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(12/13/19 3:32pm)
Earlier this week, President Donald Trump and other world leaders convened in London for a NATO summit commemorating the military alliance’s 70th anniversary. As predicted, Trump focused his attention on many member countries’ failure to devote 2 percent of their GDP to national defense — a financial obligation for participants in the alliance. The tense meeting came to a tumultuous end on Wednesday, after footage of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau mocking Trump with European leaders came to light. Trump’s abrupt cancellation of the summit’s closing news conference, and his denunciation of Trudeau as “two-faced,” are revealing of the deep-seated disjointedness in the organization.
(11/18/19 4:57am)
The Cavalier Daily ran a column earlier this month shedding light on the newspaper’s tumultuous path to financial and legal independence. The forgotten story details the organization’s rejection of then-University President Frank Hereford’s attempt to censor its coverage of persistent racial issues plaguing the University community in the late 1970s. As a result, The Cavalier Daily lost the majority of its financial and legal support and has continued to distance itself from the University as a benefactor ever since.
(10/08/19 11:08pm)
In Federalist Paper no. 78, Alexander Hamilton writes, "Liberty can have nothing to fear from the judiciary alone, but would have every thing to fear from its union with either of the other departments.” Given the increasingly politicized nature of the Supreme Court nomination process over time, the judicial branch has never adequately fulfilled Hamilton’s vision of neutrality. But you can’t blame a man for trying. Today, his efforts are facing their gravest challenge since 1937, as several politicians advocate for the resurrection of court-packing.
(09/12/19 2:09am)
In contrast to 10 years ago, you don’t need to search long in order to find a parade of college students, politicians, academics and entertainers all calling to abolish the Electoral College. Among them, per usual, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-N.Y.) voice rings loudly — indicting the institution for its supposed repression of racial minority voters. But a surprising number of less radical Democratic politicians have decided to join Cortez. Most notably, Presidential candidates Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Beto O’Rourke, Julián Castro, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) have all spoken out in support of eliminating the Electoral College in favor of a nationwide popular vote.
(03/22/19 12:22am)
In a column published earlier this month, Opinion Columnist Jake Wartel composed a crude case against the University’s Reserve Officer Training Corps based on two non sequiturs. Because the U.S. military is an “objectively destructive institution,” and college should theoretically be free, a military program that provides scholarship opportunities to students must be rendered “obsolete.” To Wartel, the program represents an illicit exchange in which the United States government resorts to bribery in order to fuel its insatiable imperialist appetite. Aside from overlooking alternate motivations for joining ROTC, this portrayal fails in its outright misrepresentation of the U.S. military and of the economic viability of universal tuition.
(01/24/19 5:33am)
Like most Twitter users, I spent the greater part of this past Saturday and Sunday in a fit of rage over a picture. The photograph — captured at last weekend’s protests in Washington D.C. — featured a smug, MAGA-hat sporting, white male teen lording over an elderly Native American activist, Nathan Phillips. Viral video clips and subsequent “tell-alls” from Phillips, released initially by the Detroit Free Press and The Washington Post, supported and fueled the storm of indignation. The general Twitter sentiment and accompanying media frenzy was correct — the Covington Catholic incident is emblematic of a larger societal ill. However, rather than symbolizing the threat of white supremacy to historically oppressed minorities, the faceoff and elicited reactions illustrate the ever-blurring lines between fact and fiction and an attempt to desperately convince the public of a larger narrative — often at the expense of accuracy and journalistic integrity.
(12/06/18 4:11am)
The current legal drinking age in the United States is outdated, yet it remains in place. The reason behind our collective failure to properly campaign for a lowered drinking age is clear — individuals with an actual stake in changing the policy quickly lose incentive when they hit the critical age of 21. Groups with an exterior motivation to vie for drinking rights — like liquor and alcohol corporations — lose credibility for disingenuous motivations. In contrast, Mothers Against Drunk Driving generated mass public support in the early 1980s, capitalizing on moralizing and emotional rhetoric to push our representatives to enact a higher legal drinking age. Their campaign worked — in 1984, Congress passed and President Ronald Reagan signed into law the National Minimum Drinking Age Act to effectively blackmail each state into raising their drinking age to 21.
(11/16/18 4:36pm)
Picture this. You’re sitting in a lecture, gearing up for your Spring 2019 enrollment appointment. Like half of your surrounding classmates, many of whom may share your class year or even your major, you’ve stopped paying attention to your professor five minutes ago and moved on to continuously refreshing the Student Information System. When wait — what’s that? Two previously-undetected holds on your SIS account? Your mind floods with worst-case scenarios — you’ll likely be unable to enroll in the critical courses necessary to complete your major requirements, dropout of school and be forced to join your family’s traveling folk band as an unnamed backup dancer as you have neither musical talent nor academic prospects. After talking on the phone with roughly 12 different customer service representatives to solve the technical difficulties and ending up back on the first line you dialed, this is the future you’ve firmly settled on. Unfortunately, this scenario is precisely how the latter half of last Tuesday went for me.
(10/11/18 9:42pm)
Sitting prominently in the northwest corner of Central Grounds — directly adjacent to Jefferson’s academical village — Alderman Library serves as a reminder of the University’s distinguished historical status. In contrast to the early 1980s architecture of Clemons Library, Alderman’s classic aesthetic style dating back to 1938 has withstood the test of time. Even more worth preserving than the building’s traditional facade, however, are the centuries of accumulated print material that lay inside.
(09/05/18 4:41am)
Healthcare has been a source of controversy in the United States for many years. This divisive conversation initially emerged in the late twentieth century under the Clinton administration, but has recently intensified with the passage of the Affordable Care Act. Unfortunately, despite the attention the issue has received, affordable and accessible medical care has remained out of reach for many American families.
(05/25/18 1:15pm)
Joseph Wood — a convicted double-murderer — received 15 injections of midazolam and hydromorphone in 2014 in an effort to complete his botched execution. The inmate reportedly gasped and snorted nearly two hours before dying. In addition to Wood’s painful and drawn-out death, several more recent examples of unsuccessful lethal injections exist.
(03/15/18 4:57am)
On the night of Feb. 22, Pro-Palestinian protesters converged on Clark Hall to derail an event held by the Brody Jewish Center and Hoos for Israel. The event, featuring a panel of reservists from the Israeli Defense Force, sought to “promote conversation and respectful dialogue between students of different religious and political backgrounds,” according to Talia Sion, the chair of the Jewish Leadership Council on Grounds. The Pro-Palestinian protesters must have missed the memo about “respectful dialogue” because their threatening behavior — including derogatory posters and chants intended to shout down civil free speech — eventually led to the dispatch of the University Police Department. Students left the event fearing for their safety. This incident, along with the University’s Minority Rights Coalition’s rejection of the Jewish Leadership Council’s request for full admission into their organization, is a continuation of the trend I wrote about in a column published last July about the often hypocritical attitudes with which those seeking to represent minorities approach Judaism. Intersectionality — a principle purporting to protect minorities — has facilitated the discrimination against this historically and presently vulnerable minority group.
(02/08/18 7:06am)
Following a period of intense debate and national controversy, Charlottesville’s City Council voted to rename Lee Park as Emancipation Park in June of last year. The step away from Virginia’s Confederate past was widely praised throughout the city for its seemingly progressive connotations. However, as a leader in the local black community Mary Carey has asserted in her increasingly popular petition, the council’s chosen name of “Emancipation” fails to represent the will of the Charlottesville community. Moreover, the term’s broader historical implications undermine the agency of black citizens in their own abolition. The City Council’s failure to discern the name’s detrimental consequences for parts of Charlottesville’s black population reflects a severe shortcoming in their role as arbiters of public opinion. For this reason, Emancipation Park should be renamed with community input.
(01/25/18 6:53am)
Against the backdrop of the increasing prevalence of xenophobic and racially-charged rhetoric in the political sphere of the United Kingdom, the daily happenings of the royal family appear inconsequential. Since the watershed referendum vote to sever ties between the U.K. and the European Union, hate crimes against religious and ethnic minorities within Britain have reached their modern peak. In the cities of Gwent, Warwickshire, Kent and Nottinghamshire alone, the percentage of racially motivated violence increased by well over 50 percent in 2017. Amidst growing ethnic tensions, however, a glimmer of hope emerged with Prince Harry of Wales and Meghan Markle’s engagement announcement last November.
(11/10/17 3:36am)
On Sep. 20, fellow Opinion columnist Thomas Ferguson highlighted the importance of welcoming prominent speakers on grounds, regardless of their political affiliation. According to Ferguson, by censoring diverging viewpoints, the University would effectively eradicate opportunities for intellectual discourse. The obligation to engage critically with varying viewpoints necessitates the analysis of the credibility and esteem of every speaker, not just those with political beliefs divergent from from the University’s majority. In light of former DNC chair Donna Brazile’s allegations against Hillary Clinton, we must cast a critical eye to the apotheosized former Secretary of State before her appearance at the University’s Women’s Global Leadership Forum from Nov. 13 to 14.
(09/20/17 4:07am)
In October of 1937, the Soviet Union under Stalin oversaw the removal of famed sculptor Paolo Troubetzkoy’s statue of Tsar Alexander III from Vosstaniya Square in Saint Petersburg. Along with statues, books and churches from the tsarist era also fell victim to the communist regime. The systematic destruction of Russia’s cultural heritage was deemed an essential step in the Marxist revolution, in order to erase any lingering attachment to the old-world order. The University recently experienced the essence of this destruction when, on Tuesday Sept. 12, protesters from several student organizations arrived at the Rotunda to shroud the Thomas Jefferson statue in a black tarp. Claims regarding the motivation behind the demonstration are varied, with some protesters condemning President Teresa Sullivan’s response to the white supremacist rally of Aug. 11 and others attempting to honor the rally’s victims. Regardless of justifications, the defacement of a UNESCO World Heritage site commemorating the University’s founder is absolutely unacceptable and ought to be more widely and explicitly denounced by the University community.
(09/08/17 2:28am)
On Monday, Aug. 21, concerned and outraged members from across the Charlottesville community took to City Hall to express their grievances to City Council regarding the “Unite the Right” rally of the previous week. The attendees targeted the Council as a whole for failing to prevent the outbreak of violence during the rally, and then went on to single out the failures of Charlottesville Mayor Mike Signer and University President Teresa Sullivan to prevent white supremacists from confronting counter-protesters. The meeting quickly devolved into chaos, resulting in the abandonment of the Council’s procedural norms, and the chance for every aggrieved citizen to voice their complaints for one minute. This chaotic example of mass participation at the local level typifies the level of civic involvement the city of Charlottesville and cities across the country should strive for, in order to combat fringe groups attempting to dominate over the voices of many.
(07/31/17 7:53am)
In late June, thousands from across the Midwest congregated in Chicago to demonstrate their support for legal rights, recognition and cultural heritage of LGBT communities in the city’s annual Pride Parade. The event, which typically emphasizes inclusion regardless of ethnic or religious background, left Laurel Grauer feeling discriminated against after being removed from the parade for carrying a rainbow flag adorning the Jewish Star of David. Organizers of the program, justifying her removal, claimed that the flag was deemed unacceptable due to its association with the State of Israel.
(04/18/17 4:06am)
Attacks on the College’s area requirements have a long history in The Cavalier Daily Opinion section. In 2002, an Opinion columnist opposed the area requirements, arguing that the extensive time required to complete them stifles the pursuit of one’s chosen major. In 2014, another columnist claimed that the majority of the required fields fail to prepare students for the practical job market. The most recent article came in response to my assertion that the Echols Scholar Program, with its exemption from area requirements, lacks a sufficient breadth of study to be a legitimate liberal arts experience. In his article, columnist Connor Fitzpatrick contends that area requirements obstruct intellectually curious students from exploring a full spectrum of courses. All three arguments in opposition to the requirements are predicated on the theory that giving students complete freedom of choice in class selection will enhance their ability to take worthwhile classes. However, the worth of a particular course is not always self-evident. The skills learned in one class can apply across several disciplines, to various majors, and the elimination of the area requirements would remove institutional incentives to take such classes.
(04/11/17 4:23am)
The nomination process for Supreme Court Justices has been in a downward spiral. Beginning with the Republican-controlled Senate’s obstruction of Merrick Garland’s nomination, partisanship has infiltrated a branch of the national government thought to be immune. Democrats in the Senate continued this trend last week with their decision to filibuster the confirmation vote for President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court justice nominee — Neil Gorsuch. In response, majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) promised that Gorsuch would be confirmed April 7, with or without the traditional 60 votes for cloture. In accordance with his promise, McConnell invoked the “nuclear option” on Thursday, overturning the Senate’s rules, allowing a simple majority to confirm Supreme Court nominees. This dangerous new precedent politicizes the nomination process and puts Democrats in a precarious situation within the national government. The filibuster and subsequent employment of the nuclear option was an avoidable mishap that will have a lasting impact on the national government.