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alestlelive.com
Thursday, 04.14.22
ALEX AULTMAN
Editor-in-Chief
GABRIEL BRADY Managing Editor
EMILY STERZINGER
Lifestyles Editor
BRANDON WELLS
Sports Editor
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Opinion Editor
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LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Belief systems should not justify prejudiced rhetoric
SIUE ART THERAPY COUNSELING COMMUNITY
Articles are currently circulating claiming the SIUE Art Therapy Counseling program is unwelcoming of Christian views. It’s important to note our small learning community of 33 students is predominantly made up of white, cisgender women—with a large portion of students identifying as Christian. As students, we have experienced the freedom to express our beliefs and value systems in the classroom. In fact, we are encouraged to do so in order to become self-aware art therapists. However, a line is crossed when students use their belief systems to justify racist, homophobic and xenophobic rhetoric. When Christianity is used as a shield for bigotry, one perpetuates the historical abuses that have occurred and continues to cause tremendous harm. Unfortunately, our program has a history and current reality of students who use their beliefs to justify such harmful rhetoric and action, which creates a toxic and harmful learning environment.
Our program is among the top art therapy programs in the country and aspires to train exemplary and socio-culturally attuned clinicians. The three core faculty members have made a point to weave issues of intersectionality, critical self-reflexivity and sociocultural awareness into most facets of our learning. Our student handbook states, “Our vision is that art therapy counselors cultivate creative, just and healthy communities.” (Student Handbook, 2021, p. 3).
If individuals cause harm to fellow students, how can we expect them to not cause harm to clients? As art therapists, we hold positions of power within the therapeutic relationship, and cannot allow this power to be used to hurt the people who seek us out for help. If the university expects to create art therapists who “take reasonable steps to ensure that they are sensitive to differences that exist among cultures” (Student Handbook, 2021, p. 8), how can one overlook the harm currently being caused in our learning community by the failure to meet this outcome? We must uphold our ethical standards and hold trainees accountable when these standards are not met.
To address these concerns, we communally planned an art show and invited community members to engage in the discussion. Now that this conversation has expanded outward, it is necessary to hear our experiences before distorting the issue further. We urge those who have exploited these matters to make a statement that calls for an end to the threats made against members of our community. We invite these individuals to engage in open dialogue with us.
ALESTLE VIEW: Status quo isn’t always the best choice
THE ALESTLE STAFF
editorial board
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is a common piece of advice, but only serves to reinforce one’s decision to follow the status quo in the face of difficult decisions, even if it goes against their own values.
On the surface, the phrase makes sense; there’s no reason to change what’s already working. However, this advice pushes people to look less critically at the systems or structures in place because they assume they are the best options. But if they really are the best options, shouldn’t challenging them lead to a defense proving just that?
What it leads to in practice is avoiding counterarguments altogether and ignoring changing societal landscapes by refusing to adapt. No human system is perfect — and rejecting that reality allows issues, however small, to compound over time.
For example, politicians will often run on ideas of changing the U.S. for the better on the large-scale, yet instead of challenging the foundations creating the problems, they will make small tweaks within the status quo one way or the other to gain political favor, rather than solving the larger issues, which require more difficult choices and a larger level of responsibility.
An example of this is the U.S. economy. According to data tracking its political-economic system since the early 1970’s, its wages and poverty rate have stagnated, the wealth share for the top one percent has seen drastic increase whereas the bottom 50 percent saw little to no change. Further, the racial wage gap has drastically increased, undergraduate tuition has doubled and per capita healthcare spending is almost five times higher.
In a 2018 study conducted by Mackenzie Health ethicist Johnathan Breslin, he describes a manifestation of status quo bias called the default effect, which is the idea that “decision-makers will tend to stick with the default choice even when it conflicts with their stated preferences.” This tends to have two root causes — the status quo effect and omission bias.
The status quo effect is where people stick to the status quo in an effort to minimize regret. If a negative outcome occurs from going against the current state of affairs, we are more likely to believe things would have turned out better if we had just stuck with the default, whether or not there’s a logical reason to believe this is the case.
Omission bias is “the greater willingness to accept harms that arise from omissions than from actions.” People tend to feel higher moral responsibility when they feel they are the direct cause of harm than if harm occurs from them avoiding this responsibility. Breslin provided the example of a parent hesitating or refusing to vaccinate their children as they’re choosing to put their children at greater risk, rather than feel responsible in the small chance their child has an adverse outcome.
Further, in a research article titled, “Overcoming status quo bias in the human brain,” the researchers found that humans have a much greater tendency to accept the status quo when faced with difficult choices, which leads to more errors in their decision making — even if the status quo conflicts with their chosen preferences and values.
Despite the overwhelming drive to follow the status quo, it’s not impossible to fight against it, which is worth fighting to avoid greater harm. In the same study by Breslin, he suggests three potential ways to combat falling into this trap. Although his advice was specifically targeted at clinicians supporting surrogates in making decisions on behalf of patients, much of the same ideas from his first two suggestions can be applied to a large range of contexts.
His first solution is, when laying out options for a decision, to frame an alternative to the status quo as the default option, combating the inclination to immediately choose the “easy out.” The second is to share major decisions with others as a means to spread the responsibility, which minimizes the chance of having to take sole responsibility for the decision, fighting omission bias.
When making a difficult decision or looking at the current state of a system or structure, it’s easy to follow the status quo and hope it works out. Afterall, it’s easier to accept being responsible for harm by omission than by a direct decision. However, this bias continues to plague our decision making abilities across the board.
While we shouldn’t default to disregarding the current systems in place, we shouldn’t be against considering potential for improvement, or even completely restructuring an imperfect system. Ultimately, learning to challenge the status quo not only works to benefit large-scale systems, but helps to guard individuals from making poor decisions that serve to cause them more harm than making the difficult choice to consider alternative options.
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NEXT WEEK: SIUE’S TIM HALL APPOINTED TO NCAA SOFTBALL COMMITTEE
Thursday, 04.14.22
Women’s soccer remains undefeated, spring season well underway at 3-0
BRANDON WELLS sports editor
Following a 3-0 winning streak in their spring season, the women’s soccer team prepare for their next games.
Looking back at the past few games, the Cougars have shown their teeth to their last three opponents, Western Illinois, Mckendree and UMSL.
In their first game of this season, SIUE faced Western Illinois on March 26, winning with a 2-0 lead.
The next game of the season was one of the Cougar’s lower scoring games so far, but still resulted in a 1-0 win against McKendree University.
The third and most recent game on April 9 was an SIUE vs. UMSL matchup resutling in a 7-0 win for the Cougars. The team walked away with one of the highest scores they’ve overtaken UMSL with since 1982.
With a prosperous few weeks of scoring goals, the team only has two games left in the season, playing against Lindenwood on Friday, and SLU on April 23.
While the games have yet to be decided, the last three are indicators of more to come.
Freshman defender Mary Fetter of Blaine, Minnesota, tries her best to stop her opponent, Jaycee Cotton of Waterloo, Illinois. | Jihun Han / The Alestle
SIUE STANDINGS
Softball
OVERALL OVC
SIUE
Murray State UT Martin Belmont Tennessee Tech Southeast Missouri Austin Peay Eastern Illinois Morehead State Tennessee State
Baseball
OVERALL OVC
SIUE
Belmont Austin Peay Southeast Missouri Tennessee Tech UT Martin Morehead State Eastern Illinois Murray State
Women’s Tennis
OVERALL OVC
Murray State Belmont Austin Peay
SIUE
UT Martin Eastern Illinois Southeast Missouri Tennessee State
All stats are from the OVC
UPCOMING
Track and Field at Redbird Invitational All day, April 15-16
Baseball at SIUC vs. Siena 2 p.m., April 15
Softball at Morehead State 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., April 15
Women’s Soccer vs. Lindenwood 5:30 p.m., April 15
Men’s Soccer at SIUE vs. Illinois Springfield 1 p.m., April 16
