Rebecca Gilman's "Spinning into Butter" Quiz

Answer: Nuyorican

Sarah needed to know so that she could help Patrick get a scholarship designated for minority students. However, when he told her he was Nuyorican, she asked if she could just tell the scholarship advisory board that he was Hispanic. Patrick objected to being called Hispanic and persistently refused to describe himself as such, eventually asking Sarah if she knew why he was objecting.

She confirmed that she knew, saying, "correct me, please, if I'm wrong, it's because it really only applies to imperialists of European descent who colonized Puerto Rico." Patrick made it clear that he didn't want to be called Hispanic, so Sarah then asked about the term "Latino." When Patrick objected to that as well, Sarah asked about "just plain Puerto Rican," which Patrick also shot down.

When Sarah pointed out that the scholarship was worth $12,000, Patrick conceded to being called "Puerto Rican."

Answer: Sarah

Meyers, the security guard, came to put the notes in a plastic bag and mentioned the police, which infuriated Kenney. She chastised Sarah for having called them, pointing out that calling the police would alert the local press, which would then get the story into the wire services and make the college's problem a national issue. Kenney wanted to handle the incident internally, but Sarah had felt that with a note as "violent" as the one left, calling the police was a natural move. Once Kenney and Strauss had left, Ross told Sarah that she "did the right thing," but she made it clear she didn't want his support.

Answer: Students for Tolerance

He came to Sarah's office to get space for a meeting and approval for postering on campus. Then he started asking about funding and the process for becoming a legitimate organization and confessed that he was putting together the organization to "add a line" to his law school resume. Sarah was clearly unimpressed by his questionable commitment, and Greg lost even more ground when he realized Sarah was responsible for making the campus fraternities convert to coed status.

Answer: "minority students"

Patrick told her that the correct term to use was "students of color." They had an awkward exchange because Patrick had complained about how he and his friends had felt at the forum, and Sarah assumed he was talking about other minority students. Patrick challenged her, mocking the notion that all his friends were minorities and that "'Hispanic' people stick together." Sarah apologized, but was never quite able to redeem herself. Patrick went on to say that at the forum, the "students of color were being talked about like we weren't even there, like we couldn't even talk for ourselves. And the white kids were being talked about like they were all criminals." Sarah continued to apologize, but also urged Patrick to attend the second forum and voice his concerns.

Answer: NYU

He came into her office because she wanted to talk about the editorial he'd written, in which he accused her of offering him a minority scholarship before she "even knew his race or ethnicity, as if any minority would do." He was upset that there was always a price attached to him getting things, like the shame he'd had to endure twice in the process of obtaining the scholarship. Sarah explained that she wanted the price to be in the college's pocket, in that they were giving money to Patrick, but it was clear that she didn't understand his complaint and was doing little to appease him.

He told her that he was applying to NYU for the spring semester and would be sending a copy of the editorial along with a letter explaining his feelings to the president of the college and board of advisers. Sarah kept trying to apologize and flatter him into rethinking his departure, which he eventually cut off, saying "I don't want to reconsider and I don't want any more compliments! I'm not some genius or something. I'm just whatever I am and I want to go someplace where I won't stand out."

Answer: respect him

Sarah recounted the way Ross had described the man and likened it to romanticizing poverty. She said he was idealizing him, and "that means that you didn't respect him." She continued, "To idealize is to fundamentally mark as different; it is not to respect.

It is to fundamentally mark as different and, therefore, not equal. So that man on the train could never be your equal." She kept insisting that because Ross saw the man as fundamentally different from himself, he would never respect him or see him as an equal.

She eventually confessed that she was taking the subject so seriously because she felt she'd done the same thing with Patrick; she had seen him as fundamentally different from herself and had consequently failed to respect him.

Answer: a rock

He was out when it was thrown through the window and wasn't hurt. Meyers brought it to Sarah's office and told her to take it to the police because he was tired of being yelled at by them for having so many fingerprints contaminating every piece of evidence. Sarah contended that she was tired of being yelled at as well. Meyers also told her that Simon had requested she not tell his parents about the rock, as they'd make him come home, and she resigned herself to going to talk with him about it.

Answer: plantation mentality

Sarah said that when she got to graduate school, she met people who were smarter and more abrasive than she, and they pointed out that her "desire to help minority students [didn't] have anything to do with a sense of justice or fair play." Rather, it came from her "plantation mentality." They told her she wanted to "help the noble savage." She told Ross that she agreed, though subconsciously, and tried to enlighten herself by taking seminars on African American literature and theory.

She immersed herself in black culture to try to "hear the African American voice and the African American viewpoint" but ended up just feeling responsible for their hardship.

However, when she went to work at Lancaster in Chicago, where the student population was entirely minority, her perspective got worse.

As she told Ross, "before I started there, I was just paternalistic. Now I'm fully aware that black people have agency and are responsible and can help themselves, but I think they don't do it because they're lazy and stupid."

Answer: Little Black Sambo

The FBI results had revealed that the handwriting was Simon's, and when Sarah went to talk to him, he confessed to having done all of it to himself, but couldn't explain why. Later, in a meeting, Strauss tried to compare it to the story of Little Black Sambo; that he'd been wearing beautiful new clothes in the jungle and one by one tigers had come and taken all his clothes away.

Then the tigers argued about which was grandest and took the clothes off to chase one another. As they were busy chasing, Little Black Sambo went and retrieved his clothes.

The tigers chased each other faster and faster around a tree "until they were just a yellow blur, and they spun so fast, they spun themselves into butter." Little Black Sambo then went to get a spoon and spread the butter on his pancakes to eat. Strauss argued that Simon had turned the college into the tigers and had gotten them "in a whirl over nothing." Sarah protested, but Kinney and Strauss had both seen her racist rants on the legal pad and were disinclined to listen to much of anything from her.

Answer: Sarah

Strauss had wanted to do it because he wanted to "meet him." Sarah insisted on doing it herself, saying that she didn't want Strauss near him. Kenney allowed Sarah to go because she knew Sarah had never done anything overtly racist and Strauss would "say something stupid without even knowing it and open [the college] up to a lawsuit." The next day, after Meyers had reported back to Sarah about getting Simon home and Sarah had finished her appointment with Greg Sullivan, she called Simon to see how he was doing. Kenney had apparently failed to notify his parents, so he'd had to explain to them, but Sarah tried to impart some hopefulness to him about the future, reassuring him that it was "okay."