Intent matters
SUPPOSE a first-year student
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SUPPOSE a first-year student
You may think you know what an honor offense is: It's a non-trivial act of lying, cheating or stealing, committed with dishonest intent. But the definition leaves a lot of room for interpretation, and the secrecy surrounding honor cases makes it impossible for us to know how it is being interpreted. That's why I wrote the amendment to the Honor Committee Constitution on the ballot this week that would give us this information, while still protecting the privacy of all concerned.
GREED! Greed! It’s all the fault of greed! The two major presidential candidates agree, and you can hear the same complaint from other corners too.Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said it in Friday night’s debate, saying he “warned about corporate greed and excess.” “But somehow in Washington today — and I’m afraid on Wall Street — greed is rewarded, excess is rewarded, and corruption — or certainly failure to carry out our responsibility is rewarded,” he said, according to a CQ transcript posted online by The New York Times.Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., said it on Sept. 21, in Charlotte, N.C., and you can watch an Associated Press video of it on YouTube: “The era of greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street and in Washington has led us to a perilous moment.”But Wall Street without greed would be like a farm without fertilizer, and the suggestion that the economy should operate without greed is nothing but fertilizer — of the variety supplied freely by politicians and bulls.Merriam-Webster defines “greed” as “a selfish and excessive desire for more of something (as money) than is needed.” The notion of need is echoed in claims that various people earn more money than they or anyone could ever need. But think about what it must mean to have only the money one “needs.” Anyone who can afford a Coke has more money than he needs for a minimal survival. For a good life, we need more, and, as long as it doesn’t cost us something more valuable, the more the better. Selfishness is a good thing. To be selfish is to desire good things for oneself — money, virtue and knowledge, for example. It doesn’t mean desiring that others lack these things. It means wanting them for oneself. I benefit from the knowledge of others, because I can learn from them. It’s good to be around good people. And in a free society, one makes money by creating goods and services that other people willingly pay for, which means that the way to become rich is to be especially useful to others — and that others’ wealth is both evidence that they have been productive and a means of rewarding you if you are productive. More importantly, selfishness is the pursuit of happiness. As Ayn Rand taught, being selfish means being your own highest goal, and never sacrificing what you value to others. Part of being selfish is making money in order to use it in ways that enrich your life, including by buying enjoyable things for yourself and assisting people you value. Greed, in the sense of wanting and working to acquire as much material wealth as you can without sacrificing other values that contribute more than money to your own life and happiness, is good.Someone might object that this is not what he means by greed. It’s not about getting more than one needs, he’d say; it’s about getting more than one deserves. Another dictionary (American Heritage) lends some support to this idea, defining “greed” as “an excessive desire to acquire or possess more than what one needs or deserves, especially with respect to material wealth.”“Excessive,” here, has to mean excessive in relation to what the person deserves. As Aristotle pointed out, what is excessive for one person is not excessive for another. In the case of money, for example, it is plainly not excessive for a doctor to require more money for his services than a janitor earns. Indeed, a physician who asks only a janitor’s wage would be blameworthy for not demanding what he deserves.This is because desert in this context is not a matter of a person’s moral character. There are individuals of good and bad moral character in virtually all lines of work. Deserving money is a matter of “making money,” quite literally: of producing the value that the money measures. The only way to determine what money a person deserves is to let him prove it in a free market.Does that mean that whatever money a person has, that’s what he should have? No. In today’s partly free, partly socialized economy, people often obtain or preserve fortunes through government intervention. And even without government help, someone who acts dishonestly in the market can, at least for a while, gain unearned money. The desire for the unearned is immoral and destructive. But when politicians denounce greed, they don’t usually make that distinction. That puts the focus on the desire for wealth, which is part of the pursuit of happiness, not on the desire for the unearned. Those who would lead a free society should not denounce the pursuit of happiness or any part of it.Alexander R. Cohen’s column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at a.cohen@cavalierdaily.com.
I HAVE a plan to get us both rich quickly: You lend me all your money. I take it to Atlantic City and gamble it into $2 million. Then I return to Charlottesville, give you $1 million, and keep $1 million for myself. Do we have a deal?Risk? What risk? You’re lending me all your money — the government won’t let you lose it! You need some way to get through the school year. I may end up out the price of a ticket to Atlantic City, but your money is perfectly safe, as safe as if you’d left it in your checking account, which will never turn a student into a millionaire. Too bad that proposal isn’t really safe. If we lost money in Atlantic City, our loss would be our own. The government wouldn’t consider us important enough to rescue.Actually, of course, that’s not “too bad.” It’s as it should be. Consider what it would mean for the government to make good our gambling loss. The government has to get that money from somewhere, and, unless it trims something else in its budget, that’s probably going to mean raising taxes or issuing more government debt.And what is government debt? It is — absent something surprising such as the wholesale liquidation of the national forests — merely deferred taxation. Even if the debt is never paid off, interest must be paid. The principal source of government money is: taxation.And what is taxation? Taxation is taking someone else’s money. Broad-based taxes may be justified in order to provide the basic functions of government, on which we depend for our safety: the courts, the police and the armed forces. But surely taxation is not justified when its purpose is to make sure I can run a get-rich-quick scheme at no risk.When John Q. Taxpayer makes money, he makes it for himself. That, as Ayn Rand taught, is how human beings live: by producing the values they need. If John wants to use some of it to sponsor someone to get rich, it will be himself or, perhaps, someone he knows and values. You and I have no right to use the government to force him to give that money to us instead.What, then, is the difference between us going to the government when my get-rich-quick scheme fails and a major Wall Street firm looking for a government bailout when its moneymaking strategies fail?There is (one hopes) a difference in the degrees of risk we and the firms took. Their projects were probably more likely than mine to succeed. But it was up to them and their investors to judge their risks, just as it’s up to you to judge the risk of my casino gambling plan. In a free society, it has to be up to investors to judge their own risks — and it should be up to them to a greater degree than it is. But investors have no right to expect that they can choose risks and force others to bear the losses — that wouldn’t be choosing their own risks anymore: they would be choosing other people’s risks.There is (one hopes) a difference in productiveness. Investing supports productive activity — or it attempts to do so. But if it fails, it’s because the activity it supported was not actually productive, or not productive enough to make the investment a good one. That’s no reason to force others to bear the losses.And when there is a widespread “financial crisis” such as the current one, there is a difference in who is losing the money. As the government sees it, the people and institutions who are losing their assets in the current situation are too important to be allowed to suffer such losses. Or rather, some of them (such as Fannie Mae and, it may turn out, financially reckless homeowners) are, while others (such as Lehman Bros.) are not. Defenders of government intervention will say that the favored people and institutions really are more important to the economy considered as a whole than the disfavored ones. This may be so. But what is important to the economy as a whole is not necessarily what’s important to each individual taxpayer. The financial bailout comes down to something very simple: The government has decided that some people and institutions are more important than others. The important ones will get rescued; the less important ones get forced to pay for the rescue. And meanwhile, of course, the less important ones get to struggle on, if they can, trying to pay their own debts. Alexander R. Cohen’s column usually appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at a.cohen@cavalierdaily.com.
WHERE do you live? For many students, it’s a complicated question. In an election season, it’s a politically important question.In this election season and this state, it’s especially important, because conventional wisdom has it that Virginia might throw its electoral votes behind the Democratic candidate for the first time in years — and that that candidate is very popular among college students. According to the Gallup polls, Sen. Barack Obama, D.-Ill., has a huge, consistent lead among 18- to 29-year-old registered voters.When word spread that the official in charge of registering voters in Blacksburg had issued a statement raising the possibility that registering to vote there instead of at one’s family home might affect a student’s scholarships, tax status and health insurance, it was natural for students there and elsewhere to feel outraged. I know I did. Citizens have a right to vote whether they are students or not. And such a warning, especially given that the student vote in Virginia may be a factor in the presidential election, looks like voter intimidation.But surely the correct way to decide whether a student should vote where he grew up or where he attends college is not to ask where his vote will be most influential in the presidential election. The Electoral College is not a game to be played strategically. Doing so gives students (and others with residences in multiple states) an unfair advantage: Students who come from non-swing states but attend school in swing states can vote at school, while students from swing states attending school in solidly red or blue states can vote from their “permanent” addresses.One response to the problem is to insist that students vote only from their “permanent” homes. This is in line with the traditional legal idea that one’s domicile changes only when one establishes a residence and intends to remain there, or at least in that jurisdiction, permanently. But it seems ludicrous in the case of students who have no permanent home — students who intend to live, after graduating, neither where they used to live nor where they attend school. And even in the cases it seems to suit best — students who return to their native states during vacations and plan to return to those states full-time when they finish their degrees — it is not compelling.Among the reasons for having elections is that, since government exists to serve individuals by protecting their rights, the individuals who live under a government are entitled to supervise it; voting is one form of supervision. Another reason is that participating in the political life of one’s community is part of a flourishing human life.Consider a University student who was born and raised in Philadelphia, spends his summers there, and plans to seek a job there upon finishing his degree. There are good reasons for him to continue to vote in Philadelphia even when he is in Charlottesville. If he followed politics as a teenager, he’s likely to know Philadelphia politics better than Charlottesville politics. He may have a clear, considered evaluation of the performance of Philadelphia’s mayor but no idea whether Charlottesville even has a mayor. He’s likely to care about how Philadelphia develops in the long run because he is deeply rooted in that city and will spend many years there.But there are also good reasons for him to vote in Charlottesville (and to inform himself so as to do so competently). He’s here about three-quarters of the year, and, while here, he’s subject to state and local laws as enforced by local police and local courts. As a student, he may have distinctive interests in how certain laws are written, applied and enforced. For example, policies related to alcohol, parking, noise and the expansion of the university’s facilities often affect students and others differently. When it comes to state and local elections, students should be allowed to vote everywhere they live. Citizens should not have to choose between having a say in the government of the place they call home and having a say in the laws under which they live most of the year.Such dual voting in presidential and congressional elections, however, would obviously be unfair. The prevailing way of dealing with the problem empowers students to pick their voting places strategically, which is also unfair. But dual voting would eliminate the strongest grounds to object to either requiring students to cast their presidential votes from home (if they have one) or requiring them to do so from school, and either rule would at least reduce strategic voting. Unless dual voting is established, however, we must accept the risk of strategic voting. School is where students live most of the year. They have the right to vote there.Alexander R. Cohen’s column appears Tuesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at a.cohen@cavalierdaily.com.
WHO OF the following is drinking responsibly: A 21-year-old who downs a fourth-year fifth, or an 18-year-old who has a glass of wine with dinner?Who can best guide you as you learn to drink moderately: Some guy standing over a keg at a party and filling cups as they’re shoved at him, or a trusted friend joining you at a quiet restaurant?These are not difficult questions. They don’t require a lot of research. Drinking responsibly doesn’t mean watching the calendar; it means watching what you drink. Careful attention from a friend can help develop good habits; encouragement to drink all you can and then some is more likely to help develop bad ones.Yet for 24 years, this country has maintained a minimum legal drinking age of 21. That law does not promote responsible drinking. Quite the contrary: By prohibiting responsible drinking for millions of Americans, it encourages them to drink dangerously. And it exposes them to unnecessary risks when they do drink by making people afraid to get help for underage drinkers who drink themselves sick. Now, more than 100 college and university presidents have signed on to the Amethyst Initiative, which calls for the reexamination of this law. The University has long acknowledged that students do not, as a rule, wait for their 21st birthdays to have their first drinks. That acknowledgment is implicit in the posters appealing to social norms of responsible drinking. Every sign that identifies some particularly risky drinking behavior and points out how many people don’t do it, or that praises some responsible way of dealing with drinking, implicitly recognizes that its readers are going to drink.The September issue of the “Stall Seat Journal” says, “72 percent of U.Va. first years usually or always eat before drinking.” That implies that more than 72 percent of first-years (and first-years are typically under 21) drink. The poster also reassures students that Student Health and the University Medical Center emergency room don’t report underage drinkers to the police — a policy that should be adopted as widely as possible and advertised as widely as possible, because the fear of legal consequences can dissuade people from seeking medical help when underage drinkers suffer medical consequences. This University has a special reason to condemn the drinking age laws. We are committed to the value of honor; we condemn lying, cheating and stealing. Evading the drinking age by means of false identification is a form of lying: One claims to be 21 when one is not. There are reasonable defenses to be made for such conduct, but it is dishonest. This makes dishonesty seem acceptable — and if we accept it as trivial, as most of us probably do, it undermines the community’s commitment to honor. And the problem is compounded if evading the drinking age by means other than fake ID, such as by getting drinks from older friends, is regarded as a form of cheating. University President John T. Casteen III has declined, provisionally, to join the Amethyst Initiative. He said, in remarks posted online by the Department of Media Relations, that he wants to see more evidence that lowering the drinking age would not do more harm than good. If his standard is measurable net lives saved, I don’t know enough about the state of the evidence to declare this an unreasonable request: The drinking age almost certainly has contributed to some deaths, but it is also almost certain that it has prevented incidents that might have been lethal.But what I can say is that the drinking age is unjust, that it violates liberty by prohibiting even drinking that does not harm others, that it encourages irresponsible behavior, that it provides an incentive for dishonesty, that by being unenforceable, it diminishes respect for the law, and that in general, it degrades the character of the people. By my lights, these reasons are sufficient to justify its repeal.While I hope President Casteen will eventually be persuaded to join the Amethyst Initiative, the rest of the University does not have to wait for him to take the lead on this issue.If students — both under and over 21 — want the drinking age repealed or lowered, there are a variety of avenues they can use to pursue that goal. For example, Student Council routinely engages in lobbying; this issue should be emphasized in its agenda. It’s difficult to think of any bad law whose effects are so focused on college students, or so dangerous.But the biggest statement University students could make would be to adopt a referendum condemning the drinking age and taking concrete policy measures to mitigate its effects on University students.Alexander R. Cohen’s column appears Tuesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at a.cohen@cavalierdaily.com.
POLITICAL correctness comes at a steep price. It diminishes our confidence in the fact that we can freely explore and discuss all the important issues in our society. It introduces an element of fear into public expression: the fear that some innocently intended remark will be misinterpreted as racist and bring dire consequences for the one who made it.If any measure of political correctness is justified, it can only be because certain kinds of hatred and contempt, such as racial hatred and contempt, are contrary to values so fundamentally important as to warrant balancing them against the freedom of thought and the openness of debate. If that is so, then the values behind political correctness must be more important than partisan advantage in any election. On the other hand, if partisan advantage is more important than enforcing political correctness, political correctness cannot be worth the price — not, at least, if open, fearless discourse is a vital value.Last week, the Democratic party demonstrated that in its view, partisan advantage is more important than political correctness.When he was seeking the Democratic nomination for president, Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., infamously declared Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., now the nominee but then just one in a large field, “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”The claim was ridiculous — even if Biden only meant the first among Democratic candidates for president. Obama was preceded in seeking the nomination by Rev. Jesse Jackson. I am no fan of Jackson’s, but he is not dumb, dirty, ugly, or, usually, half as inarticulate as Biden was on that occasion. And his performance in the 1988 primaries and association with Democratic leaders makes it difficult to classify Jackson as beyond his party’s mainstream.But Biden’s remark did more than erroneously criticize at least one past presidential candidate. It suggested that black Americans are not normally mainstream, articulate, bright, clean and nice-looking. And that is not merely obviously insensitive, but patently untrue.Yet Biden is now the Democratic candidate for vice president. Obama’s most successful primary opponent, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., actually suggested that Obama might not live to see the convention. Perhaps there was nothing racial on her mind — but a white woman contemplating the possible murder of a black man who who did not treat her as someone whose social standing he could not equal, but challenged her for the political power she wanted and expected to attain, suggests to me one thing: She was hoping a U.S. senator would be lynched.Maybe I’m reading too much into that one. But consider another infamous remark the former first lady made in the campaign: her mention of “hard-working Americans, white Americans.” “White Americans,” in that phrase, clarified what she means by “hard-working Americans.” The implication, then, is that she thinks all hard-working Americans are white, or in other words, that she does not regard Americans of other races as hard-working.If you think I’m pulling quotes out of context and ignoring mitigating factors, let me remind you: That’s how political correctness works.Remember “nappy-headed hos”? The context of that remark was a radio broadcast that poked fun at a wide variety of people and generally displayed a crude sense of humor. Don Imus was knocked off the air for it. (He later got a job with another network.)Or, on Grounds, remember “Ethiopian Food Fight?” The context of that cartoon was a series of comics that sought to provoke people into thinking. It provoked people into driving Grant Woolard off The Cavalier Daily.But if you’re important enough to the Democratic party, you get immunity, or at least a reduced punishment. The party needed Clinton to bring her supporters behind Obama, and apparently it needed Biden for something he can bring to its ticket as the vice-presidential candidate.Some will defend Biden and Clinton by citing their policy records. But policy records are poor evidence of attitudes on race: Policies may be adopted to buy votes — or to take care of people a politician thinks, contemptuously, can’t take care of themselves. And it is virtually inconceivable that someone who opposes affirmative action because it undermines respect for black professionals’ achievements would be exempted. The appeal to policy records just means that important Democrats get a free pass.Anyone who is serious about political correctness should condemn Biden and Clinton. Anyone who still supports Biden and Clinton should never again condemn anyone for remarks like theirs. And all of us should take a lesson from this Democratic convention: A few ill-chosen remarks are not worth repudiating a person one has good reason to value. Political correctness is not worth the price.Alexander R. Cohen’s column appears Tuesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at a.cohen@cavalierdaily.com.
IF YOU used a fake ID to buy a beer last week, you may have had Olympian company: He Kexin, the Chinese gymnast who won gold on the uneven bars, is widely suspected of using a passport that misrepresents her age — a fake ID prepared by her government in order to evade the requirement that Olympic gymnasts be at least 16 years old. Whenever there’s a minimum age, evading it with fake ID is dishonest — but the real injustice lies in the minimum age itself. I don’t know whether He is 16, as her passport claims, or 14, as a widely cited report by the Chinese government news agency Xinhua would make her. But if she is too young, and yet the best in her field, the scandal lies much less with the Chinese government than with the Olympic authorities. Their Games are supposed to symbolize human excellence in the field of athletics — but their rules would have excluded an athlete their own judges determined to be the best at her game. One argument in defense of minimum ages for athletes is that young people’s bodies can’t stand the strain of adult-level sports. Obviously, people’s bodies do change as they age, but not everyone goes through the same changes on the same schedule. News reports indicate that medicine cannot distinguish confidently between a 14-year-old and a 16-year-old. So if there’s some stage of physical development a gymnast needs to reach before being able to compete safely, and if the rules ought to guard against injuries by excluding those who haven’t reached that stage, checking ages won’t do it — not unless the minimum age is set quite high. A former Soviet Olympic gymnast argued in The New York Times that youth brings advantages in that sport — that younger competitors are lighter and “worry less.” If these are the reasons that underlie their exclusion from the games, they are being excluded because they tend to be better at gymnastics — excluded so that inferior gymnasts can become Olympic champions.But even if that is not the reason, it is the effect. If we assume that in the Olympic games, the best of the competitors win, then minimum-age rules are not necessary to exclude any but the best athletes. Anyone who isn’t good enough yet, but might be when she’s older, simply won’t win till she improves. If she needs enough improvement, she won’t make it through the tryouts. The only people who are prevented from winning by a minimum-age rule are those who, if allowed to compete, would win — by hypothesis, the best athletes.The same is true of many other minimum ages. Consider the driving age. To get a driver’s license, you have to be able to demonstrate that you know the traffic laws and can handle a car. Young people who can’t learn the traffic laws or can’t handle a car — defenders of the driving age sometimes mention small boys and girls who can’t see over the dashboard — can’t pass those tests. The only people kept off the road by the driving age are those who could meet every other requirement.Of course, the theory behind the driving age is that people who haven’t reached a certain age are unable to drive safely. Thus, on the premise that young people can’t drive safely, it denies licenses to just those young people who actually can drive safely. The ones who can’t would be kept off the road by the exams anyway.Some defenders of the driving age argue that younger people tend to be less responsible than their elders.But the fact is clear that there are responsible and irresponsible people at all ages. Alex Koroknay-Palicz, executive director of the National Youth Rights Association, told me he has a 28-year-old friend who has managed to rack up 30-40 speeding tickets, lost his license for a while, and drove without one — and is now licensed again. Yet I know and have known (among other ways, through NYRA’s online forums) numerous responsible teenagers. As Koroknay-Palicz said, “The law should not be written in such a way that ... a safe and responsible 14-year-old driver is not allowed to drive” while an irresponsible 30- or 40-year old driver is.Koroknay-Palicz also pointed out that drivers who live on farms and start driving equipment at an early age learn to be very good drivers at an early age. The safety of the roads could be improved by getting most drivers started younger, but making it harder to get a full license.Whatever the field, ensuring safety or honoring excellence requires judging individuals. The calendar will never tell us enough.Alexander R. Cohen’s column appears Tuesdays in the Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at a.cohen@cavalierdaily.com.
"IF CERTAIN departments are paid significantly more than others, it is legitimate to ask why. If a certain professor, administrator or coach is paid a very large or very small amount, it is worthwhile to ask if his performance has justified that salary."
WHEN IT comes to national and international coverage, The Cavalier Daily cannot substitute for a newspaper that employs national and international correspondents. This newspaper, written and edited by University students for a University audience, properly focuses on University matters and stories concerning the University's immediate surroundings.
SOMETIMES, very subtle things perpetuate stereotypes and promote prejudices.
JUST BECAUSE everybody seems to be ganging up is no reason for a newspaper to join the gang.
LOOKING over the e-mails I've received about two comics about the conception and death of Jesus that ran in this newspaper recently, I have come to the conclusion that a review of some basic matters is required.
LAST WEEK, The Cavalier Daily published at least six comics that made light of people's religious beliefs and practices. Among them were one showing Jesus doing stand-up comedy on the cross and one implying that God had told Mary he'd had a vasectomy. And those caused no little trouble.
IN THE nine issues before Spring Break -- The Cavalier Daily did not publish the last morning before the vacation -- this newspaper published nine letters to the editor. Five of those issues, including four consecutive papers, contained no letters at all. And until I raised the subject, matters were even worse on cavalierdaily.com, where it seemed only three letters had been published over the nine issues, with a stretch of five consecutive letter-free newspapers.
ON THE basketball court, the gentlemen of the University have won 13 games this year and lost 12; their record in their conference is 3-9, which you don't have to be a sports fan to figure out is rather poor. The ladies have them beat, and rather dramatically: 20-8 overall, 8-4 in the conference. (These are the Athletic Department's Web site's figures, as of Monday.)
STUDENT elections rarely offer enough substantive debate. That's especially bad at this University because of the substantial powers elected student leaders wield. The Cavalier Daily made a potentially valuable contribution to reducing this problem this year by publishing an election supplement in which candidates were given space to address the voters. This was the first year, Managing Editor Kristin Hawkins said, that she knows of such a supplement being published; I applaud the innovation. Still, I'd like to offer a few suggestions for improvement for next year.
IF YOU caught a glimpse of Thursday's paper, you probably saw the front-page headline announcing that a University student was being charged before the University Judiciary Committee "for music piracy." If you read the first two lines of the story, you learned that the student in question was Rob Froetscher. And if you read the first four column inches, you found The Cavalier Daily affirming, without attribution, that "Froetscher ultimately did more than simply copy music at the library's expense: He decided his experience would provide fodder for an article for The Declaration."
PICK A subject, any subject. Who is the world's leading expert? And how do you know?
SOMETHING SCARY appeared in this newspaper Monday. Introducing itself to the readers, the new managing board wrote an editorial that concluded thus: