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(05/17/03 4:00am)
I NEVER wanted to attend the University of Virginia. It was probably my last choice of schools, but when all the acceptance and rejection letters were in and all the tuition numbers had been crunched, U.Va. was it. I had wanted to go to a small liberal arts school, so I wasn't looking forward to the big school mentality, the Greek-dominated social scene, the emphasis on sports. But I came, I saw, I got used to it; and now that it is time to leave, I am sadder than I ever thought I'd be.
(04/22/03 4:00am)
Howard Dean is my hero. And if you are, like me, dismayed by the direction the country's been going in lately, he should be your hero too.
(04/16/03 4:00am)
I'm not good with numbers. I figure, however, that if you were to come up with an equation to predict a nation's willingness to go to war, a proportion would be involved that would go something like this: The more the sacrifice entailed by war is spread out among a nation's populace, the less willing to go to war a nation's people will be.
(04/08/03 4:00am)
A WEEK ago, the U.S. House of Representatives called for a national day of prayer during which Americans would pray to "secure the blessings and protection of providence for the people of the United States and our armed forces during the conflict in Iraq and under the threat of terrorism at home." The non-binding resolution follows on the heels of a similar resolution passed by the Senate last week. It also echoes theological references in President George W. Bush's recent speeches, as in his State of the Union address, when he talked about his confidence in the loving God that is behind all of history and said, "we go forward with confidence, because this call of history has come to the right country -- may He guide us now."
(03/25/03 5:00am)
As bombs started falling in Baghdad last Wednesday night, millions of Americans turned on their televisions and have kept them on as the first week of the war has unfolded. Vietnam may have been the first "living room" war -- television sets made it possible for Americans to follow war news in their living rooms -- but the Iraq conflict is proving to be the first "live" war.
(03/18/03 5:00am)
There is a cycle the University goes through every time a racial incident occurs. Shock, outrage, e-mail from the administration; rhetoric, rally, race forum. Then the talk wanes, discussion peters out, and the stultifying complacency to which we always eventually surrender sets in again. Time passes. Then the next thing happens, and the cycle repeats itself, and nothing ever changes.
(02/26/03 5:00am)
Last week, the Department of Homeland Security held the press conference that launched a thousand duct tape jokes. Officials of the newly-minted department advised Americans on ways they can prepare for terrorist attacks, including stocking their homes with extra food and buying supplies like blankets, spare batteries and, yes, duct tape.
(02/18/03 5:00am)
From Rome to Seoul, Johannesburg to Melbourne, people have been calling for peace. As part of a global protest on Saturday, the streets of 150 U.S. cities and an estimated 350 cities around the world were filled with demonstrations against war in Iraq. In Berlin, up to 500,000 protestors gathered in the city's center to support German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's calls for a peaceful solution. In London, 750,000 people marched against war, appealing to British Prime Minister Tony Blair to reconsider his support of the use of force to disarm Iraq. At the New York rally, Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa declared, "Let America listen to the rest of the world -- and the rest of the world is saying, 'Give the inspectors time.'"
(02/11/03 5:00am)
Imagine being confronted, as everyone is from time to time, with someone who makes your blood boil: They believe everything you don't. Their every conviction so conflicts with yours that you either want to argue with them or be in a position where you don't have to listen to them anymore. Now imagine that you have neither of those two options, because the person is your professor, and you have no choice but to listen, take notes and be graded on the beliefs he or she is stuffing down your throat.
(02/04/03 5:00am)
Much of the affirmative action debate revolves around questions of fairness: Are white students treated unfairly in application procedures that consider race as a factor? The question is usually approached from the white perspective, as white prospective students to selective schools argue that they are the victims of reverse discrimination.
(01/28/03 5:00am)
There are a lot of things 17year-old boys cannot do. They are finally allowed to see R-rated movies -- which doubtlessly makes the producers of Arnold Schwarzenegger movies very happy -- but that's just about the only privilege they win upon reaching their seventeenth birthday. In the eyes of the law, they're too young to vote or get married without the consent of their parents; they can't drink or even legally play church bingo. In the eyes of the law, 17 year-old boys are still, well, boys.
(08/30/02 4:00am)
I DON'T often like to make moral appeals. I have never asked anyone
to "think of the children." I have never said something should not be done "in the interest of common decency." That is why I feel slightly silly when I type the following phrase: Is nothing sacred?
(08/01/02 4:00am)
DEAR AL Gore,
(07/22/02 4:00am)
THERE are probably several things you expect to get out of your four years of education here at the University: some great memories, a few life-long friends, and the ability to discuss the symbolism in Dante's Inferno like nobody's business. There is one thing your parents expect to get out of your four years of education, aside from big tuition bills: the assurance that you, as a college graduate, will not have to move back in with them after you leave Charlottesville in 2006.
(07/03/02 4:00am)
THE YEAR is 1969. Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas writes the majority opinion in the case of Tinker v Des Moines, in which the Court decided, by a 7-2 margin, that it is unconstitutional to deprive public school students of their freedom of speech. After all, Justice Fortas writes, "it can hardly be argued that students shed their constitutional rights ... at the school-house gate."
(06/13/02 4:00am)
COME UP with a list of school children's top nightmares and it would probably include a number of old favorites. One old stand-by is the one where your classmates are pointing and snickering at you and you can't figure out why - until you look down and realize that you've come to school naked. Another is the one where you arrive at class and find out there's a test you didn't know about. And then there's the mother of all school-related nightmares: the one where school never ends. Hours pass, seasons change, and algebra class just never, ever draws to a close.
(01/22/02 5:00am)
WE ARE a super-sized nation. Americans adhere to the McDonald's school of thought: We want whatever's biggest, sweetest, and we'll be especially happy if we get "20 percent more, free!" When it comes to servings of fries, the size that was called "large" 30 years ago is "small" now. As our portions are expanding, so are our waistlines - and health problems, as well as deaths that could have been prevented, are the result.
(11/27/01 5:00am)
L ET US give thanks. The words may have seemed hollow to many Americans gathering around the table for Thanksgiving last week. Thanks - for thousands of people killed in the worst attack the nation has ever seen? Thanks - for our sense of security shaken, for being made to fear something as basic as the daily mail? Thanks - for being thrust into a war no one really knows how to fight, against an enemy no one knows how to find? Thanks - for the most harrowing few months many of us have ever had to live through?
(11/20/01 5:00am)
THERE are some dumb laws out there. In Vermont, whistling underwater is illegal. In Arizona, it is illegal for donkeys to sleep in bathtubs. For some reason, Pennsylvania has not one but three dumb laws about fishing: You may not catch a fish with your hands; you may not catch a fish by any body part except the mouth; and dynamite is not to be used to catch fish.
(11/13/01 5:00am)
IMAGINE, for a moment, that you have diabetes. You have an illness caused by something in your genes or just bad biological fortune. Now, suppose people tell you that you don't need medication, you just need to get over whatever it is that's making you think you're a diabetic. Suppose they tell you that you can will it away. Suppose they tell you that you just have to "snap out of it." Sound ridiculous? It is, and yet it happens to people with clinical depression all the time.