Opinion

Opinion

In defense of intrinsic value

By Managing Board | November 7, 2013

For University professors and administrators to take the intrinsic-value argument seriously, for them to make it forcefully to external parties, would mean that they would be asserting another claim at the same time. They would be insisting that the purpose of college is more than just job preparation. They would be saying that college is something more: it is about creating people who can make a life, not just make a living.

---

Opinion

DiNapoli: Beautiful and useless

By Emma DiNapoli | November 6, 2013

The humanities exist, and will continue to exist, because we are human. Because we exist not to build bigger buildings and computers that are more powerful but just to be: to be happy, sad, angry, wistful, passionate, horrified, winners, losers, friends, lovers, parents, leaders, followers. Does it matter that the humanities serve no practical purpose, if they give pleasure? I don’t think so. Do you?

---

Opinion

HUTTO: Living between the lines

By Katy Hutto | November 6, 2013

There was a place named Reality, the twin city of Illusion, and its inhabitants were in retrospect not all that different from U.Va. students at their most stressed and chronically overcommitted. Day in and day out, all these people just trying to get through Reality were so relentlessly preoccupied with traveling straight from point A to point B that they never even looked up long enough to notice something astounding: their entire city had become invisible.

---

Opinion

PERLA: Oh, the humanity

By James Perla | November 6, 2013

The humanities use its tools to pop the bubbles, to take apart the shed and put it back together — occupy it, learn its every panel and stand outside of it — from an outside perspective it doesn’t seem like anything is being done, but anyone in the humanities will smile because there is no instruction manual to what we do.

---

Opinion

WOLFORD: Beyond observation

By Jackson Wolford | November 6, 2013

Things like love, hate, the despair that comes when your laptop won’t work right before you’re supposed to submit an article for The Cavalier Daily — these are things we don’t understand from observing; we understand these things from being.

---

Opinion

MENENDEZ: A long line of storytellers

By Sandra Menendez | November 6, 2013

Tía Ysa did not have beautiful hands. They were scarred and sliced from the sharp crack of machete against sugar cane. I turned her hand over in mine, poked and prodded the raised, white scars that were like spider legs crawling in her palm and asked again what would happen if you found a set of eyes while cutting.

---

Opinion

DIEM: Magic words

By Matthew Diem | November 6, 2013

Imagine a square circle.

---

Opinion

CONNOLLY: Charting a course

By John Connolly | November 6, 2013

Choosing a tentative list of courses with Lou’s List based on intellectual interests, before whittling it down with the Course Forum and Rate My Professors, is a better option than relying only on the possibly unreliable and outdated grade distributions put forward by the Course Forum.

---

Opinion

BROWN: For the greater good

By Forrest Brown | November 6, 2013

Why should the stupidity of a few isolated groups make vaccines mandatory? Because their stupidity does not put only them at risk. Many people cannot get vaccines without risking major health complications because of specific conditions, medical treatments or age. The prevalence of vaccines in the general population is the best defense these people have against many diseases to which they would otherwise be susceptible.

---

Opinion

BOGUE: The most wonderful time of the year

By Russell Bogue | November 6, 2013

With so much festive spirit in the air, it’s time to resurface that perennial debate: which holiday is the best? Is it the raucous debauchery of Halloween? The joy of Thanksgiving? The timelessness of Christmas?

---

Opinion

Five lessons from the 2013 Virginia gubernatorial election

By Managing Board | November 6, 2013

We’re mostly just glad that the gubernatorial race — one of the most toxic and intellectually unproductive in recent memory — is over. But unpleasant as the race was, the results point to some interesting developments in Virginia politics. They also confirm some traditional wisdom.

---

Opinion

YAHANDA: No offense

By Alex Yahanda | November 5, 2013

Overall, however, I take the most issue with the idea that losing a holiday’s religious sentimentality automatically detracts from the holiday itself. I would argue that, in cases where the holiday promotes messages beyond simply religious sentiments, ignoring a holiday’s religious base does little to diminish the good that the holiday may promote.

---

Opinion

WHISNANT: Neither Brand nor Rand

By Gray Whisnant | November 5, 2013

Progressives on Election Day should engage in a collective act of nose-holding, go to the ballot box, and counteract reactionary voters who will always turn out no matter what. To say there are no differences between the candidates, as Brand suggests, is disingenuous and ignores the consequences of those differences for regular people.

---

Opinion

Don’t suffer in silence

By Managing Board | November 4, 2013

More U.S. college students die from suicide than from alcohol, according to a 2011 study commissioned by James Turner, executive director of Student Health at the University of Virginia. And one in 12 college students makes a suicide plan, a 2002 report co-sponsored by the National Mental Health Association found.

---

Opinion

KNAYSI: The neuroscientific case against hazing

By George Knaysi | November 4, 2013

To promote hazing as a desirable form of bonding might go against anecdotes from those who have emerged from the other side of the process, but it directly contradicts empirical and clinical evidence.

---

Opinion

KELLY: A governmental glitch

By Conor Kelly | November 4, 2013

Our federal government’s increasing reliance upon the Internet and technology for the implementation of legislation, reflected in the Affordable Care Act, calls for a corresponding development in our nation’s bureaucracy.

---

Opinion

BERNSTEIN: The ethical question

By Dani Bernstein | November 4, 2013

If you see a drunk student stumbling home, do you have a moral obligation to help him or her, or are you just particularly virtuous for doing so? It’s clear that, though these issues might seem broad, they are actually relevant to us here and now, and having students discuss them in an academic setting will ultimately compel them to question their own systems of belief and everyday actions.

---

Opinion

Don’t sit this one out

By Managing Board | November 4, 2013

We write first and foremost to urge students to vote.

---

Opinion

FINOCCHIO: Compassionate service, tangible results

By Peter Finocchio | November 3, 2013

The Cuccinelli that the Democrats have crafted is heartless, extreme, unacceptable and unelectable. The real Cuccinelli, however, is none of these things. He is passionate about policy and about people, he is experienced and he is by far Virginia’s best candidate.

---

Opinion

LONG: Promoting a platform

By Gabrielle Long | November 3, 2013

As a student at the University of Virginia, education affordability is important to me. It’s important to many other students as well. Terry McAuliffe believes that in order to combat the large increase in tuition at colleges and universities in Virginia, these colleges and universities need to be given tools to keep tuition low and financial aid high.