Upstairs, the Board discussed the University’s budget in dry, even tones. Downstairs, protesters shouted and clapped.
No two terrorist incidents are the same, and many of the errors in judgment that have followed in the wake of national tragedies can be blamed on people drawing too many connections between attacks. However, I think it is useful to remember how our nation reacted to 9/11 in order to see how far we have come in terms of facing terrorism on our soil.
There is no benefit to treating terrorists, whether they be enemy combatants or domestic criminals, differently than any other defendant in our criminal justice system.
We often respond to the brutality of physical violence, because it is easily noticeable, but structural violence is overseen due to the way it is invisibly integrated into our social structures. Yet structural violence is just as damaging as physical violence to a community, and is affected far more by the bystander effect. It is too easy to be apathetic about the negative effects produced by societal institutions, because we are so habituated to the system that we are blinded to the damage it is doing. Though some may think it is a bit dramatic to call instituting a living wage a matter of life and death, it certainly has a significant impact on the health of workers.
I’m Trudie, your friendly teaching assistant, and I’m here to help. Sure, you might think, what does a TA have to offer in the world of advice? Well, I’ve seen quite a bit in my time. And believe it or not, I was once just like you. That is, before I went to graduate school.
Though Schwarzman says he was inspired by the Rhodes scholarship program at Oxford, the Schwarzman scholarship lacks the Rhodes’ intellectual flexibility: the program’s founders seem more interested in creating statesmen than scholars, which may limit the level of prestige the program attains and narrow its applicant pool. But students lucky enough to nab a scholarship will still enjoy a superior academic experience, including an immersion into Chinese culture and instruction in Mandarin.
The movement to push children, or at least the responsibility for rearing those children, from parents and families is one that echoes more radical regimes.
The Virginia Board of Health gave final approval last week to a new set of regulations on clinics that perform abortions. This issue has been live since 2011, when the General Assembly decided to tighten the standards abortion clinics are obliged to meet. The Board of Health had initially decided to exclude existing clinics from having to meet the regulations but changed its mind because all 19 clinics in Virginia renewed their licenses last year. Those clinics are now being treated as new clinics and must abide by the new regulations, which primarily mandate architectural changes such as wider hallways like those usually found in hospitals.
For STEM fields overall, around 40 percent of graduate students are foreigners. And those percentages are constantly on the rise. Yet with the current number of H1-Bs, many soon-to-graduate foreign students will not be able to remain in the U.S., even if they want to. The U.S. is therefore using much of its higher-education system to benefit other nations when it could be using much more of the intellectual capital American schools generate. We are squandering talent that we could easily retain.
Last year, a close friend of mine was raped by a fellow student. She bravely decided to take action through channels offered by the University, but the University process proved fruitless and, in fact, subjected her to the same kind of humiliation and indignity that she had suffered only a short time before at the hands of her rapist. Her case is only one example of the profound injustices that many rape and sexual assault victims face here at the University because their school has failed to protect and support them.
The Williamsburg school unveiled a new tuition and fees structure Friday. The operational model, dubbed the “William & Mary Promise,” resembles the high-tuition, high-aid approach many selective private institutions, including most ivies and Ivy League equivalents, employ.
Paul’s argument — that no citizen should be subject to a drone strike without first being accused of a crime and without a proper trial — is in response to the prospect of drone strikes on U.S. soil exclusively. Paul contended that drone strikes on American soil give the government undue power. This concern should allow apply to American drone strikes abroad.
Last Wednesday the Manchin-Toomey amendment, which would have required background checks for all commercial gun sales, received just 54 of the 60 votes it needed to pass in the U.S. Senate. The legislation’s supporters argued that the bill would have been a helpful preventive measure against gun violence. While I understand this perspective, it is important to see how the legislation would have affected United States citizens negatively.
For some of us, serendipity means being able to attend our Friday classes safely because we chose not to go to school in Boston. For some of us, serendipity means having our elementary school experiences not be clouded by the terrors of Newtown, Connecticut. For some of us, serendipity means returning home safely from our study abroad experiences. For some of us, serendipity means being mentally, physically and monetarily able to study at the University of Virginia. And yet for all of us, serendipity means waking up each and every morning.
Money in politics is undesirable because we don’t want our legislators obligated to anyone but their constituents. We hope that when our Congressmen are casting a vote on important pieces of legislation, such as the gun regulation bill the Senate voted on April 16, they are concerned with what is the best idea for the largest number of people. They should not be worried about pleasing corporations or interests groups or ensuring their own re-elections — they should be thinking about how to keep people safe or protect their rights.
But the University, with its ample intellectual capital, is also poised to make great strides in environmental protection. The school has already taken some notable steps. In February 2011, the University launched an interdisciplinary minor in global sustainability. A few months later, the Board of Visitors approved a commitment to reduce the University’s annual greenhouse gas emissions to 250,000 metric tons by 2025 — a figure 25 percent below 2009 levels.
Journalism can be a self-prophesying industry. Every journalist understands the political leaning and expected coverage of their workplace, and it takes bravery for journalists to write against a predominating zeitgeist with their job on the line. That’s not an excuse for media bias, but it is a problem.
The managing board’s occasional survey of notable numerals
The University’s enthusiasm for expanding differential-tuition programs — and its stated reasoning for upperclassman fees — comes from the same ethos that drives the development of the school’s new internal financial model. The model aims to treat each school or unit as a separate cost center that must generate revenues to cover its expenses.
The rest of the report goes to describe in detail the revolting stories that form that fabric of Dr. Gosnell’s history — stories such as delivering and then murdering a live, screaming baby and keeping jars of baby feet. It reads almost like a horror story in which the antagonist is not a misanthropic psychopath but a twisted doctor motivated by profit.
