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(11/14/01 5:00am)
KNOWLEDGE is power, as the saying goes. It's also just plain convenient. When it comes to managing information, small changes often can make the biggest difference in our daily lives. The University made a good change earlier this year when it added phone numbers to its searchable online database. But it's past time to take the next step - to add address and position information and get rid of the paper phone book.
(11/08/01 5:00am)
IT COULD happen to any of us. Lots of situations could put you or me in a position of having to worry about an unplanned pregnancy, either for ourselves or for someone close to us. Unless that actually happens, it's hard to say for sure what any of us might choose to do. But we can say that having as many options as possible in a difficult situation like that would be best. California has taken a big step toward that goal by passing legislation that streamlines the process of obtaining emergency contraception, joining Washington as the only states that have done so. Other states, including Virginia, should follow suit.
(10/31/01 5:00am)
EVERYTHING has changed, politics included. It's hard to know what "politics as usual" might mean these days. Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe attempted to address this issue on Monday as he spoke to students about the future of the Democratic party. His speech reminds us that the terrorist attacks will make politics more difficult and political solutions more elusive. The challenges of living after Sept. 11 clash with the challenges of living after President Clinton.
(10/24/01 4:00am)
RECENT events have shown that nearly everything is a potential target for terrorists. But now, Congress has damaged one of the few things that terrorists can't touch - our commitment to the rule of law and the guidance of the Constitution. We should be worried deeply about Congress' willingness to discard without hesitation protections of our most basic civil rights - to respond to lawlessness with arbitrariness.
(10/10/01 4:00am)
PRESIDENT Bush's speech announcing aggressive military action against Afghanistan skewed and manipulated the truth to justify war as the only logical possibility. He would have the American public and the world believe that this is a war of self-defense, one we regrettably must fight. In truth, war is an option, but it's not the only one. Whether or not each of us supports our nation's violent response, we should remain questioning of such one-sided propaganda.
(10/03/01 4:00am)
SYMBOLS carry a tremendous amount of force. When used deliberately and thoughtfully, they provide a crucial and effective means of expression. But as we continue to respond to the events of Sept. 11, we must be conscious of the symbolic value of our actions. We must keep in mind that patriotism isn't always noble, and we must be particularly careful to teach our children that being responsible citizens means knowing when to be patriotic and when not to be.
(09/26/01 4:00am)
WE KEEP hearing about how our new war on terrorism is going to be radically different from anything we've ever seen, that it's going to redefine modern warfare. If so much is going to change, then now is a good time to make a crucial change in our military: moving toward gender equity.
(09/19/01 4:00am)
THIS HAS been a week of shock for all of us. Like most, I was jolted by the news of the terrorist attack that claimed thousands of innocent lives. But I was even more disturbed by the way most Americans reacted to the event - with bloodthirsty calls to violence, couched in the shallow rhetoric of war and justice. America must hold itself to a higher standard; it must refuse to continue the chain of violence.
(09/12/01 4:00am)
FOOTBALL is a game. Yes, it can be fun. If we stretcha little bit, we might even be able to call it important. But it isn't the be-all and end-all of college existence; life shouldn't grind to a halt every time there's a home game. By making members of the academic community schedule their lives around football, the administration proves that it has its priorities seriously out of whack.
(09/05/01 4:00am)
AFTER 50 years of fighting it, school segregation hasn't gone anywhere. Like a virus, it has survived by adapting amidst changing times and pressures. It used to be overtly racial. Now, we face a more powerful, though less visible, segregation: that of wealth.
(08/29/01 4:00am)
SOMEWHERE out there, in a smoky, dimly lit room, there is a wild-eyed credit card company executive, fine-tuning his latest nefarious plot to drive college students to financial ruin. He will trick students into acquiring credit cards and, even more deviously, to use them. Something has to be done to stop him. Congress must act.
(07/23/01 4:00am)
COLLEGE is not about learning. By that, I don't mean that academia is a farce. Higher education does offer positive knowledge - answers. But its most valuable function is to produce negative knowledge - to generate questions. College, in short, should teach us how much we don't know.
(04/25/01 4:00am)
SCHOOLS generally don't try to fail. Perhaps there are a few ill-intentioned educators out there, but common sense and experience suggest that most teachers and administrators want their schools to succeed. Amazingly, though, education policy-makers in New York are advocating a tough-on-crime approach to education that flies in the face of this apparently straightforward idea that educators want to educate. Administrators should give up on this foolishly punitive strategy and pursue policy options that encourage success instead of those that punish failure.
(04/18/01 4:00am)
AT TIMES, the University seems like the only pocket of reasonable, progressive thought in the otherwise backwardly conservative Commonwealth of Virginia. The administration sometimes must take the lead in pressing for the establishment of needed reforms when Richmond isn't ready to do so. Employment benefits is an area in which the University ought to do just that. Although they cannot legally change their own policies, the administration should press the Commonwealth to allow colleges to provide the same benefits to employees with same-sex partners as to married employees.
(04/11/01 4:00am)
WE SHOULD be careful not to confuse education with academics. The two are of course related, but they aren't synonymous - education includes far more than coursework. The failure to recognize this fact skews our standards of what a "full" academic load should entail, causing students to spread themselves too thin and receive too superficial an academic experience. To fix the problem, we should redefine a normal, full course load as 12 credits.
(04/04/01 4:00am)
EQUALITY. We claim to believe in it. At the same time, we preserve and defend institutions and structures that stand in its way. College admissions are one such barrier to equality. As the debate over the use of race in admissions rages on around us, swinging steadily towards the side of racial inequality, we should think about the issues more fundamentally than we usually do. If we strip off the hyperbole employed in defense of inequality, we will see that we still need affirmative action.
(03/28/01 5:00am)
SAFE AND sound. It's a nice phrase, sort of warm and fuzzy. Wouldn't we all like to be safe and sound, to snuggle up under the warm blanket of feeling safe? Surely most of us feel that appeal at least sometimes. The problem with pursuing that unrealizable utopia of safety is that it drives us to pretend that crime is a simple problem with simple solutions.
(03/21/01 5:00am)
IT HAPPENS every semester about this time. The Course Offering Directory becomes available online, tempting students to put their work aside and window shop for classes. As they plan their academic careers, a familiar phrase keeps popping up: "It fulfills one of my requirements."
(03/07/01 5:00am)
TRADITION. Well-roundedness. Diversity. We spout off these terms, treating them as if they were universally desirable goals. We invoke these ideas to justify policies or actions. "It will promote diversity," we say. The implication is that because something promotes diversity, we should automatically favor it. But why is diversity good? The controversy over diversity in education - most recently incarnated as the debate over using standardized tests in admissions - often strays from first principles. Defenders of diversity forget to explain why we should value it.
(02/28/01 5:00am)
DO YOU consider yourself fully educated? If so, think again. Becoming educated is a continual process, one we can never quite finish. No one is ever fully educated, and most of us still have a long way to go. But we can, however, move toward that goal if we know what a full education includes. So, over the next few weeks, I'll be talking about different aspects of that broad issue - a multi-part series of columns, if you will. I'll be asking various forms of, and suggesting some initial answers to, the question, "What does it mean to be educated?" I challenge you to think with me about where the gaps in our education lie so that we might begin to fill them. I don't pretend to have all the answers; I've got as much left to learn as anyone. So disagree with me - loudly and constructively.