Cat Comes to University Every Day So She Can Rescue Students with Cuddles

For years, the University of Augsburg in Bavaria, southern Germany, has played host to a very special visitor: a little ginger cat whose only mission is to give students soothing snuggles. She started popping on to campus when she was one year old, realised she liked hanging around with students, and has been paying the university a visit every day since then. Her owner lives just nearby and has no issue with the cat spending her days helping out the students, who call the cat Sammy or The Campus Cat. Sammy now knows many of the students, and will always run to them to sit on their lap and cuddle up. During each daily trip to the campus, Sammy enjoys lounging outside in the sun. But her favourite spot in the library, where she can check in on stressed out students revising for exams and offer support.

Photos by CampusCat Augsburg

But they seem to have zero idea how to actually talk about racism to other white people who don’t already agree with them

I was talking to a classmate today who told me he “felt bad” because his parents and siblings voted trump

And I’m just like: what’s the fucking point of doing all this chatting about allyship if you can’t even sit down and reason with the people closest to you.

I work with a mix of people who carry a wide array of political viewpoints. I work closely with a guy in his 60s who tends to lean Republican on most issues. 

One day, I was in a car with him and another colleague, around my age. The conversation diverted into entitlement spending and race. Us 20 somethings were on one side of the issues and a 60-year-old white guy was on the other. 

After hearing him rant for a bit, I calmly asked, “Hey ____, what’s so wrong with those living in the projects getting unemployment benefits?” I let him answer and then posed another question off of his response. I kept calm and kept letting him speak, then asking follow-up questions. Eventually, he was calm and I could tell he was satisfied that I heard his point and where he was coming from. I also noticed that his views became less and less extreme every time I posed a question. His emotions were subsiding and he was critically thinking about each question. So, I expressed my position of how certain people are exposed to certain opportunity and race plays a major role in exposure. I related to people we both knew. I related to stories of friends that he didn’t know. I asked him, again calmly, if that perspective changes anything. 

He kind of grumbled something and we arrived at our destination, ending the conversation.

However, the next day he came in and stated that he gave my position a lot of thought and felt like I brought up a lot of great points. He said was willing to think about these things. 

I was COMPLETELY taken aback. I realized that my conversation was effective. I honestly don’t know who he voted for or if there a major impact on his thinking, but something changed enough for him to thank me and bring up a willingness to change, albeit how small.

So I guess my advice would be the following:

1) Have people re-examine their own thinking. Don’t tell them how to think or haw you think. Ask them questions that have them explore their thought process.

2) Relate your position to shared experience. Put a face and a name to the marginalized group. Don’t let them go to the ‘well they’re the exception’ answer. Go back to 1) and ask them questions.

3) Stay calm. Like 100% be calm. Disarm their emotions and don’t escalate with your own. This gives them an opportunity to think rationally rather than emotionally. 

4) Don’t do it to feel good about yourself. Do it because it’s the right thing. If you are white/male/straight/cis, you need to do this for those who are not. Keep your thoughts on the marginalized and not making yourself feel good or ‘not like them’. This is not about you.

5) On the flip side, understand white poverty and what is going on in the manufacturing industry. Get the other viewpoint, even if you don’t think it’s worth empathizing with. Just understand that issue. Keep it in the back of your mind when asking questions.

Overall, Roberts’ decision means more than 860 fewer polling stations in places with a history of disenfranchisement. State governments in Wisconsin, Texas, Ohio, and North Carolina are ignoring federal court orders to provide proper voting facilities.

Mendeley is the greatest program ever

I want to weep with joy every time I use it

Just click a button when you pull up an article and it will automatically save it to your library

And cite it for you

And you can use it on your mobile devices

And it’s free

You can use it to highlight, write notes, mark up, etc. What I do is I highlight all the important jazz, use the comments to write notes on the document, and on the side bar, I write an annotated bib for it for future me. It save everything you write on it forever for you and you can put the articles in folders and organize it.