Ping-pong, Human Rights, and Cecil B. Rhodes

Important things happen in rooms with brown-paneled walls. If I hadn’t already known this was true before this past weekend, I know it now. The room at the St. Regis Hotel in which my interview for the Rhodes Scholarship took place not only had brown panels, but was even windowless and darkly lit. The room was the perfect place for an interrogation, which is exactly what happened. For 20 minutes I tried to tell a panel of eight extremely accomplished people—including, perhaps most notably, Nicholas Kristof—why Burma matters, but in the end the scholarship went elsewhere. A scattering of traumatic memories remain, but so too do dim outlines of lessons learned.
The two-day extravaganza, which culminated in the interview on Saturday, began with the Rhodes’ well-known day one double-header: the cocktail reception and “informal” (read: extremely formal) dinner. These parts of the program, although predictably forced and stuffy, were actually fairly enjoyable. Much to my pleasant surprise, my fellow finalists were not all poli-sci and econ kids gunning straight for the White House. There were a few in the room, for sure, but some fields a bit more to my liking were also well-represented, including medical anthropology, ethnic studies, public health, and my own migration studies.
The panelists, unsurprisingly, were people of some stature: a high-powered CEO, a well-known lawyer, two professors, two scientists, a former Heisman Trophy winner, and Kristof, the self-proclaimed “scribbler.” (Aside: Kristof’s son spells his first name like I do. Too bad that didn’t help me.) By the time we all arrived for interviews on the morning of day two, I felt fairly comfortable with the other finalists, one of whom I interned with years ago in Washington, D.C.
That afternoon, while we awaited the outcome of the panel’s hours-long deliberation session, we played ping-pong in an adjoining banquet room, where a Bar Mitzvah was being set up for later in the evening. For the record, I went undefeated—I beat one of the eventual scholarship winners, and the second would have been toast, too, had I been given the chance. The West Point cadet gave me the most trouble, but I won a close match. (Why ping-pong skills are not a part of the scholarship criteria I never will understand.) About an hour later, we were casually sitting around a table talking when the clip-clop of dress shoes on marble told us the panel was approaching with its decision. About 15 minutes after that, we all cleared out, and I found myself downstairs in the famous Old King Cole bar, toasting rejection with a few other finalists and some seriously expensive beer. “So it goes...” was the phrase passed around. It was said slowly, repeatedly, and with melancholy. “So it goes....”
It was all quite surreal, a strange encounter with power and the environments in which it is produced and reproduced. For now, my more traumatic recollections seem far easier to articulate than any wisdom I might have (accidentally, I suppose) picked up. But when I do try to conjure the latter, the thoughts I have are difficult to enunciate. I recall one moment in my interview in particular. I forget the specific question, but in answering, I remember trying to give the panel some feel for the conditions of migration on the Thai-Burma border. I stumbled over a description of one village I visited this past summer, speaking too quickly and too superficially. I was immediately frustrated, but of course the moment afforded little opportunity for revision. The question passed, and so did a key chance to unravel some of what should have made me a strong candidate.
How could I fumble this kind of story, this kernel of the very issue for which I care most? The answer does not come easily. Talking with friends and professors, and writing in various publications on- and off-campus, I can speak to my experiences on the Thai-Burma border with some comfort and conviction. But when faced with eight fairly severe and stone-faced panelists—one of whom, United Technologies CEO George David, is the Chairman of the US-ASEAN Business Council, an extremely powerful Southeast Asia business conglomerate—I felt very much the outsider, a naive idealist unable to speak the “mature” and “sensible” language of global economics and international realism, of business engagement and “reasonable” social change. Had I defended my positions eloquently and with sophistication, I do believe the panel would have met me halfway. But I could heard my voice sounding small and dry; my words were fraught with insecurity.
Looking back, I want to say this particular moment evokes an inevitable clash of contexts. Perhaps brown-paneled rooms in expensive midtown hotels simply do not accommodate intense stories of deprivation and human rights violations, especially when these rooms are populated by people of extreme power and privilege. And yet, in the search for the “lessons learned,” for the proverbial takeaway that will help me think this was all worthwhile, the “clash of contexts” answer is not good enough. Viewing human rights work as intrinsically antagonistic to places of power and the people who inhabit them is not a smart move. Doing so might feed the anti-establishment fantasies of a self-righteous activist (Who, me?), but it’s not likely to improve the lives of Burmese migrant workers in Thailand. The point might be a cynical one, but as I grasp for the redemptive lesson, this is all I can really produce: the value of being able to move in multiple contexts, not only on the Thai-Burma border, but also in the St. Regis hotel.
So it is that I bid goodbye to Cecil B. Rhodes and his powerful financial progeny, whispering my “So it goes...” as I (continually) relive my 20-minute window of opportunity. I could have done this, I could have said that, and of course, I coulda been somebody. Alas. Even though the room with the brown panels got the best of me this time, one hopes there will be a next time, and that it will go differently. And anyway, in the meantime, the ping-pong table is mine.

The author is a Columbia College senior majoring in anthropology.
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