By and large, the average student will never in his four years at the University take a class with or speak to a faculty member living in a pavilion. The faculty members living in pavilions do not enrich the student experience nearly as much as they once did — so student spaces should replace faculty residences.
At Rochester, the need to locate students stemmed from racially motivated threats. As we wrote yesterday, racism — and other isms — is perpetuated by the existence of environments of inactive bystanders. Anonymous social media platforms demonstrate an area of student interaction where offensive posts are ubiquitous and users have no accountability.
Whatever the cause may be, it is important that we reject this type of behavior as a social or educational norm. The University offers one of the most envied educations in the country and treating it with any less than the utmost respect certainly doesn’t send a positive message about how students value their time at the University. Fortunately, students have the most influence to ensure that this culture is not representative of the student body at the University.
Norway was the first country to impose gender quotas of 40 percent, all the way back in 2003. After 12 years any positive effects from quotas should start to show. However, it is very hard to see any change. Less than 6 percent of general managers in Norway are female and not a single CEO out of their 32 largest companies is female.
Rather than the usual system, in which congressional members bring guests, a lottery would allow any American a chance to attend a public, political event. Such a change would promote the ideals of equality and political egalitarianism that have come under pressure recently as a result of the barrage of corporate and personal political spending.
Since our University is no stranger to this type of racial scandal, these issues are just as relevant for us. At a party jointly thrown by the University chapters of Kappa Alpha and Zeta Psi in 2002, some guests came wearing blackface. We can readily point to the party-goers wearing blackface as racist in their actions — but why not also consider the fact that these two fraternities, by ostensibly failing to criticize these guests and failing to kick them out, contributed to an environment in which racist behavior was acceptable?
Where Adames goes wrong, however, is saying that praising “Jefferson as a person” suggests “appreciation for everything about the man, including his personality and practices.” Jefferson was flawed, to be sure, but his sins were the sins of his time, and did not belong to him alone.
Effective labeling is especially important in the digital space, where the lines between sections and types of pieces within sections are more easily blurred. In the current website design, sections are labeled in the navigation bar and in text at the top of each article. This seems reasonable for both the News and Opinion sections where the type of piece is then clear. In other sections, though, the readers are left to sort out for themselves whether they are reading an objective news report or an Opinion column.
Ahead of spring break, the Managing Board recounts some notable numbers from the start of the semester.
The 2015 student elections results proved endorsements are insufficient for and unnecessary for winning.
Not only was WGS not what I wrote it was, but it also proved to be a wellspring of expansive and insightful critical debate. Thanks to the class, I am now far better equipped to understand and deconstruct both forms of explicit patriarchal oppression and the subtler implicit biases that continually erode at the possibility of equal opportunity for women and minorities in all spheres of personal, work and civic life.
Students may be quick to criticize the Lawn selection system for the disproportionate representation of particular groups, or stigmas surrounding particular extracurriculars, or even the diversity of the applicant pool itself. But the homogeneity of Lawn residents, though impacted by many factors, is due to what we have made the space of the Lawn — an accolade for high-achieving students, a reward by which we can (imperfectly) measure individuals’ achievements, and not necessarily a space where our whole community can gather.
I realize Groves’ intention isn’t to solely promote the traditional spring break experience, but in effect his email is doing exactly that, with the side-effect of marginalizing alternative spring break options. Although it’s not the express job of the University administration to publicize alternative options — many of which are student-organized — and more their job to ensure student safety, they should match their coverage of ‘traditional spring break’ with a touch of other options.
Did CPAC actually provide answers to any of these questions? No, not remotely. But it does provide a useful lens into what looks to be an extremely entertaining primary season. More than that, perhaps the most important function of CPAC is to determine whether Republicans can achieve some measure of cohesion as they look to pick their nominee.
Vigils are not merely “gestures of solidarity.” Rather, vigils provide a space for individuals who are grieving to find emotional support in their community. When unimaginable tragedies, such as the disappearance and death of Hannah Graham, face our community, the only method of support that is available is support through our peers.
Thirst for knowledge is fading away from undergraduates, and as a result, higher education is losing its focus on exploring the depths of human intellect. College has become a stepping-stone, a four year itch on the backs of students with inherently misguided ambitions. The concept of attaining wealth in the professional world has protruded the sacred boundaries of our nation’s higher institutions, for as an undergraduate, if you sit back to smell the roses, you lose.
In the 1960s students went as far as Waynesboro to protest a General Electric Factory over wages and employee benefits. During Vietnam War protests in the 1970s, University students stormed the Lawn, occupied buildings and made demands from the administration, among them the right for University employees to strike and bargain collectively. And now in the context of such incendiary events last semester over hate crimes and rape, the Living Wage Campaign is not simply making noise to shout.
The police as a whole have not yet demonstrated the ability to sensitively interact with sexual assault survivors. This does not mean police cannot be trained to respond carefully to survivors’ needs when questioning them or moving forward with investigations — but until the police are thoroughly trained, survivors should not be subjected to the consequences of mandatory reporting laws.
Why would we elevate another school to the point of mentioning them in our fight song? Why would we lower ourselves to using profanity?
In America, African-American males are incarcerated at six times the rate of white males — an increase from 1960, when black men were five times as likely as whites to be incarcerated — and Latino men face a ratio of 2.5 to one. Our justice system is rife with racial disparities in sentencing, death-penalty verdicts, the granting of probation or parole and employment prospects after incarceration.
