Weekly

Opinion

​MINK: Moving beyond tenure

By Alex Mink | April 13, 2015

Another reason tenure has failed is the perverse incentives it provides. The tenure system in the United States consists of a probationary period of around five years, during which a prospective candidate’s research, teaching and service are evaluated. At the end of this period, a committee of tenured faculty vote on whether to recommend this person for tenure. If this person succeeds, he is given a job that is almost guaranteed for life. If he fails to receive tenure, he is often terminated. This all or nothing system couples tremendous pressure early in a person’s career with very little incentive following his acquisition of tenure, leading to stagnation in in the education system.

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Opinion

​BROOM: Pushing the envelope

By Christopher Broom | April 13, 2015

It doesn’t seem to me that if the management of a publication decides, on its own, to pull stories that aren’t meant to be factual in the first place that there is any free press issue to worry about. The same is true about free speech. The Managing Board decided to pull the pieces and apologize after they heard from enough others that what they published was, in fact, offensive because they didn’t want to be offensive and hoped apologizing would make that clear and help heal the wounds they’d caused.

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Opinion

​HARRINGTON: Make execution look like what it is

By Elaine Harrington | April 10, 2015

When discussing the ethics of capital punishment, I find it necessary to discriminate between the ethics of choosing to give someone the death penalty and the ethics of how the execution is carried out. Fogel implies he disagrees with the death penalty. As do I. Yet one can still seek to have an inherently immoral act to be carried out in a more ethical way.

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Opinion

​RUDGLEY: Rand Paul and the future of the GOP

By Ben Rudgley | April 10, 2015

Paul, more than any other candidate, has tried to reach out to disaffected voting blocs that when they do vote, vote blue, like African-Americans and college-age voters. His bold ideas, like scaling back surveillance programs or criminal justice reform, represent a departure from establishment Republicans who appear intent on adding to their party’s litany of failures and embarrassments (that range from George W. Bush’s costly, disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to Todd Akin’s cringe-inducing comments on rape and pregnancy).

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Opinion

​EDEL: In praise of the thesis

By Brennan Edel | April 9, 2015

Writing a thesis is the sort of résumé padding that I can get behind. Besides the fact that spending fourth year writing 40 or more pages of deep academic discourse is not something that one does merely on a whim, writing a thesis confers, in addition to the honors, a deeper and more pointed understanding of the major than only coursework can provide. Spending months researching, writing and finally producing a unique thesis about one single topic instills and inspires the sort of hard work and creativity that is truly distinctive.

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Opinion

​GORMAN: Religious freedom isn’t a license to discriminate

By Ryan Gorman | April 9, 2015

Substantial controversy has been raised over Indiana’s recently passed Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which — in essence — openly allows businesses to discriminate against potential customers by citing their right to the “free exercise of religion.” This piece of legislation has caused serious uproar across the nation; pundits, celebrities and politicians alike have denounced the inhumane precedent the RFRA has established and called for its repeal.

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Opinion

​SPINKS: Brand Link is bad journalism

By Ashley Spinks | April 9, 2015

What does the term “Brand Link” mean to the uninitiated? Horowitz assured me that an explanation of our Brand Link policy would remain a fixture on our website, and she said that the model “is not coming from a place of ignorance” about editorial integrity concerns. She says that “much more of our energy is going into long-term solutions” than into the Brand Link model. But those long-term solutions are moot if our audience can no longer trust us.

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Opinion

​JACKSON: The power of the University’s brand

By Lauren Jackson | April 8, 2015

When Stanton’s trusted brand of Humans of New York presented a story that encapsulated the American Dream and the current myth of social mobility almost too-perfectly, it created a firestorm of media attention and galvanized potential contributors. The story, like Stanton’s blog, was innocent and well meaning enough to make it immune to critical analysis. No one dared point out the aid allocation flaws in the logistics, even if they saw them. No one wanted to be the person to question why Stanton and Nadia Lopez, the school’s principal, weren’t sending kids on more cost-conscious trips to any of New York’s excellent universities — Columbia, New York University or Juilliard to name a few.

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Opinion

​EVANS: Natural gas kills

By Will Evans | April 7, 2015

Until we begin to question those conventional structures that leave bodies bloodied and crumpled beneath ruined homes, local environments ravaged and watersheds spoiled, we will not progress as a species whose industrial nature will forever demand some form of efficient energy supply. It is up to our generation to facilitate the delivery of a new energy model that reconciles economic productivity with greater values of social and environmental justice.

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Opinion

​PATEL: A bridge too far

By Sawan Patel | April 7, 2015

While every other dorm has its advantages, CDF has none. It doesn’t have the air conditioning or singles that Gooch-Dillard has nor the air conditioning and luxury of New Dorms. CDF also lacks the convenience of being a walkable distance to class, nor does it have a convenient bus stop. To further exacerbate the situation, there are no study areas or rooms made for working, which means I regularly do have to go to the library, which is a 25-minute hike if I am going to Clemons.

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Opinion

​ALJASSAR: The consequences of homogeneity

By Nazar Aljassar | April 7, 2015

The BSA makes a fair point. I do not think the Rosa Parks piece would have been published with stronger black representation in The Cavalier Daily. Somebody along the editing chain would be aware that the article is inappropriate. If I can extract anything from the publication of the April Fools’ articles, it is that the paper’s demonstrated lack of sensitivity toward issues facing minority communities is a natural consequence of homogeneity in our staff. We lack the minority representation to be able to effectively do what we do.

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Opinion

​WALLS: Talk about race in the classroom

By Nora Walls | April 7, 2015

American schools ought to teach race relations as a current event — provide the history and inform students about where we are today. Of course, kids are not equipped to handle the full complexity or intensity of the issue, but teachers could easily address the fact that racism still exists in our country without getting into some of the darker or more complicated details or bringing politics into the classroom.

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Opinion

​ADAMES: Jefferson lives, with undue praise

By Alexander Adames | April 6, 2015

I think it’s important that we take note of the weight Jeffersonian enthusiasts attach to Jefferson’s actions. It seems to me that society does not praise individuals whose immoral deeds outweigh their moralistic deeds. For example, President Richard Nixon provided us with the Environmental Protection Agency, but he was also involved in the Watergate scandal and prolonging the Vietnam War. Despite this laudable feat of establishing the EPA, many Americans castigate him on account of the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War outweighing any and all of his benevolent actions.

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Opinion

​DOYLE: Discussions start with professors

By Bobby Doyle | April 6, 2015

Professors can also do a better job incentivizing discussion. Participation points as part of a grade are a great start, at least in smaller classes, but leaving students to figure out how to participate can be discouraging. Students feel forced to talk in class even if they have nothing useful to say. Professors could make clear that coming to office hours with questions or going to external events that relate to the class could count as participation.

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Opinion

​JACKSON: Language matters for Israel-Palestine

By Lauren Jackson | April 3, 2015

Reducing race to a matter of skin color is an inadequate definition of racial identity. Sachs therefore cannot conclude Israel does not racially discriminate simply because it does not reflect the “bigoted environment” of a clear segregation of skin colors. As the Convention legally outlined, the use of the term apartheid does not require any situational commonalities between the state in question and South Africa.

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Opinion

​KHAN: The right to be beautiful

By Hasan Khan | April 3, 2015

Confronted with the idea of plastic surgery, many will immediately cry vanity. Intuitively, this position is simple: one should not modify their body to conform to society's artificial idea of beauty, as “inner beauty” should theoretically outweigh the importance of the external self. Such a position has merit; women shouldn't self-objectify themselves by getting breast enlargements for the sake of wooing men. Yet the reality of plastic surgery is much more complicated, especially in Brazil.

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Opinion

​BROOM: April Fools’ is no excuse

By Christopher Broom | April 2, 2015

The Cavalier Daily staff has damaged the trust readers had in the paper. The main point of the paper is to be an independent voice at the University of Virginia. The paper can’t be that if no one trusts it and if no one is paying attention. The April Fools edition of the paper has done harm to the Cavalier Daily and to its readers.

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Opinion

​EDEL: Time for a sane scheduling system

By Brennan Edel | April 2, 2015

We need a lottery system. I imagine something like the one used for scheduling basketball games, except with students listing out their intended classes in order of priority. Rather than Sabre points — which give a person more ‘names in the bucket’ come ticket-allocating time for sports games — we’d give people more names in the bucket for their preferred classes.

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Opinion

ALJASSAR: ​No UGuides in Pavilion VIII

By Nazar Aljassar | April 2, 2015

To be clear, I don’t mean to say that the Guide Service shouldn’t receive a space on Grounds to perform its functions as a tour-giving organization. I think the Guide Service is one of the most necessary organizations on Grounds particularly given its role in preserving the history of our University. Over the past few years, the Guide Service has made significant strides in addressing slavery at the University in its historical tours. Additionally, tour guides are often the first faces that prospective students see when they come to Charlottesville.

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Opinion

​FOGEL: Drawing the line at firing squads

By Jared Fogel | April 2, 2015

These alternatives should not become primary methods of execution. Hanging, though the most popular form of capital punishment for the majority of U.S. history, sometimes leads to prolonged strangulation or decapitation, and electrocution sometimes leads to inmates catching on fire or needing multiple jolts. It is the gruesome nature of these botched executions that led the majority of U.S. states to declare these alternatives unconstitutional, and the American people agree.