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(02/13/13 4:01am)
The joke is an old one: When talking to an English major, you usually end the conversation with “Yes, I do want fries with that.” Studying Proust or Joyce is not exactly economically sound. Especially in the face of a volatile economy, many people see such study as privileged fancy. Today people want students to buckle down: Society cannot afford to have its next generation lollygagging around and seeking impractical intellectual pursuits in the comfort of the ivory tower. The consensus seems to be that if you are going to college, you better be majoring in some kind of STEM field, since such fields prove to be practical, which is to say they are economically valuable.
(02/06/13 5:30am)
If I asked you to picture a lecture in your head, it would probably look like this: 200 of your closest friends in a hall somewhere on Grounds, all listening — or, at least, pretending to listen — to a professor as he gesticulates wildly. In a brief survey of the people sitting nearby, you see that the girl beside you is taking notes very intensely; the guy in front has his head down; the girl next to him is on Tumblr. You are tempted to calculate exactly how much tuition money Dopey and Tumblr girl are wasting. Fifty minutes go by, and class is dismissed.
(01/30/13 4:22am)
THE LATEST incarnation of the fight against illegal immigration is “self-deportation,” wherein laws make living conditions so intolerable to illegal immigrants that they leave the country of their own accord. Some state legislatures are pursuing this tactic. The poster child is Arizona’s notorious Senate Bill 1070, also known as SB-1070, which criminalized the lack of immigration papers on one’s person and allowed law enforcement to detain individuals suspected of being illegal immigrants. Another bill, Alabama’s House Bill 56, also known as HB-56, is perhaps the most comprehensive and successful in terms of combating illegal immigration. But the harmful consequences of HB-56 are evidence that the hard-lined measure of self-deportation should be abandoned.
(01/23/13 3:07am)
We as a culture believe that sports is a pillar of the community. Acknowledge the fact that NFL games air on Sunday right after church, and it becomes clear that sports is a kind of secular religion for a consumerist society. A “hero culture” naturally grows out of our love for sports; we see coaches and athletes as people whom we should admire. It takes guts and determination to play the game, and from that we infer that other virtues off the field must follow.
(01/15/13 3:12am)
The tranquility and homeliness of the holiday season this year has been shattered by the brutal shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, leaving the country in a state of distress. The media has again, as in previous shooting tragedies, become a circus: the shooter, whom I will not name here as he would have liked to be publicized, has now been immortalized, with every nook and cranny of his life analyzed for possible motives. Some television programs offered a play-by-play of the shooting as if it were a football game. Any tragedy of this proportion is bound to be politicized, and indeed Sandy Hook has reignited the gun control debate as both pro-gun and anti-gun advocates are using the incident to galvanize their sides.
(12/05/12 1:17am)
Once a year, Walmarts across the United States become jungles.
(11/29/12 2:50am)
The resignation of General David Petraeus from his position as CIA director is a stunning downfall for one of the most highly regarded public officials in modern times. That the architect of the surge during the Iraq War turned commander of military operations in Afghanistan would have his career ended by marital infidelity is still hard to imagine. The scandal is especially compelling because it resembles a soap opera more than real life, in terms of the amount of dirty laundry uncovered. Petraeus is but a part in a tangled web of clandestine affairs: Investigators found General John Allen, Petraeus’ successor as commander in Afghanistan, to have been sharing a voluminous and suggestive correspondence with Jill Kelley, the woman who filed the complaint to the FBI that unraveled the scandal. Allegations of an affair led to the postponement of Allen’s nomination as the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO forces. Petraeus and Allen are in positions of authority; we are supposed to look up to them. Thus is it not right to punish them for their mistakes? While the usual inclination is to say yes, I argue that in this case the answer is no.
(11/14/12 3:30am)
Imagine the scene: It’s two in the morning, and you are at the bottom floor of Clemons Library with 50 of your closest friends, all of whom are as bleary-eyed and groggy as you are. There’s a mess of papers in front of you and a halfway-finished paper on your laptop screen. Sleep tempts you like a cruel mistress. Maybe some words from Faust come into mind: “What matters our creative endless toil?”
(11/07/12 5:46am)
Dear president-elect, I do not know who you are yet — I’m writing this column the Saturday before you were elected — but whoever you are, congratulations on your victory. It sure has been a long road to get to this point, president-elect. Make sure to send the other guy a consolation Hallmark card, at least. It will be your first act of presidential statesmanship.
(10/31/12 12:53am)
The two important stories of the technology world this week are the respective debuts of the Microsoft Surface and the iPad Mini. Surface is one of Microsoft’s first forays into hardware in the company’s storied history. Its main selling point is its cover, which doubles as a keyboard and built-in kickstand, allowing it to transform from a tablet to a laptop. Microsoft is touting this as a revolutionary leap in consumer electronics; I am touting this as a good marketing ploy, since keyboard and kickstand combos are already common for current tablets. Meanwhile, the iPad Mini, in a stunning display of inventiveness from Apple, is a smaller version of the iPad, which in turn is pretty much a larger version of the iPhone. For whom is the iPad Mini, exactly? Goldilocks? But no matter my opinions about the lack of innovation; either way, you can bet that both the Surface and the iPad Mini will sell millions of units.
(10/24/12 2:56am)
For-profit colleges, as their name implies, are private ventures that provide an alternative to the standard postsecondary options of community colleges and universities. They cater to non-traditional students — working adults who are seeking an education to further their career opportunities. For-profit colleges have experienced massive growth in the last decade, tripling their enrollment from 1998 to 2008 to about 2.4 million students. Certainly they are no longer the niche vocational schools of the 1990s, as they have expanded their offerings to include courses in general fields such as criminal justice and business management.
(10/17/12 3:41am)
As a country, we have an almost neurotic desire to rank things. We rank football teams, the best places to live, restaurants and, of course, colleges. In the 2013 U.S. News and World Report college rankings, the University was rated as the 24th best research university and the 2nd best public university in the country, a slight relief to the people who were fearful that the tumult of last summer would affect rankings adversely.
(10/10/12 1:51am)
On Wednesday night, a pack of my dorm-mates crowded around the television in the first floor lounge. One would expect such a crowd watching the inevitable tragedy of a Cavalier football game, but instead on the screen there were two gentlemen in nice suits, each one serenading the American people in hopes of becoming the next leader of the free world.
(10/03/12 3:27am)
You have probably heard that we were ranked by Playboy as the best party school in the country. While we pulled off an “uninspiring” 16th place in the sports criterion, we were ranked highly in the other two criteria of night- and sex-life, placing third and second respectively.
(09/27/12 3:20am)
Are U.S. schools failing?