Is the Back Row the Ghetto? A Political Pamphlet

In recent weeks, I have had an epiphany about the status of the back row within the larger scheme of medical school; unfortunately, it is considered to be a convenient ghetto by many students who sit in supposedly "superior" seating near the front of the classroom. There are two important things worth nothing: firstly, until recently, many back row people were completely oblivious of their own ghetto status. It was as if they didn't realize the inherently unequal treatment they were suffering at the hands of their fellow "equals" (much like proletariat factory workers). Their unequal status was only realized when a revolutionary (in the manner of V.I. Lenin) let them know that they were being treated with brazen unfairness (this communist metaphor foreshadows the imminence of a revolution or at the very least a Decembrist uprising).

Secondly, the back row's unequal status stems predominantly from an arbitrary construct created by geography of the classroom. Just because the back row is closer to the exit, it has become a convenient rest stop for late stragglers who usually sit in the valuable real estate rows (i.e. front and middle). Since I am a lover of metaphors, the back row is like Harlem, a place where shiny, smart, privileged Columbia students (i.e. medical students from front and middle rows) must travel through via subway to get to their prestigious, Ivy League institution of higher learning. These Ivy League students barely acknowledge the residents of Harlem (or in this case the foreign medical students who all aggregate in the back row) as they move towards the front towards their sparkling destinies of wealth, happiness, and a home in Martha's Vineyard. The back row or Harlem is just filled with a blur of non-white people because, really, who can keep straight what kid is from what random ass country that a) no one has heard of or b) you don't even want to know about because it is in the political axis of evil (as deemed by the U.S.)?

The most important question remains: how is the back row the ghetto? People who usually sit in the front seats get to class late and feel an overwhelming sense of embarrassment to walk to their normal seat so they sit in the nosebleed chairs (aka the back row). This disturbs the delicate seating order already set in place since the beginning of Block 2 (montony, after all, is essential to the human condition). And so, back row regulars are left a) upset b) destabilized and c) scrambling for a seat in the far corners of the room. These people then get up and go to their normal seat during the break, which makes the back row people feel used and abused like a two dollar hooker at the local brothel. Then the uprooted backrowballer and/or aremeniangangsta and/or Greek god return to their normal seats when the "privileged" med school student deigns to go back to his or her regularly scheduled seat.

How much longer do back row people have to suffer? Why should the back row foreign people suffer like this? We demand equal rights and equal respect, just like any other medical student.

By Mariam, who aspires to be the medical school equivalent of V.I. Lenin (except without all that bloodshed and the preserved body on permanent display).