36 items found for your search. If no results were found please broaden your search.
(03/26/15 4:22am)
All college students ought to be familiar with the arguments against illicit drug use. They are numerous: the wasted hours, the decline of physical health, the spiral into addiction and the possibility of overdose and death. The effects of illicit drug use are, of course, not limited to the individual user; drug use tears apart families, breaks down friendships and destroys the fabric of communities through the crime and social waste that it inspires.
(03/05/15 5:07am)
This past weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference marked the unofficial kickoff of the race to achieve “Anointed Son of the Right-Wingers” status in the forthcoming Republican presidential primary season. While candidates have been jockeying for many months — firing off passive aggressive subtweets and making cryptically critical statements through their press offices, among other antics — the 2015 CPAC marked the first time the presumptive candidates were all in the same place, firing off televised speeches in front of a raucous crowd.
(02/19/15 5:01am)
Last week, second-year student Richard Yoder authored an Opinion piece in which he decried the moral failures of the upcoming honor referenda. Yoder’s grievances seem to center on his presupposition that the students spearheading the proposed reforms are not impelled by a driving moral principle. Instead, he finds a movement defined by a “post-modern” attitude, characterized by an utter lack of firm principle or grounding. “I would have more respect for advocates of a multi-sanction system,” Yoder writes. “If they, too, attempted to justify their views based on a moral principle.”
(02/05/15 5:10am)
Catholics constitute a historical political swing bloc, not wholly comfortable in the confines of either American political party. Some Catholics, particularly those who attend Church more often, have traditionally aligned themselves with the socially conservative Republican Party. Others, identifying with the Church’s teachings on social justice, have allied with the economically liberal Democrats, who like to claim their redistributive policies are best for the poor.
(01/22/15 4:55am)
You’ve surely heard by now that Stephen Colbert is headed to CBS to replace David Letterman, leaving behind Comedy Central and his iconic alter ego, a breathtaking and irreverent parody of conservative personalities such as Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. As everyone who has followed his career knows, Colbert frequently jokes about “truthiness,” a term he coined which Wikipedia defines as “a quality characterizing a ‘truth’ that a person making an argument or assertion claims to know intuitively, ‘from the gut,’ or because it ‘feels right’ without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts.”
(12/04/14 7:39am)
I am an enthusiastic participant in mentoring programs such as Madison House’s “Big Siblings” program, and I have always enjoyed teaching and tutoring. Teach for America (TFA) therefore seems like a logical potential postgraduate destination. But it is with some dismay that I learn many regard TFA as controversial. To quote one Harvard University editorial, TFA is “working to destroy the American public education system,” through a nefarious combination of sending unprepared twenty-two year olds into the most challenging classrooms in America and replacing career teachers. A bit more digging reveals a veritable bookshelf of criticism: a Washington Post op-ed citing TFA as an “experiment in ‘resume-padding’ for ambitious young people,” and an Atlantic article eviscerating TFA for its lack of teacher training are just two of the many, many examples of TFA-related criticism I found in a simple Google search.
(11/06/14 6:22am)
Republicans around the country are in the midst of a great celebration. Victors in most of the contested Senate races around the country, the GOP commands a healthy majority in the U.S. Senate (their exact lead will not be known until the Louisiana runoff on December 6th). The GOP also picked up several surprise governorships, including traditional Democratic strongholds Illinois and Maryland.
(10/23/14 4:39am)
I tend to be more skeptical than most about quotas and other measures to artificially induce diversity, but there is one corner of this University that possesses a homogeneity that really makes my blood boil. I am talking, of course, about the columnists for The Cavalier Daily Life section.
(10/06/14 5:10am)
Last Wednesday, my fellow columnist (and my close friend) Gray Whisnant penned a column on the ills of the “socially liberal, fiscal conservative,” or, as Whisnant calls it, “the neoliberal.” Through his praise of social liberalism and his condemnation of fiscal conservatism, he heavily implies that the fiscal conservative, aside from being simply wrong on matters of public policy, practices “upper-class identity politics” and may be “indifferent” to war and poverty. Aside from presupposing fiscal conservatives to be incorrect (or downright immoral), he describes events or actions as “ideological” when that label is unnecessary, or even wrong. We should reject the notion that fiscal conservatism is wrong and immoral and caution against misconstruing the nature of ideology.
(09/25/14 4:55am)
Rand Paul is perhaps the most intriguing potential 2016 presidential candidate. Rand is not his father — committed libertarian Ron Paul, who developed a passionate but ultimately small movement of devoted followers — and he seems to have largely escaped the lazy media narrative that he is “just like his dad”. Like his father, Paul brings unorthodox Republican policy positions onto the national stage. Unlike his father, he may have the mainstream appeal to pull off a Republican presidential primary victory, at the very least. According to a July poll, he leads all other potential Republican candidates in New Hampshire, and is tied for the lead in Iowa.
(09/18/14 4:35am)
The term “student activism” brings to mind the turbulence and chaos of the 1960s. I think of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and its heroics in organizing and participating in the marches and sit-ins of the Civil Rights movement. I think too of the more than 4.5 million students who went on strike in the aftermath of the 1970 Kent State University shootings. It’s hard to forget that the 1960s student activism movement was tinged with connotations of rampant drug use and sexual upheaval, but that is not to take away from the obvious successes of this era’s student activism.
(09/11/14 4:59am)
Over the summer, Cavalier Daily Columnist Ben Rudgley wrote, “the biggest public policy challenge facing our generation is climate change.” Fair enough — this is an opinion that many on the both sides of the political aisle share. In particular, the environmental faction within the political left is gaining momentum, both ideologically and financially: Tom Steyer, a San Francisco hedge fund mogul who topped the list of individual donors in the 2013-2014 election cycle by more than $10 million gave largely to a slate of environmentally-conscious Democrats. Recently, he has been hard at work getting other wealthy Democrats to join his crusade.
(09/04/14 3:59am)
Liberals often call conservatives hypocrites for their views on social issues. They do so for two primary reasons. First, they argue that conservatives, as self-identifying limited government enthusiasts (at least from an economic standpoint), should automatically reject government interventions on social issues such as restrictions on abortion and marriage. This argument is easily dismissible, as it ignores the distinction between conservatism and libertarianism. Note that when I say “conservatives,” I speak of supporters of social conservatism, a group distinct from “fiscal conservatives” or “members of Republican Party,” although there is significant overlap between these camps. Conservatives tend to believe in the role of government to regulate virtue and vice, whereas libertarians (and keep in mind, these are sweeping generalizations) would rather leave most social issues untouched: let individuals decide for themselves whether to use drugs or have abortions. Thus viewed, conservative social positions are not at odds with their limited government tendencies.
(08/28/14 3:07am)
In the spirit of the new school year, I thought it would be appropriate to offer up a set of resolutions for the coming year, an “agenda” of sorts, which our student leaders might heed as they govern their organizations in the coming year. This university is a haven, in many ways, from the turmoil that plagues the outside world, but that is not to say that the institutions that govern student life at this University are perfect, or even close to it. Cracks in the surface do exist.
(05/23/14 5:30pm)
The issue of sexual assault on college campuses is in the midst of a “public moment,” so to speak. In late April, the White House released a task force report issuing recommendations for reforming how colleges handle sexual assault, the centerpiece of the Obama administration’s campaign to bring attention to the issue. The White House has also created a website, www.NotAlone.gov, replete with resources for students and schools on how to best combat sexual assault.
(04/25/14 7:26pm)
At some point in every student’s career, he or she encounters a teacher who incorporates personal bias into teaching. This has important implications on the educational process. Teachers and professors heavily influence the thinking of their students, and are crucial in a student’s development of beliefs and biases, be they political, religious or economic. How should professors go about their work, with personal biases in mind? Should they be upfront in their beliefs? Should they try and be unbiased? And what are the responsibilities of students?
(04/17/14 5:37am)
On April 10th, President Barack Obama paid homage to the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Civil Rights Act, the 1964 legislation that banned racial segregation. Part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Great Society,” the law is one of the signature legislative achievements in American history, and a product of Johnson’s legislative genius. Johnson argued, cajoled, schemed and bargained his way around the powerful Southern bloc of the Senate (of which he was once a part), utilizing President Kennedy’s death, a Democratic majority, the ebb and tide of public opinion, and every ounce of political capital he could muster to jam the Civil Rights Bill through Congress and into law.
(04/10/14 4:31am)
Last Thursday, the Honor Committee hosted its first ever “Honor Congress,” a forum for students and University community members to identify and discuss problems with the Honor System. The event did not, of course, solve the deeply rooted and significant problems with the Honor System, but it does constitute a positive first step towards making “Honor belong to all of us,” and not just those on the Honor Committee, as outgoing Honor Chair Evan Behrle said in a recent op-ed piece.
(04/03/14 4:22am)
This spring break, I had the good fortune to attend an Alternative Spring Break (ASB) trip to San Juan, Texas. My experience was phenomenal. And I was not alone in this assessment; each person I asked told me that his or her ASB trip was exceptionally fun and worthwhile. I would highly recommend the ASB experience to any University student.
(03/27/14 6:12am)
The United States continues to face two massive and contradictory health care problems. The first is that millions of Americans lack health care coverage, placing health care expenses out of reach for the nation’s poor. The recently passed Affordable Care Act (ACA) works to address this problem. According to Congressional Budget Office (CBO) forecasting, the ACA will reduce the number of uninsured Americans by about 30 million in the coming decade. Whatever your opinion on the ACA, it does take steps to reduce the number of uninsured by expanding health care to more Americans.