Viewpoints

Four more years

Fri, 09 May 2008 00:20:00 -0500

Sometime during your fourth year, you’re bound to have The Conversation. One day you’re walking to campus, thinking about the latest bit of Plato that you’ve read (or, given that you’re a fourth-year, wondering what time the Pub opens). And then you run into an acquaintance—perhaps some old suitemate from your days at Max East whom you never really liked but are socially obligated to exchange pleasantries with. The Conversation goes something like this:

Him: Hey! It’s been a while!
You (feigning interest): Yeah, hey!
Him: How’s it going?
You: Well, just thinking about Plato/alcohol. You?
Him: Not much, I was just posting some particularly subversive musings on my blog. Do you read my blog?
You: Oh, you know, my Internet has been really spotty recently….
Him: No worries. So, do you know what you’re doing with your life?
You: Er, I’m working on it. You?
Him: Yeah, I got a job lined up at a consulting firm.

At this point, you distinctly remember why you disliked this person. The smugness, the self-fascination, the fact that he’s wearing a sweater vest—there is no reason in the world why you should care what this person is doing with his life. And yet, the update destroys your soul. He’s going into consulting?

After four years of college, what do you have to show for yourself? The hours spent at the library, the nights of inebriated Mario Kart at a friend’s apartment—all of it wasted time. You should have been out making connections, getting Metcalf internships, and doing whatever it is smug sweater vest–wearing folks do to score jobs at consulting firms. You’re so incompetent that you even allowed your useless first-year acquaintance to become far more important than you. And he’ll be making so much money! Let’s spare ourselves the clichés about how money isn’t everything—at this point in your life, being rich seems like a fantastic idea.

The truth is, it’s horribly depressing to see your fellow classmates develop firm life plans while you’re still in college student mode. I don’t have any interest in being a consultant; I’m not even sure what they do. So why do I become intensely jealous when I find out that someone else is becoming one?

This depression is probably unavoidable. Many of us go to college so we can grow up. We expect a certain sense of clarity in exchange for all of the studying and melancholy we’ve endured over the past four years. This makes it disheartening to go through your fourth year in a state of confusion. Your family really paid all that money so you could end up just as muddled as before? The feeling gets much worse when you see your acquaintances, or even friends, find definite plans. The distinction seems clear: They did something right, they went through college correctly, and you didn’t. Now they are reaping the intended benefits, and you are not.

Clarity, though, seems to be overrated. The point of college is not necessarily to clarify your life. Not all of us are ready to grow up, even after four years. In college, you should be introspective. You should learn about yourself, change your mind about some things, take a few neat classes, and have a good time with your friends. If after four years of that, you happen to end up with a life plan, great. But four years is an arbitrary period of time. At some point in the near future, the “confused” phase of life will be over. Just as you left awkward, surly adolescence to enter awkward, confused young-adulthood, you will soon become an awkward adult with at least a vague life plan. We will all grow up, we will find out what we like doing in life, and we’ll be happy. What’s the big deal if some of us are a few years late?

And so, I wouldn’t worry about the consulting guy. The next time I see him, I’m just going to ignore him. Literally. I mean, what kind of businesses are consulting recent University of Chicago grads? Especially grads who wear sweater vests! I have confidence that I will grow up and will gain some modicum of clarity—but I’ll probably never understand why adults are so tolerant of the most repellent among the U of C student body.

Greasing the wheels

Fri, 09 May 2008 00:17:00 -0500

Getting out of Hyde Park can be a bit of a chore for students. Most buses connecting the University with the rest of the city are inconvenient for a majority of the campus and oftentimes prove unreliable; those that bring riders directly from the heart of campus to the Loop and the North Side are primarily intended for faculty and staff and, accordingly, only run during rush hours. The Metra is rarely utilized for similar reasons—with the exception of rush hour, service is excruciatingly intermittent. The recent proposal by the Transportation Office to reroute the #173 bus wouldn’t alleviate all of these problems, but funding from the Provost would be an important advance toward improving the ability of students to easily explore downtown Chicago.

As it stands, the #173 route includes two-dozen stops and takes more than an hour to make its way from the Lab School to Belmont. If, for example, a student wanted to go from the Reynolds Club to the Gleacher Center, he or she would have to sit through seven stops over a period of about 45 minutes. On the new route, the bus would make only a few stops: the Reynolds Club, the Roosevelt and State/Lake Red Line stations, and the Gleacher Center (as well as possibly the new dorm, once it is constructed). This would slash travel times, while providing riders easy access to downtown El stops and popular destinations such as the Roosevelt Road Target and AMC River East.

Perhaps the worst aspect of the current #173 is its infrequency. Those seeking to head north on a weekday afternoon probably find the bus satisfactory. Those looking to return to campus from downtown or to travel anywhere outside of 3:30 to 6:30 p.m. on weekdays must look elsewhere. The rerouting proposal includes extended late-night hours, weekend service, and a southbound version, addressing all of these problems.

An additional benefit of the proposed rerouting is safety: Instead of having to wait for the #55 late at night at the exposed Garfield stops, students could simply ride the new #173 all the way back to campus.

One potential concern about a new #173 route is its price tag, but this can be offset, in part, by scrapping the University-subsidized #174 bus. The bus, which currently runs from the Reynolds Clubs to the Garfield El stations, might be marginally more convenient for some students but has proven little more than a redundant version of the #55 bus.

Leaving Hyde Park can often be a journey in itself. Any improvement to the current weak transportation options can only help the student body. Overhauling the #173 may provide a much-needed jolt of energy for a system that often seems as if it’s running on empty.

The Maroon Editorial Board consists of the Editor-in-Chief, Managing Editor, Viewpoints Editors, and an additional Editorial Board member.

Equality for Illinois

Thu, 08 May 2008 23:47:00 -0500

As media operatives fished around in the goldfish bowl for a story last fall, they stumbled into proving to the world that historians can be newsworthy and even interesting.

Allan Tulchin, who holds a Ph.D in history from the U of C, published an eye-opening article in the Journal of Modern History arguing that homosexual relationships were not merely prevalent in Medieval Europe—they were socially sanctioned. Drawing from gravesites and written records, Tulchin determined that variations in household structures were accommodated by legal contracts sworn before a notary and witnesses, in which each party pledged to live together and share everything in common, including property. The media readily glossed this contract, which served blood brothers and lovers both, as a case of gay marriage 600 years ago, long before Massachusetts became a state.

Here was an island of love and tolerance afloat in a stormy sea of plague, strife, and fanaticism. For some, this story was a glimmer of hope from the benighted past; for others, it heralded a new effrontery to the cherished sanctum of marriage. Knights-errant picked up the torch and branded Tulchin an “intellectual terrorist” and “the worst historian,” among other such ignominious things.

Whether or not Tulchin is right matters little. Whether or not the analogy to civil unions is accurate matters less. What matters here is that history shows how deeply people are committed to sharing their lives with the ones they love or with whom they share important ties. Groups may regulate intimacy in more or less constrictive or elastic ways, but the feeling remains the same.

Everybody knows the trope about history—those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. What we don’t know, however, is which parts we ought to remember.
Perhaps we ought to remember the case of Mildred Loving, who passed away just days ago. Arrested in 1958 while at home with her husband Richard, Loving was tried and convicted for breaking anti-miscegenation laws by the state of Virginia, which banished her from the state for a period of 25 years. Only in 1967 did her plight merit the attention of the Supreme Court, which struck down such invidious discrimination once and for all in the ironically named Loving v. Virginia.

Yet how we forget! Interracial marriage no longer makes us throw a fit. There’s no longer much hullabaloo about the decay of civilization and the dissolution of traditional values because two people of different races fell in love with each other and wanted to share the benefits.

But the prejudicial fires burn all the same, albeit fueled by different objects, namely gays and lesbians. With the Defense of Marriage Act, the 1,138 rights guaranteed to married couples have been circumscribed in the eyes of the federal government.

Many states have opted to ban gay marriage or any same-sex unions by statute or through constitutional amendments. These cascading, reactionary effects of Massachusetts’s move have brought the question of marriage rights out into the open. It is an important opportunity to move toward a future where the legal sanction of a long-term relationship are shared by any two people who so wish.

Illinois House Bill 1826, the Illinois Religious Freedom and Civil Union Act, is a step in the right direction. This bill would create the possibility of civil unions for any two people.
Civil unions would allow partners not otherwise recognized by the state to make funeral arrangements, hold hospital visitation rights, enjoy state spousal benefits, enjoy domestic-violence protections, and receive tax relief at the state and local levels. This is a godsend for gay couples excluded from state recognition and barred from caring for and visiting their partners. It helps to simplify employment benefit structures by making legible what constitutes a “committed relationship.” Older couples with a widowed partner can enter civil unions without having to give up pension benefits from the deceased partner.

It’s a blight on our state history to bear the distinction of lacking, until 2006, any form of state anti-discrimination laws for sexual orientation. Let’s let love go free.

Marshall Knudson is a second-year in the College majoring in political science and romance languages and literatures. His column appears on alternate Fridays.

Fanning the flames

Thu, 08 May 2008 23:33:00 -0500

In its trek across the six continents, the 2008 Beijing Olympic torch has been engulfed by a series of political and ideological battles and subjected to criticism (and occasionally capture) from journalists, human-rights groups, Free Tibet advocates, and other parties dissatisfied with the Chinese government’s human rights record. If the story of the torch relay is any indication, we’re on the brink of the most controversial Games since Moscow in 1980.

Just as the U.S.–led boycott rightfully highlighted Soviet political repression, today’s protesters urging a boycott of the Beijing Games make many valid points about China’s tainted human rights record. They correctly mention Beijing’s narrow-minded disregard of Tibetan and Uyghur claims to hegemony, especially in light of the recent uprising in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital. They also float valid concerns about political and religious freedom, as more and more world leaders turn a blind eye to human rights with hopes of reaping the benefits of the fastest-growing industrial economy in the world.

But while the ends of the hard-line protesters are honest, their means are both ineffective and overly inflammatory. Their emotional displays at torch relay ceremonies and their stubborn adherence to a boycott of both the Games and, in some cases, of Chinese goods only dash hopes for improvement in this big year. One of the most vocal supporters for a boycott is “Reporters Without Borders,” a coalition of journalists advocating freedom of the press and encouraging a media boycott of the Olympics to protest the country’s poor record in this regard.
While these journalists are rightfully dissatisfied with the Chinese government, they overlook the ramifications of their actions. By refusing to travel to Beijing to attend the Olympics, they restrict opportunities to report on progress or lack thereof on the part of the government in curbing violations of press freedom.

Were powerful governments to line up behind the protesters and threaten or even enact economic sanctions against China, it would undermine the enormous gains already made by China in the human rights department over the last 30 years. Protesters alone cannot expect their stubbornness to be met with reconciliation on the part of Beijing; they only isolate themselves from working constructively with both China and other world leaders to engage the human rights situation with a hands-on approach.

While they aren’t publicized as well, there are organizations that take a more constructive approach toward improving the human rights situation in China. One such agency is simply called Human Rights in China (HRIC). Founded in March 1989 by Chinese students and scholars from around the globe, the organization concludes its mission statement by stating that human rights gains in China will be the result of “a long-term process of engaging multiple international actors, including the media, governments, corporations, various United Nations bodies, and other multilateral organizations.” One of HRIC’s campaigns, entitled “Take Action 2008,” is directed at alleviating the often deadly consequences of rampant pollution in the country, but the campaign organizers also make it clear that their goal is to cooperate with as many governments and organizations as possible, including the Chinese Communist Party, to ensure that China sticks to its promises to curb harmful emissions and protect the health of its people.

With no signs of any impending boycott on the part of governments, the international community appears ready to give Beijing its first real chance to shine in the world spotlight. After what will likely be in-depth attempts by human rights advocates to assess China’s progress in an Olympic year, a poor showing would not only stain China’s image, but would also lead the IOC to question its decision to grant Beijing the Games in the first place. The boycotters may be laughing then, but until that point, Beijing has the opportunity to convince the world that it deserves Olympic honor and glory.

The Right stuff

Tue, 06 May 2008 00:55:00 -0500

Buried by the debate over whether Hillary Clinton will win Indiana (she might), and whether it even matters (it doesn’t), the revelation that Dick Cheney is on a one-man mission to destroy an American icon swept by unnoticed like a flock of plankton drifting beneath the stormy political seas. Primary or no primary, the North Atlantic Right Whale is not long for this world.

It’s no secret that Right Whales are fearsome beasts. They are in many respects the closest our blubbery brethren come to That Kid: lice-infested, pocked by callosities, and severely overweight. In true Snell-Hitchcock fashion, they ingest food through an elaborate system of mass consumption that involves swimming across the ocean floor with their mouths open. They also—and really, this is the one area where they differ—have a horrible tendency to swim in the middle of congested trans-Atlantic shipping lanes, which often results in them being chopped to bits.

Considering that, since 1970, at least 25 whales have met their end in this fashion, it’s this last character trait that has conservationists and the U.S. government (not to mention the whales) concerned. The former two groups have devised methods to make ships more aware of the Balaenidae among them. Primarily, this means lowering the speed limits for ships within a certain distance of northeastern ports, but it includes more unorthodox methods as well: The Right Whale Listening Network, for instance, invites concerned citizens to familiarize themselves with the screams, moans, and gunshot-like snaps of the Northern Right. (Is it too late to book them for Summer Breeze?)

Everyone seems to have taken up the cause—everyone, that is, but the vice president, who has apparently decided to spend his last eight months in office finishing what the cargo vessels started. His office has blocked new National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration guidelines from going into place, instead commissioning his own researchers to find data that better support his policies.

Perhaps it wouldn’t matter so much were the Right Whale not such an instrumental player in our nation’s history. For America, whaling was an act of self-discovery as much as it was a one-sided slaughter. The outward push into the vast blue unknown marked a great leap forward in the development of a self-sufficient, uniquely American economy.

One need look no further than Nantucket, an island community so deep in old money that its residents still bring in Irish immigrants to do their hard labor. Before it became the vacation spot of Bill Gates, it was in its own right the Dubai of the 19th century, blessed with a stranglehold on a thriving industry. The island went from a quaint fishing village to an economic force, spurring development, the creation of a railroad, and granting ship owners and captains the societal presence of Saudi princes.

The culture of exploration has long since faded—even the Hartford Whalers bolted town and took on a new name and a new zip code—but as an American institution, it lives on in spirit. The brand that, next to McDonald’s, has come to exemplify modern American consumerism takes its name from one of America’s great whaling families: the Starbucks of Nantucket, immortalized in Moby Dick.

Yet, of all the great animal symbols of this nation, the Northern Right Whale alone is on the fast track to extinction. Benjamin Franklin’s turkey has thrived in the wild, in captivity, and in deep-fryers everywhere. The Bald Eagle, thanks to concerted efforts from conservationists, has bounced back from the brink of extinction and is now off the endangered species list entirely. Even the bison, nearly wiped off the map in the late 19th century, has found salvation in the form of novelty Buffalo Burgers that don’t taste quite as good as real beef.

It doesn’t have to be this way. There’s an obvious solution that we can all get behind—one that will satisfy conservationists and satiate Cheney’s seemingly insatiable desire for protected resources. As any third-grade teacher will tell you, it’s what’s on the inside that really matters, and it just so happens that whales are filled with oil like the moon is filled with cheese. Take the billions of cents that Americans will save from Hillary Clinton’s three-month gas-tax “holiday” and invest it in a program to breed and harvest Right Whales. Call it renewable energy for the 21st century. Or just call it genius. America wins. The Right Whale wins. Dick Cheney wins. It’s a win-win-win.

Editorial: Crews control

Tue, 06 May 2008 00:54:00 -0500

As everyone learns in Hum, it’s nearly impossible to get a group of U of C students to agree on anything. It was surprising, then, that a plan to introduce gender-neutral housing was met with overwhelming support among the student body. The concept was discussed for several years, a proposal was written and voted on, and the idea had just about made its way through the University bureaucracy. Unfortunately, Vice President and Dean of Students in the University Kim Goff-Crews scuttled this progress last week, effectively delaying the plan’s implementation for at least another year.

Goff-Crews’s rationale for the holdup is unsatisfactory. She has explained that she wants to consult with faculty, but it’s unclear why faculty members should have a say in something that would not affect them. While the proposal was sent to her desk during an admittedly busy week, given Goff-Crews’s involvement in the process for the past several months, its substance should not have been a surprise.

The dean’s hesitation is confusing for two reasons: First, gender-neutral housing has already been discussed extensively, without any significant opposition being raised. After considerable informal discussion, the Inter-House Council (IHC), a body made up of elected representatives from every undergraduate house, voted last spring on a non-binding resolution to introduce gender-neutral housing. By all accounts, the University administration was receptive to the idea, and the IHC convened a working group to craft a specific proposal. The plan, which was completed this winter, was expected to receive the Administration’s approval before today’s housing lottery.

The proposal’s reasonable nature makes Goff-Crews’s reluctance even more perplexing. Introducing gender-neutral housing would allow students of the opposite sex to room together in the housing system—a potentially divisive prospect. The IHC’s plan is admirably nuanced, however, and goes far to address potential concerns: House floors currently designated as single-sex would remain that way, and first-years would have to wait almost a month before they could opt into the system. Most importantly, the specific implementation would be left up to individual houses, meaning the plan’s prevalence would depend entirely on each house’s preference towards gender-neutral housing.

Some students feel uncomfortable living with members of the same sex; many others would simply prefer to live with friends who happen to be a different gender. If done in a regulated, sober fashion, gender-neutral housing would address both of these concerns. Unfortunately, due to the reluctance of one administrator, students will likely have to wait another year before gender-neutral housing becomes reality.
The University has declared retaining upperclassmen in the housing system one of its top priorities. Ultimately, its delay in implementing gender-neutral housing does little to dissuade many students that apartment life is the best available option.

The Maroon Editorial Board consists of the Editor-in-Chief, Managing Editor, Viewpoints Editors, and an additional Editorial Board member.

Arts, Schvarts

Tue, 06 May 2008 00:52:00 -0500

Bespectacled in a pair of trendy sunglasses, Mark McGowan, a British performance artist, has buried himself up to his neck in the sand on a beach in Britain. He plans to stay that way for 48 hours. He could stay for another 48 years, and I still wouldn’t get what makes it art. It seems to imply that David Blaine is the greatest artist of this century—a conclusion that I’m just not comfortable making.

Regardless, I’m content just to leave the artists to their own devices; I’ve got better things to do, like watch reruns of Home Improvement. This seems to be the general approach of most people, including those who inhabit University administration offices (just replace Home Improvement with office work or whatever). Apparently, though, administrators at Yale have a different approach.

Over the course of the last year, Yale fourth-year Aliza Shvarts repeatedly inseminated herself and then induced miscarriages. I could go into more detail (many media outlets have), but I’ll spare you. She collected the result of each miscarriage and created a video that would make Paris Hilton blush. This piece of performance art was to be Shvarts’s senior project for her art major.

Last month, Shvarts’s project became big news after it appeared on the Drudge Report. For the most part, people were stunned, but many conservatives were just plain indignant. In the face of so much negative attention, Yale College Dean Peter Salovey gave Shvarts an ultimatum: either “admit” that the piece was fabricated or don’t display it.

When Shvarts stood by her story, the dean followed through, blocking the project from being shown.

I’m not trying to defend Shvarts here. Her project seems like a cry for attention. It has no justification beyond the sort of rhetoric that would be torn to shreds at any real school.

Regardless, you would think Yale would make some effort to engage her on those grounds. Instead, administrators immediately gave in to public pressure, and their first course of action was to try to coerce a “confession” out of her. The fact that there is value in protecting the academic and artistic ventures of students seems beyond Yale and Salovey.

Sadly, no one in the press seems to care about how misguided Yale’s efforts have been. Ever since William Buckley Jr.’s God and Man at Yale, conservatives have harped on the educational establishment for placing political correctness ahead of freedom or individualism. The most commonly cited example is the banning of ROTC from most campuses. Interestingly, I haven’t heard anyone quoting Buckley or Allan Bloom in response to the Shvarts scandal.

But even more stunning is the silence from faculty members at Yale. This isn’t some meaningless issue. Performance art (or graphic design), which Yale’s School of Art is well known for, has slowly been going down this sort of road for a long time. If this sort of thing happened at the U of C, faculty and students would likely be up in arms demanding that the administration respect our freedom of inquiry.

Yet this type of thing would never happen at the U of C in the first place. I mean, there are riots when someone changes the curriculum. I think it’s easy to forget, but stuff like the Shvarts debacle is a reminder that the U of C is a pretty unique place. I don’t mean this in the “OMG, look at me, I’m wearing Converse” sense. No, in a genuine way, the U of C seems interested in striving for a level of internal consistency that would dumbfound most other institutions.

The sort of rhetoric that President Zimmer used when justifying his decision not to divest from Darfur is just stunning in comparison to the simplistic logic that Yale apparently used here. For all the grief many of us give activists (and ideologues in general), fighting for the freedom to inquire is critical to the proper administration of most universities. Luckily we’re in good hands.

Alec Brandon is a fourth-year in the College majoring in economics. His column appears on alternate Tuesdays.

Where funding goes to die

Fri, 02 May 2008 00:20:00 -0500

RSO Annual Allocations funding results won’t be announced for a week, but the reaction will likely be the same as always. Once again, Student Government (SG) will have shortchanged your beloved RSO and inexplicably provided thousands of dollars to a bunch of undeserving chumps.

Given SG’s limited funds, a large amount of griping is inevitable. The process, however, does raise an important question: How does a group of students obtain approval to become a RSO, therefore gaining access to hundreds of thousands of dollars distributed by SG each year?

As it currently stands, students interested in forming an RSO must first gain the approval of the Committee On Recognized Student Organizations (CORSO), a body consisting of three SG members and three students appointed by ORCSA. To gain CORSO’s approval, a prospective RSO must line up a faculty or staff adviser, at least eight interested students, and craft a unique mission statement. Groups approved by CORSO are then subject to final authorization by ORCSA.

Despite its seemingly benign mandate, CORSO has the unfortunate effect of stifling competition among student organizations. For example, a group of students who believe they can outperform the UCDems in representing campus Democrats will have its RSO application rejected by CORSO as redundant.

Such a rationale encourages complacency among current student groups. RSOs are given automatic monopolies on representing certain sections of the student body or providing certain services merely because they happen to have been created first. CORSO protects existing RSOs from being usurped by upstarts but also shields them from a sense of urgency and gives them little incentive to try unique or different programming that might appeal to more students.

The student body would be best served if CORSO were abolished. ORCSA could still require prospective organizations to fill out applications; groups just wouldn’t be vetted beforehand. If ORCSA fears being short-staffed by a flood of new RSO applications, it could compensate by dropping the requirement that RSOs be automatically assigned advisers. Such a step would allow student organizations to become more responsible, as they wouldn’t have an adviser holding their hand through the funding process, all while freeing well run RSOs from burdensome and unnecessary oversight.

Ultimately, the student body is the best judge of whether an RSO deserves to exist and receive part of our student activities fee. If students join an RSO, it’s worthwhile; if they don’t, it’s unnecessary. There’s no compelling reason students’ ability to choose should be hampered by six U of C students tasked with enforcing excessive bureaucracy and protecting a non-competitive funding system.

The Maroon Editorial Board consists of the Editor-in-Chief, Managing Editor, Viewpoints Editors, and an additional Editorial Board member.

The Court’s mistaken identity

Fri, 02 May 2008 00:12:00 -0500

There is a constant tension in politics, as in many other areas of life, between process and results. Compromising the former often nets short-term gains in the latter but ends up wreaking havoc in the future. Nowhere is this more evident than in Supreme Court jurisprudence.

The Court’s latest decision—Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, which upheld an Indiana law that requires voters to show state identification before casting a ballot—is a perfect example of the results-oriented mindset held by many in the media.

The Los Angeles Times editorialized against the Court’s ruling, saying, “With its decision in this case, the Supreme Court encourages mischief and undermines its great history as an engine of democracy.” Not to be outdone, The New York Times’s editorial board unironically opined, “Democracy was the big loser in the Supreme Court on Monday.”

The Court’s task in this case was to weigh the law’s supposed benefits—preventing fraud—against its potential detriments—deterring voting. But how, precisely, are the justices to balance these two concerns? As Slate’s Eric Posner notes, considering the two interests is not at all simple: We can’t just say that one disenfranchised vote equals one fraudulent vote. “We might think that even a little fraud throws the whole system in disrepute; or we might instead worry that disenfranchising people is much worse than tolerating a little fraud,” Posner writes.

In essence, the Court’s critics are not asking for a decision based on some sort of rule of law or objective reading of the Constitution; they’re demanding one founded on the justices’ personal opinions of how to balance two competing interests and on what makes a good society.

And although both editorial boards disagreed with their final result, that’s exactly what some of the justices did: Three of them concluded that there is no evidence that the law’s costs outweigh its benefits, another trio argued that costs did outweigh the benefits, and the final three jurists argued that it’s not the Court’s job to perform a cost–benefit analysis. The question that six of the justices attempted to answer was not a Constitutional one, but a public policy one: “Is this law a good idea? Do its costs outweigh its benefits?” and not “Does the law violate the Constitution?”

This, however, begs an important question: Is there any objective standard of constitutionality? Of course there isn’t. Most cases that go to the Court that involve, for example, free speech, don’t ask whether the law in question restricts speech, but rather whether the government has a good enough reason—“a narrowly tailored, compelling governmental interest” is the Court’s standard—to regulate that speech. Behind the legalese, however, the same question remains: Is the law a good idea? Is the “governmental interest” in question “compelling” enough to outweigh freedom of speech? These are questions that ought to be answered not by the judiciary, but by elected representatives. If a democratic republic is to mean anything, it must mean that people can choose representatives who have the power to come to a decision after weighing the costs and benefits of different laws.

But wait, you say: What about “checks and balances”? What about “three separate, yet co-equal branches”? This grand, high-minded–sounding ideal—which is perpetuated in elementary school classrooms and high school civics textbooks—is simply not borne by a reasonable reading of the Constitution. The document delegates dozens of powers to the legislative branch, several to the executive branch, and next to none to the judicial branch. Clearly, the legislative branch is intended to have the most power.

Judicial review—the idea that it’s the job of the judiciary to determine if democratically passed laws are constitutional—is not mentioned implicitly or explicitly in the Constitution; it is a power that the Court gave itself (in the 1803 case Marbury v. Madison).

The problem with the judicial process, as it stands, is that it simply ignores democracy. The results are sometimes good—the Court ends up being right and the legislature wrong—but we give up something, something both tangible and intangible, when we let the judiciary subvert democracy. In Crawford, the Court respected the will of the legislature but only because some of the justices happened to agree with that legislature’s opinion.

The Supreme Court purports to be above democracy or even to be a check on the excesses of democracy. But in actuality, the Court is just a perverse form of the very thing that it supposes to restrain—and worse yet, it’s a democracy in which only nine people get a vote.

Matt Barnum, a Maroon Viewpoints Editor, is a second-year in the College majoring in psychology. He can be reached at mgbarnum@uchicago.edu.

Switching gears for safety

Fri, 02 May 2008 00:08:00 -0500

With warm weather comes more crime. It’s a simple enough statement, but in a city neighborhood, it can sometimes mean coming home to a broken window and no laptop. Protected by the Chicago Police Department, the U of C Police Department (UCPD) and, for a few blocks at least, the United States Secret Service, most U of C students are happy with the state of safety on campus. But as with any situation, it can always be improved. The University can start by putting more cops on bicycles.

When it comes to visibility and mobility, bicycle police certainly have advantages over their counterparts on four wheels. An officer sitting in his car cannot reasonably be asked to notice every student who walks to class along 57th Street, but a bicycle police officer, riding more slowly and covering more ground, could. In a car, someone’s primary responsibility is to watch the road, where very few students walk and few crimes are committed. On a bike, one must be aware of all manner of things. The simplest way to explain it is that you can watch squirrels while riding a bike or walking, but not while driving. On a squirrel-intensive campus like this one, the UCPD should share the perspective of an average student.

Mobility is also important, and although in emergencies cars can get around campus quickly, a bicycle police officer would be more effective in chasing someone if he ran to a place a car would not fit, such as the small sidewalks between apartment
buildings and academic buildings.

The sizable fleet of UCPD patrol cars no doubt makes students feel safe. However, with such limited personal interaction with the officers, it’s difficult to associate the dozens of squad cars with the officers inside them. How many students can identify individual officers by face, let alone name? Allowing for interaction between students and the officers could enable more personal relationships between the two groups, which would be helpful in building trust and contacts. Knowing someone by name facilitates all future interactions—think of someone who serves you food or grades your papers, for example. Improved accessibility would be also be a good feature in the UCPD’s umbrella service.

In addition to safety and efficiency, bicycle programs have a number of other significant benefits, such as zero carbon emissions, cheaper operation costs than cars, and more exercise for the police officers. It could also serve as tacit encouragement for more bicycle use in Hyde Park, which in the long run could help alleviate some parking and CTA crowding issues that the neighborhood has. Alderman Hairston was correct, at least, in pointing out that Hyde Park suffers from parking problems; choosing bicycles over cars is a way to alleviate the congestion.

There are obvious limits to the implementation of bicycle police officers around campus, and any policy enacted must take these into account. For instance, asking the police to ride their bikes in the dead of winter would be cruel, and considering that cold weather is a deterrent in itself, it would be altogether unnecessary. Likewise, it would be both costly and inefficient to purchase an excessive amount of new bikes in order to create an entirely new patrol strategy; by making changes in moderation, the UCPD can fit the bike patrols within the current system. Last, it likely wouldn’t make much sense for bike patrols in less pedestrian-heavy zones of Kenwood or Woodlawn, which are still easily navigated by car.

The neighborhood is going through many changes. The prospect of famous architect Jeanne Gang’s Solstice On the Park (a 26-story luxury high-rise building so revolutionary it was featured in Wired), improving retail options, and a general rise in affluence as city living continues to grow in attractiveness will transform the area over the next decade. How the police are perceived inside the community is almost certainly going to change as well. Overall, students, faculty, and staff would feel safer if UCPD officers on patrol reflected the pedestrian nature of those whom they serve. Increasing safety and trust with law enforcement on campus and beyond would go a long way toward helping Hyde Park improve as a community.

Ronan McNulty is a third-year in the College majoring in geography.

McNear wrong about Earth Week

Fri, 02 May 2008 00:04:00 -0500

Claire McNear’s op-ed about the U of C’s Earth Week celebration last week (“Seven-Day Activists,” 4/29/08) reflected a fairly poor understanding of Earth Week and its aims. In the first place, Earth Week activities on campus were organized by a broad coalition of environmental groups, each with their own interests and goals. The Sustainability Council was the most visible of these groups, but the Council, which is not an “activist organization” but rather a twice-quarterly forum where students, faculty, and administrative and facilities staff meet to discuss and implement sustainable solutions to campus issues, was not responsible for all of the Earth Week programming, including the move to cover up trays in the dining halls.

Since its inception just a few years ago, the Sustainability Council has had a profound effect on the University. The recent hiring of a Sustainability Coordinator for the University (an area in which we lagged several years beyond our peer institutions) is in itself evidence that things are not back to “business as usual.” I agree that most U of C students are apathetic when it comes to progressive issues, but it simply isn’t true that the student body was unresponsive to Earth Week events.

Hundreds of students who were presumably very busy writing Sosc papers, finishing problem sets, or editing their B.A. theses still managed to attend several events specifically designed to help them make lasting, long-term impacts on the environment. There may be no “influx of solar panels,” but students were plenty interested in the student-built wind turbine display on the quads. Those who sat in for the “Diet and the Environment” panel were indeed interested in eating locally.

Professor Cass Sunstein’s Earth Day talk at the Law School about federal environmental policy was filled to seating capacity. Students who attended the “Greening Your Apartment” workshop will slash up to 75-percent of their electricity consumption by switching to compact fluorescent light bulbs. The 60 members of the University community who picked up vermiculture composting bins will reduce their solid waste production by up to 20-percent, and have pledged to donate the next generation of worms to others, multiplying the environmental effect of this one action severalfold over the next few years.

Had McNear attended any of the Earth Week events, I think it would have been clear to her both that U of C students are interested in the environment and that the programmatic value of these events extended far beyond the five days of Earth Week itself.

Liz Selbst
Class of 2008
Co-Chair, Green Campus Initiative

Editorial: On Point

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:39:00 -0500

With summer likely to return for another year, students and neighborhood residents heading in droves to the Lake for weekend barbecues will come to face-to-face with a bitter reality: Promontory Point is falling apart.

Given the Point’s uneven, dangerously crumbling landscape, it would be logical to assume that fixing this popular locale would be a top priority. And yet, since 2001, a vocal coalition of residents have argued that “preserving” the landmark is better than fixing it; these activists have stymied a series of progressively better redevelopment proposals advocated by the Park District and the Army Corps of Engineers.

The controversy is centered on the seemingly trivial issue of limestone. The Point’s current state of disrepair is due almost entirely to its construction from limestone blocks which, unsuited for the repeated pounding by Lake Michigan’s waves, have eroded or shifted out of position. The Park District’s original proposal would have rebuilt the Point using mostly concrete, which community activists have rightfully pointed out is less aesthetically pleasing than limestone (but much sturdier). In an attempt to reach a compromise, the city agreed to incorporate much of the old limestone in its redesign.

But “Save the Point” proponents scuttled the plan, refusing to accept a concrete–limestone hybrid. The Point should be preserved, they claim, but preserved for whom? No one benefits when the Point is unusable. The activists are not defending a beloved community monument from evil developers; they are preventing Hyde Park residents from fully enjoying their lake.
Unfortunately, common sense rarely prevails in these disputes. As with the Doctors Hospital (perhaps the activists want the hospital reopened for when they break their ankles at the Point), the outspoken community members seem to have forced the issue to a stalemate. Currently, the task of overseeing a new redevelopment plan has been given to Senator Obama, who has been too busy promising to mend the deep fissures in national politics to find a way to fix the cracks in the Point.

It is a great irony that those who claim they want to “Save the Point” seem dead set on doing the opposite. Instead of handing out their bumper stickers and commending themselves on defending the neighborhood, the activists should reevaluate what the purpose of having parks and community landmark is. They say they want to save the Point; the rest of us just want to be able to use it.

The Maroon Editorial Board consists of the Editor-in-Chief, Managing Editor, Viewpoints Editors, and an additional Editorial Board member.

Seven-day activists

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:29:00 -0500

Last week marked my 978th consecutive week on Earth. Much like the previous 977 weeks, it was characterized by the beleaguered existence of the Amazon Rainforest, ice in Antarctica, and 1,196 species of geckos; unlike the other 977 weeks, last week this mattered, but, in true U of C activism style, only in big, not-so-active ways: It was Earth Week.

I suppose that it was a good week for the Earth. The sun shined, it rained some, a couple of tectonic plates had their way with Reno, and a few sharks reminded us of where we humans stand in the grand scheme of things (eaten). So although the actual holiday is Earth Day, this lone day offered just one-seventh of the environmental revelry provided for the duration of an entire “Earth Week,” and, considering the ever-worsening state of global affairs, it was as good a week as any for the Sustainability Council to offer a slew of Earth-related activities to the University community.

The trouble here is that, judging by the University’s prompt and unaltered return to business as usual, Earth Week did not have the lasting effect that its organizers presumably hoped that it would. Looking over the schedule of events, which ranged from a Hyde Park tree tour to seminars on sustainability and recycling, the intentions were obviously good; to further this, the events were all very well publicized via listhosts, signs, and flyers. Why, then, hasn’t the student body responded with an influx of solar panels and locally grown produce?

The problem is that the Sustainability Council and its cohorts seem to have misunderstood one of the most powerful forces currently active on campus: apathy. The average U of C student is unlikely to read about—much less attend—the workshops outlined on the placards placed on tables throughout Bartlett and Pierce, however brilliant or well intentioned those workshops may be. Instead, most students encountered, perhaps, one or two stray aspects of environmentalism during the week that, in their isolation and pettiness, did little more than embitter previously indifferent students.

Take, for example, the trays. The environmentally minded planners kicked off last week’s hoopla by covering the stacks of trays in the dining halls with garbage bags and signs advising diners to ditch their trays and carry their food solo, ostensibly to save resources.

Overall, this tactic became little more than a nuisance for most students. Many spent the week hugging water bottles and apples to their chests as they balanced sandwiches and bowls of soup on free arms; others resorted to digging trays out from under the trash bags with a grimace at the Earth Week signs that beseeched them, in vague terms, to “remember the Earth.” Perceptive students openly griped about this move, pointing to the abundant laminated notes that had been created and hung excessively from every possibly appropriate surface and wondering what, exactly, they were conserving—the glossy notes offered no clue.

This confusion, the general inconvenience, and the lack of apparent reasoning clashed with the typically lackadaisical attitude of students to create the opposite of what Earth Week aims to accomplish: It made students feel both alienated from and antagonized by progressive environmentalism. The trays are just one example, but the point applies to the other stray eco-events that filtered into daily life: The average U of C student is not looking to save the world, however much RSOs may equip him to begin doing so; for the most part, he hopes only to get through the next Sosc paper. This is not to say that students here are selfish, just that we’re preoccupied.

If the Sustainability Council is looking to make a difference, it needs to make more of an effort to avoid simply preaching to the choir and step into the lives of the wider community in a way that is at once easily comprehensible and less of a hassle. During Earth Week, the Sustainability Council brought the horse to water with the best of intentions, but, despite all this, the horse was decidedly not thirsty. What the Council and other activism-oriented organizations need to do is find a way to make the student body thirsty in lieu of just bringing it expectantly to the trough. And forcing students to juggle their food alongside their classes and personal lives is not the best technique.

Claire McNear is a first-year in the College majoring in international studies. Her column appears on alternate Tuesdays.

Bring the mind back to life

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 23:56:00 -0500

The “examined life” is a thing more often discussed than lived at the U of C. For all our questioning, one thing that goes largely unquestioned is the U of C’s own educational philosophy and academic culture—as well as the actual quality of the lives of students living in that culture.

Is it desirable to be the school where “fun comes to die,” where high stress is a constant fact of life, and where everything—friendships, mental and physical health, extracurricular interests, personal growth—is supposed to be subordinated to academic work?

Many prospective students choose the U of C over other schools because they are attracted to the academic culture and the symbols that represent it: the “crescat scientia vita excolatur” motto and “life of the mind” slogan, the imposing austerity of the Reg, the students bent over books in coffeeshops, the solitary walkers with their iPods and cigarettes. The University’s image and selectivity attracts hard workers, and so the culture is continually reinforced.

But perhaps we’ve misinterpreted the University’s symbols and turned academic work into a false god. “As knowledge increases, let life be enriched”—but is it life-enriching to spend 10 hours a day in the library, neglecting personal interests and relationships? Does the average U of C student appear to be living an enriched life, an “examined” life—or simply an unbalanced one?

“The life of the mind”—but whose mind? The mind of the individual student? And yet academic work as understood by a major research university isn’t about an individual student’s education. Instead, it’s about the scientific development of academic disciplines—about journal articles, symposia, and Nobel Prizes. Participating in and observing the world of academia can be an education in itself, but the development of a student’s mind is only a by-product of his participation in academia, not the aim of such participation.

If the education of students were the top priority, we would not be forced from our first first-year papers to write exclusively in academic prose; we would be given more time to think, grow, and explore outside the confines of course syllabi; and we would be given more space to breathe and be physically and mentally healthy without having to constantly choose between academic work and everything else in life.

Critics will object that there is a wide range of work ethics at the U of C and that the student who slaves away in some corner of the stacks every Saturday night will graduate alongside the student for whom academic work is a minor logistical hurdle on the way to a career. They will point out, also, that the University has plenty of resources for students who are struggling: counseling services, academic advisers, leaves of absence.

But, most will admit that the University’s academic culture is not neutral; there is a clear, if often implicit, value system at work in which a premium is placed on self-reliance, autonomy, and individual toughness in the face of stress. That value system makes withdrawal from the high-strung academic culture feel like a personal failure.

There is a major disconnect between the number of students who struggle under the weight of their work and the number who seek to deal with that through counseling or a sabbatical. Instead, many simply fall out of love with their work. Their academic performance declines, they begin to experience academics as a chore rather than a pleasure, or they experience burnout—and each case is accompanied by a corresponding drop in self-esteem and happiness.

Administrators should make student well-being a higher priority. They should seek honest answers to the question of whether students are happy at the U of C by adding a comprehensive psychological test to the online surveys required of students every year. Asking students point-blank whether they feel overwhelmed by their coursework isn’t enough: Many students’ answers to that question will be affected by the fact that their sense of self-worth is closely connected with their sense of their ability to handle a huge academic workload.

If such a test revealed, as I suspect it might, that there is a large number of unhappy students at the U of C—students who, even if they “like it here” and buy into the academic culture, have serious issues with work, a personal life, stress, and sleep patterns, and whose personal development is crowded out by their coursework—the administration should be prepared to make major changes aimed at improving student happiness.

Such changes might include the replacement of letter grades with written evaluations, a restructuring of course syllabi to cut required reading to 100 pages or so per week per class, a reevaluation of the quarter system, and an overhaul of the University’s educational philosophy to prioritize the intellectual growth of individual students.

Ryan McCarl is an M.A. student of international relations. His column appears on alternate Tuesdays.

Three blind Moose

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 01:26:00 -0500

Sitting through Monday’s interminable Student Government (SG) debate, I couldn’t help but think of the things I’d rather be doing with my time: watching TV, doing homework, gnawing off a limb. The debate was excruciating for the same reason it always is—the Moose Party once again proved that if you like your obnoxiousness to be enormously distracting and served with a side of misogyny, U of C frat guys have got you covered.

The Moose Party, for those unfamiliar, is comprised of Delta Upsilon (DU) brothers, and just completed its 14th consecutive unsuccessful run for the Executive Slate. A centerpiece of the Moose campaign is packing the annual SG debate with drunk frat guys, who proceed to heckle rival campaigns.

To call the Moose Party a joke is unfair—jokes are supposed to be funny. The Moose Party, on the other hand, is predicated on the idea that the only thing more hilarious than a frat boy is a drunk frat boy. Thus, those of us unlucky enough to be present at the SG debate were treated to gems such as a DUer repeatedly yelling the word “Penis!” (which is funny because guys have penises), Moose Party partisans whistling loudly so as to interfere with a rival candidate’s answers (which is funny because frat guys just do crazy stuff like that sometimes), and some Moose supporters shouting sexist remarks whenever outgoing undergraduate liaison Hollie Gilman’s name was mentioned (which is funny because she’s a girl).

What was lacking from the Moose Party’s performance, however, was any sort of actual humor. The Moose Party and its followers operate from a nihilistic standpoint. They take it for granted that SG is useless and that everyone’s time is better spent hearing frat guys yell incoherently about replacing course books with a VHS copy of Independence Day (part of the Party’s “platform”). Such an approach, however, is thoroughly anti-intellectual and belied by reality. As much as we like moaning about it, SG is clearly a more nuanced organization than some give it credit for. Over the past year, for example, SG played a leading role in reopening the A-Level, resolving the #171 bus stop controversy, and convincing the Student Care Center to distribute Plan B again.

This is not to say that SG is never ridiculous, or that those who seek to join it are not worthy of mockery. Indeed, I kept waiting for Moose to pick up on one of the many ripe targets for satire. Where was their response to the vapidity of the YEP slate, whose campaign posters feature three first-years staring vaguely (but importantly) into the distance, and whose platform is so empty and full of platitudes I’m not convinced they are not actually an elaborate satire? Moose’s take on the meaningless and bland calls for transparency, communication, and student involvement that were the centerpiece of every slate’s campaign was nowhere to be found. Instead, we got a Moose telling a joke about Kevin Costner. Are they really so busy they can’t even find current pop culture references to use? Faced with the option of engaging with their surroundings and actually saying something worthwhile, the Moose Party chose to rely on the worst, laziest type of humor possible: humor disconnected from reality and encouraging a self-congratulating cynicism for those unwilling to think.

Not that the Moose Party isn’t convinced of its own cleverness. Attempting to salvage some credibility from its overwhelming uselessness, Moose presidential candidate and College third-year Andrew Galluchi claims that the Party is exposing the “frivolity” of the elections, offering the useless Reynolds Club LCD screen (or “TV screen,” as Galluchi incorrectly called it) as the ultimate example of SG’s irrelevance. Setting aside the fact that the screen in question was purchased more than three years ago, who, exactly, does the Moose Party think takes SG so seriously that they need to be shown its frivolity? Most of the students at the debate work for the Maroon, currently serve on SG, or had abandoned lucidity for the haze of drunkenness (to be fair, not all of the drunk frat guys were Moose supporters; a small, but obnoxious minority came out in support of the YEP slate which was, entirely coincidentally, the only slate to feature a tall, attractive first-year female as a candidate). Few on campus take SG seriously at all, a truth which destroys Galluchi’s attempt at rationalization.

On the one hand, it is a bit silly to be overly critical of the Moose Party and its gang of morons. The Moose Party and its campaign exist to promote an annual DU party (the fun kind, not the political type). Furthermore, the idiocy of Moose and its supporters is at least partly a front, born from the joy of public intoxication and release for people who are too meek to be rude as individuals but feel comfortable acting on their more feral impulses when reinforced by a group of like-minded dolts. And yet, I don’t think it’s too much to ask that the joke party for political office actually say something funny.

Zack Hill, a member of the Maroon Editorial Board, is a fourth-year in the College majoring in NELC. His column appears on alternate Fridays.

Editorial: Real SG progress

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 01:25:00 -0500

In one of the more hotly contested votes in recent years, this week’s Student Government (SG) election yielded high turnout and conflicting results. On the one hand, One Campus—an experienced alliance of students who have shown a willingness to work within the confines of SG—won in a landslide. On the other hand, College Council (CC) elections netted 5 of 12 seats for SGProgress, a coalition of starry-eyed student activists dedicated to radically reforming the University. Vocal divestment proponent and third-year Aliza Levine, endorsed by SGProgress, was elected undergraduate liaison to the Board of Trustees. Both Levine and SGProgress would do well to learn from One Campus and adopt a realistic, appropriate agenda for SG.

SGProgress’s platform offers hints as to what the caucus may attempt to do with its newfound power. Inspired by what they see as widespread disenchantment with SG, they ran on a promise to “transform [SG] into an organization that reflects the critical engagement of students with our university.” Specifically, they called for more transparency from the administration, increased financial aid, a cap on tuition increases, and greater respect for diversity on campus. In keeping with their goals as student activists, they are determined to make the University a “positive force in society.” SGProgress is not alone in its populism. One Campus seems to think that students will eagerly line up with ideas and grievances when it institutes its much-advertised office hours, and Levine joined SGProgress in promising a new era of transparency, change, and student involvement.

Such goals are well-intentioned but ultimately misguided. The purpose of SG should be twofold: reforming the byzantine RSO funding process (an area where One Campus has shown a regrettable lack of initiative) and addressing obvious student grievances. The administration has proven its willingness to work with SG within this limited scope, as seen by the successful campaign to re-open the A-Level and the creation of the UnCommon Fund. The administration is likely to ignore excessively ambitious SG initiatives, however, and attempts to affect the University’s long-range policies will only produce a group of self-important student politicians focused on grandstanding and consumed by infighting—in other words, the type of student government SGProgress and Levine campaigned so fervently against.

Hope for dramatic change by SGProgress and other student politicians is understandable. It’s tempting to think that student apathy is a result of previous SG ineffectiveness and that if only a truly representative and dedicated caucus gained power, students would come together and remake the University in their own image.

In reality, however, even those who voted in the election don’t care about SG enough to attend its meetings or office hours, serve on its committees, or even read its blog, and that’s unlikely to change. All those elected would do well to follow the example of the outgoing slate, dedicating themselves to working quietly in the background to achieve the modest but important changes necessary to improve student life.

The Maroon Editorial Board consists of the Editor-in-Chief, Managing Editor, Viewpoints Editors, and an additional Editorial Board member.

Beyond the ivory tower

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 01:23:00 -0500

Community is an idea that most of us respect and few denigrate. We grow up venerating community leaders, taking up the torch of community service, and reading the community paper. It’s a word of great currency and much contestation. Do we mean a group of individuals living in meaningful proximity, as in political districts, or do we hope to describe a group of people who share affinities—a common identity, or maybe a mutual vision of progress? In most cases, it seems to mean a little bit of both.

For our purposes, the “community” is understood to be everything and everyone involved with this university. Catering to the community is like peering out of the ivory tower and clambering down its hard stone steps to reach the ground, an inescapable condescension. With its monolithic presence in the central South Side, the University is always poised to pursue policies that affect the lives of “community members” with untold consequences. It’s not that our presence is an unmitigated disaster, or our programs sheer negligence: The University’s hospitals provide critical services, its sponsored schools and tutoring programs promote scholastic achievement, and under the aegis of the University Community Service Center, students are made aware and empowered to engage with the community, wherever it might be lurking.

On the other hand, our narrow-sighted vision and heavy-handed approach to community development takes a real toll on the “town–gown” rapport. Zimmer’s assurances to improve community relations amount to little more than recruiting as a major real estate holder in the area, corporate retail operations that provide us with brave new shopping experiences and a wide range of imported cheeses. The community gets to fill the new part-time positions and serve us in exchange. Symbiosis? Maybe not.

What we need is a way to bridge the gap between the University and the community in a way that’s less patronage and more solidarity. For those unaffiliated with the University, there is scarcely an organization with which to speak to students, or faculty, or administrators on equal terms. What we need is a genuine social space beyond the confines of campus—somewhere we can create a community that cuts across the lines that divide us, and work together in parity, with hope to make a brighter future today.

A group of students, united by the idea of providing a safe haven for community-created events, have gathered together and submitted a proposal to create such a community center, run mutually by University students and community members and backed by the hope of providing a safe haven for community-created events. Tentatively titled the “Woodlawn Collaborative,” the committee has proposed a location at the First Presbyterian Church on 64th Street, not far from the dorm being erected behind Burton-Judson in contravention of a one-time university promise not to develop farther south. The “Collaborative” would open up as a multi-purpose site to house arts and education programming, group meetings, performances, and other such functions.

Students are interested in meeting their neighbors and taking the life of the mind beyond the classroom. United in service, art, and self-education, students and our neighbors can come together to build an institution that addresses the long-standing issues that plague our wider community. Food drives and after-school programming can meld with discussion groups, art exhibits, and even bingo circles, filling out a space for collaboration and association.

A true off-campus community center would be friendly and accessible to the residents of Woodlawn, Hyde Park, and the surrounding neighborhoods. It would be a valuable means of contributing to student life, offering a healthy place to interact and collaborate.

The University’s administrative officials cannot empower and improve the community on their own. As my friend Luis Brennan suggested, “We have to do it for them, and that’s what we want to do.”

The “Collaborative” would be a tangible opportunity for the university to prove its commitment to our neighborhood and its insistence that the school motto, “crescat scientia vita excolatur, is more than empty rhetoric or an elegy to the progressive past we buried long ago.

The administration should give the green light to this ambitious and important project.

Marshall Knudson is a second-year in the College majoring in political science and romance languages and literature. His column appears every other Friday.

Letter: Abortion issue requires consideration of all involved

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 01:01:00 -0500

The characterization of the political debate on abortion in Matt Barnum’s column (“Abortion Comes to Life” 4/18/08) inaccurately depicted technical aspects of the abortion procedure, as well as omitting the real paradigm of abortion itself.

There are four kinds of induced pregnancy termination available in the United States. The first is emergency contraception, which acts by preventing a zygote from implanting in the uterine lining. Because there is no change in a woman’s body prior to implantation that might indicate a pregnancy, this method of birth control really is a blind, preemptive measure.

Abortion of a confirmed pregnancy can be induced by medication up to nine weeks after the woman’s last menstrual period, procedurally by vacuum aspiration up to 16 weeks, and by the dilation and evacuation method up to 24 weeks (preceding the age of viability).
Neither the outlawed, partial-birth abortion nor D and E are comparable to killing a fetus at the moment of birth, because aspiration is nothing like childbirth resulting from labor and delivery.

Finally, contrary to Barnum’s assertion that in partial-birth abortion, “the baby is aborted with all but his head out of the woman’s body,” fully 96–97 percent of deliveries emerge head first.

When life begins—unique, human life—is a question easily confounded by twinning and chimerism following fertilization. However, whether life begins at conception is hardly the point. For women and men mourning a miscarriage or considering an abortion, the overarching question is not whether life has begun but whether they want to have a child. There could be no comfort in knowing that an early miscarriage was not a loss of life, per se. Nor should taking emergency contraception require counting the days to ascertain whether homicide were being performed.

Instead, choosing an abortion is a matter of determining an impossibility—the impossibility of having a child, to say nothing of raising one, or the impossibility of going through with a pregnancy. (Even when adoption is a personally acceptable option, a pregnancy or the awareness of one can severely interrupt a life, a plan, a relationship, or a family.) And without advocating a particular campaign, I want to acknowledge that this is exactly what Hillary Clinton was talking about when she said, “I believe that the potential for life begins at conception...but for me, it is also not only about a potential life; it is about the other lives involved.”

Alice Bynum
Class of 2009

Letter: Maroon should engage SGProgress, not dismiss

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 00:59:00 -0500

I was disappointed at the editorial board’s Student Government (SG) endorsements (4/22/08). Yes, some candidates this year, including the SGProgress slate, are advocating things “which fall outside SG’s traditional purview.” But that traditional purview is not working.

These elections mark the first time I have thought of SG all year, since my year elected its representatives in the fall. I don’t think I’m alone, either, to be disappointed by its lack of meaningful voice. Yet instead of engaging with the question posed by SGProgress and others of how we can make SG into what we want it to be, the Maroon’s endorsements seemed more concerned with the question of how we can keep it the ineffective entity it has been.

Stephen Bonnett
Class of 2011

Letter: Coverage of Moose Party misses the point

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 00:58:00 -0500

The recent editorial on the Student Government (SG) debates, (“Student Government Endorsements” 4/22/08), was steeped in unapologetic sanctimony with hyperbolic statements such as “the Moose Party’s belligerent and sexist treatment of the SG debate crossed the line from farce to folly.” Sexist statements? Really? Referring to people as unattractive, as one Moose Party candidate did, is not sexist—it’s subjective. Could this also stem from the Moose Party’s reference to fellatio? Well, if that were the case, then the only sexists would be the members of the Maroon Editorial Board for their myopic belief that fellatio is an act that can only be performed by one gender.

Harking on statements such as this displays that the Maroon, like the three other slates, is missing the point of the Moose Party. Make no mistake about it: Disruption is our goal. Without the Moose Party the debates would have quickly degenerated into a festival of self-congratulatory speeches between people vying for résumé padding. The argument that SG fosters real change and the candidates honestly care about the students is a specious one.

The statement “asinine and distasteful comments that not just disrupted the proceedings but failed to even solicit genuine laughs” is patently false. The audience members were often in hysterics because of our party’s antics. The Maroon feels comfortable printing a fabrication like this because to do otherwise would give legitimacy to the Moose Party. To borrow a quote from Woody Allen’s Bananas, SG is a “a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham.”

Lastly a farce is defined as a comic dramatic work using buffoonery and horseplay and typically including crude characterizations and ludicrously improbable situations. Once again SG fits the bill.

Oliver Mosier
Class of 2008
President of Delta Upsilon Chicago Chapter

Letter: Zhao a poor candidate but not worthy of ridicule

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 00:55:00 -0500

I read with dismay the treatment of Nick Zhao in your Tuesday paper this week (“Executive Slate and Liaison Candidates Debate” and “Student Government Endorsements,” 4/22/08). I wholeheartedly agree that he is not a good candidate. I object, however, to his ridicule.

Specifically, the statement made in the front page news article is unfortunate: “The points made by the fourth undergraduate liaison candidate, second-year Nick Zhao, were scattered and only marginally responded to most of the questions posed.” This is a valid opinion, and one I’m inclined to agree with, but it really doesn’t belong in a neutral news article. It is unlikely that a New York Times report on a Democratic debate would be written, “Kucinich marginally responds to most of the questions posed” (even though it’s pretty true)—although this is perhaps not a paper the Maroon strives to emulate.

More importantly, the allegations of anti-Semitism should come with adequate explanations, or a statement from Nick, if possible. I don’t know the context of the comments (no context was given in the article, and I don’t know Nick), but oftentimes statements like these are misinterpreted. The Maroon’s editorial claims that he has “failed to provide a compelling explanation.” This may be true, but I have no way to judge because the news article only referred to his comments as “anti-Semitic” and left it at that. Rumors like these can have a hard way of dying, and Nick might end up fending off funny looks at parties, already given a prejudice he has not had an opportunity to explain in print. I, for one, don’t like anti-Semites and already view him at a disadvantage.

The treatment of Zhao in the editorial was a bit much. At first I laughed, but I believe this comment to be made in bad taste. It’s one thing to recommend not voting for a candidate. It’s another to “strongly recommend not, under any circumstances, voting for second-year Nick Zhao.” He has an absurd and incomprehensible mission statement, and would really make a poor addition to Student Government. But picking on a ridiculous candidate is unprofessional and ignores other issues.

Kevin Brown
Class of 2009

Letter: On divestment, University not part of solution

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 11:51:00 -0500

There were several important issues raised in Ryan McCarl’s Viewpoints pieces (“Bad Council,” 4/15/08) regarding the City Council resolution denouncing the University for its refusal to divest from companies doing business with the Sudanese government that should be addressed.

My experience has not been that most people in the University community have “moved on.” In fact, the vast majority of students and faculty are just becoming aware. The University has already made its decision, but when socially irresponsible decisions are made there is more motivation for people to mobilize. The resolution and the resulting media coverage have not “re-opened old wounds,” but have breathed new life into the movement as indicated by increased attendance at STAND meetings. This and the fact that the resolution demonstrates that the University’s corporate activities are in clear contrast to paramount political values as mentioned as the exception in the Kalven report, are among many reasons why the resolution is significant.

The University’s argument that divestment will not make a difference is fundamentally flawed. Isn’t it better to be part of the solution than part of the problem? Divestment is effective when numerous individuals and institutions take action. That is why several schools, including Harvard and Yale, 23 states, and presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have all divested. Additionally, the federal government has divested its pension funds and has passed several key pieces of legislation that prohibit companies with government contracts from doing business in Sudan (H.R. 180 & S. 2271). It is also why economists like Senior Advisor to the Brookings Institute Roberta Cohen and the U.N. Human Rights Council endorse targeted divestment strategies.

Finally, the characterization of the resolution as being self-congratulatory for the activists and being the result of a slow day at City Council is difficult to understand. Is taking a political stance against a University that bears the name of the city they represent any less important than voting on zoning ordinances? Given that it is in the interests of the University to maintain positive relations with the city, maybe they felt they could encourage the University to reconsider its position. I think the Council members should be applauded for taking time out from their busy schedules to address this issue of corporate malfeasance. Nobody is excited about this situation and there is a realization that this resolution is a small step forward in what promises to be a larger campaign.

Robert Elchert
Second-year in the School of Social Service Administration (SSA)
SSA STAND Member

Dirt off his shoulder

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 03:22:00 -0500

It had been a rough month-and-a-half for Barack Obama. Since the Texas and Ohio primacaucusaries on March 4, he’s jumped from one mini-controversy to another, sometimes with grace, sometimes with agility, and oftentimes with neither. At a stop in Scranton, he bowled a 37 over seven frames and then scored about as well at Wednesday’s ABC debate in Philadelphia, where he was hammered to no end on comments he made, comments his surrogates made, and comments that he once, maybe, heard at his church. He’s dodged a hail of criticism that would make Hillary Clinton’s trip to Bosnia look like a day at the beach (which, come to think of it, it kind of was).

But in a presidential election that has been marred by verbal missteps, psychotic pastors, and, for a little while at least, Fred Thompson, the four most significant words were the ones that were never even spoken:

Brush your shoulders off.

If you blinked, you may have missed it. It came one day after a debate that left pundits both irate and salivating, at the tail end of the flap over bittergate, and one day before John McCain released his tax returns (but not his wife’s). Not “yes we can” or “ready on day one” or “elitist,” or “out-of-touch,” or “unpatriotic”—no, the catchphrase that best explains the tumultuous Democratic primary and why exactly the junior senator from Illinois will win in the fall went unsaid in an auditorium Thursday afternoon in Raleigh, NC.

Addressing the negativity surrounding today’s vote in Pennsylvania, Obama told his audience: “When you’re running for the presidency, then you’ve got to expect it, and you know, you’ve just got to kinda let it…”—at which point he made a sweeping motion with his left and then his right hand, brushing the proverbial dirt off of his shoulders. “You know,” he said, and then repeated the gesture. “You know.” It’s unclear whether or not the 55-year-old white man standing behind him actually did know the reference, but that’s almost beside the point.

Jay-Z has never been much of a player when it comes to presidential politics, but the reference on stage in Raleigh was clear in its intent, echoing the chorus of the rapper’s 2003 hit, “Dirt Off Your Shoulder.” And although Obama has professed an appreciation for Jay-Z before (he and Beyoncé share file space on the Senator’s iPod), this marks the first time in recent history that a candidate has actually sent a subliminal message to the 18–30 demographic. While most serious candidates make some semblance of an effort to reach out to younger voters, speaking at college campuses and “Rock the Vote” events, there’s a difference between going through the motions, as such events entail, and actually going through the motions, as Obama did on stage on Tobacco Road.

More importantly, though, Obama’s brush with pop culture serves as a reminder that while incendiary sound bites might drive news cycles, the actions that win and lose elections often go relatively unnoticed. When the dust settles in the Keystone State, Obama’s ever-widening fundraising advantage, his sprawling organization, and his embrace of previously muffled voting demographics will all have loomed much larger than anything he or his pastor said. George W. Bush didn’t hit many right notes on his way to reelection in 2004, but a superior get-out-the-vote initiative was enough to grant him another four years. With Obama’s chief opponent nearly mathematically eliminated (whether she admits it or not), it makes perfect sense that a crisis over diction seems like little more than dirt on his shoulders.

Tim Murphy, a Maroon viewpoints editor, is a third-year in the College majoring in history. His column appears on alternate Tuesdays.

Correction: The original column incorrectly stated that Obama bowled a 35 out of a possible 300.

Editorial: Executive Slate endorsement

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 03:21:00 -0500

For the first time in recent memory, the race for executive slate has provided two eminently qualified teams, and the decision should be a difficult one for many students. Connect 4, a slate composed of fourth-year graduate student and presidential candidate Anthony Green, third-year Vice President for Administration candidate Kati Proctor, and third-year Vice President of Student Affairs candidate Amanda Steele, offer impressive experience. Green currently serves as the Graduate Council chair and skillfully negotiated the graduate financial aid debate, while Proctor, chair of the Student Government Finance Committee, and Steele, chair of the UnCommon Fund, have worked closely at what remains the core of Student Government’s (SG) mission : dispersing the Student Activities Fee to student organizations. Ultimately, the diversity of the slate, in addition to a refreshing outsider’s perspective, and, most significantly, a willingness to push for reasonable and needed reform to a cumbersome and excessive funding process, leads the Maroon to endorse Connect 4 for executive slate.

One Campus, with third-year presidential candidate Matt Kennedy, first-year Vice President of Administration candidate Julian Quintanilla, and second-year graduate student and Vice President of Student Affairs candidate Toussaint Losier, demonstrated an admirable and thorough grasp of the relevant issues facing SG in the coming year. Kennedy, the incumbent Vice President of Student Affairs, has been particularly impressive in interviews, debates, and campaign literature, effortlessly explaining the rationale behind, impediments to, and realistic possibilities of serious change both to SG and student life at the U of C. Losier, who serves as the President of the Graduate Council Funding Committee, brings similar bona fides to the race, and his specialization in the issue most pressing to graduate students is valuable.

The student body will be well served by either of these slates, but ultimately the reluctance on the part of One Campus to advocate for more than simple tweaking to the RSO funding system is disheartening. While they are correct to note that ORCSA is unlikely to abolish the excessive bureaucracy in the near future, we were encouraged by Connect 4’s commitment to incremental and realistic change, including new avenues to resources for non–RSO student groups, for an increasingly broken system.

Students would not, however, be well served by YEP, a collaboration of woefully unprepared first-years with little-to-no grasp of the complexity or significance of SG. Presidential candidate Yeonjean Gahng, Vice President for Administration candidate Petros Visser, and Vice President of Student Affairs candidate Ellie Elgamal could not possibly parlay a few months of sitting in on SG meetings into anything even resembling the professionalism and effectiveness of One Campus or Connect 4. Even more troubling, YEP fails to even bring the unique or different ideas that their youth or independence from SG might have provided; instead, their major plan was for the creation of a “mission statement” for SG that would accomplish nothing and waste even more of the Assembly’s time.

Finally, the Moose Party, a farcical slate of Delta Upsilon brothers comprosd of third-year presidential candidate Andy Gallucci, second-year Vice President for Administration candidate Tim Leahy, and first-year Vice President of Student Affairs candidate Joel McMurray, is participating in their fourteenth consecutive bid for the executive slate. Using SG elections as a platform to promote their annual election day party is only mildy objectionable, and there are certainly many projects undertaken by SG that are deserving of satire. But the Moose Party’s belligerent and sexist treatment of the SG debate crossed the line from farce to folly. With frequently asinine and distasteful comments that not just disrupted the proceedings but failed to even solicit genuine laughs, the Moose Party might now be a tradition worthy of discontinuing.

The Maroon Editorial Board consists of the Editor-in-Chief, Managing Editor, Viewpoints Editors, and an additional Editorial Board member. The Managing Editor recused himself from this decision due to his involvement in the Executive Slate campaign.

Editorial: Undergraduate Liaison to the Board of Trustees endorsement

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 03:19:00 -0500

In recent years, the position of undergraduate liaison to the Board of Trustees has taken on increased importance, as campus activists have questioned Board decisions on issues ranging from divestment to graduate-aid funding. Out of a competitive field, the Maroon believes first-year Louis Potok to be the best candidate for the job. Potok has shown an understanding of the liaison’s role and the challenges facing any student who wants to work with the insular Board of Trustees. More importantly, he does not share the negatives associated with his competitors. Second-year Joseph “Tex” Dozier demonstrated the best comprehension of the intricacies of the Board of Trustees and was the only candidate to offer concrete ideas on how to increase the Board’s transparency. However, Dozier’s cartoonish persona—one of the campaign videos on his eponymous website features him wearing a cowboy hat and puffing a cigar—raises doubts as to whether he would be taken seriously by the Board. Third-year Aliza Levine’s close involvement with Darfur activists—and their extreme tactics—would similarly jeopardize her ability to work as an effective conduit between trustees and students. By contrast, Potok’s sophomoric personal attacks against outgoing liaison Hollie Gilman may be gratuitous, but they do not detract substantively from his ideas or campaign. Finally, the Maroon strongly recommends not, under any circumstances, voting for second-year Nick Zhao, also a candidate for College Council. Zhao has centered his campaign around a nonsensical “mathematical equation” and has failed to provide a compelling explanation for the anti-Semitic screeds, which, until recently, appeared on his Facebook page.

The Maroon Editorial Board consists of the Editor-in-Chief, Managing Editor, Viewpoints Editors, and an additional Editorial Board member.