Student Life Archives

In a world full of reasonable and sensible arguments for file-sharing services like KaZaa, Shawn Redden has managed to avoid all of them. His points run the range from oversimplified rhetorical polemic to attacks on the recording industry itself, but they all somehow evade the basic point of Mary Bruce’s article: file-sharing of the type discussed in her piece involves taking something that you normally need to pay for, and not paying for it. This is functionally no different from swiping a candy bar from a local Schnucks. You can argue that Schnucks won’t really miss a fifty-cent candy bar; you can argue that it deserved it for being an evil transnational corporate villain; but you can’t really argue that the act doesn’t constitute simple theft.

Redden may be entirely correct when he says that KaZaa is “a serious threat” to the music industry. Yet while that fact may indeed have spurred the industry to react, it has no bearing on the simple legality of their actions. Taking a musician’s music, which is normally for sale, and not paying for it without the approval of the musician and anyone else who owns it, is theft. The musician signed a contract. Maybe not a very good one, but a contract. And to claim that you are somehow benefiting them by stealing their music is the height of hubris. It’s bad enough to steal, but it is self-righteousness of the most obnoxious sort to then turn around and tell the victims that it’s for their own good. There is not a law in this country or anywhere else that confers upon Redden the right to listen to any music he wants at any time for free.

No “super-powered media cartel” programmed half the country to like Britney Spears. The reason that radio stations played her music incessantly is because pop is-brace yourself-popular. The reason that you don’t get to hear the indie rock or jazz or classical that you favor nearly as often is because it is less popular. Not because the “culture industry” hates you, but because people tend to pay more for ads on stations that have the most listeners. And if you in fact want to listen to those other albums instead, then go out and buy them; actually paying the artists for their work will probably allow them to produce more of it.

One of record labels is to produce a product that maximizes profit for their shareholders. But they don’t do this by making albums that lots of people hate, or those that most people aren’t willing to pay for. Thus, the ultimate goal is to make music that a lot of people like, not the opposite-even if their choices disagree with Redden’s personal opinions. Sadly, therefore, lots of music that fills an ultra-small niche in the musical world doesn’t get a lot of support. However, this hardly proves that niche music is “great.” There’s a lot of “great” music that I hate and wouldn’t listen to even if it were free. I never appointed Redden as the arbiter of my cultural taste; if he wants to listen to his music, he should pay for it himself instead of forcing me to listen.

Finally, what about people who illegally burn CDs, or those who make dub tapes, or record movies at home? It’s not because those acti-ons are in any way legal that nothing is done about them, but because they’re extremely hard to detect or track. Pirate movie rings get broken up all the time, but obviously isolated incidents are impractical to prosecute; if you handed the police a list of pirates and their addresses tomorrow, though, the story might be different. To claim that somehow KaZaa users are being discriminated against is absurd, as is the argument that because other people get away with crimes, you should be allowed to as well. The magnitude of the crime is different, but not the fact that in both instances a crime has been committed, like it or not.

“Crime” and “illegality” are not relative terms. They have very specific, proscribed meanings which no amount of overheated rhetoric is going to change. Downloading music isn’t protected by the first amendment, and hiding behind the First Amendment as a self-serving attempt to hurt the recording industry both cheapens the Bill of Rights and insults our intelligence.

My first full year here as an undergraduate has been marred by the ubiquity of alcohol; it is difficult to find one thing that epitomizes the campus “alcohol culture.” I’ve recently realized that the big picture concerning alcohol use on campus only appears when one compares many seemingly disparate occurrences.

An examination of a news article in Friday’s Student Life may provide a good starting point. “Kegs banned!” cries the headline of a story about the administration’s decision to ban kegs from WILD. The three students interviewed each claim that the administration is trying to “break down” WILD by ruining the social atmosphere that alcohol presumably creates. One sophomore warns that students might be driven to more binge drinking because of the change. I am saddened when I read such statements, because it bespeaks an undergraduate culture that has become utterly dependent upon the presence of alcohol.

I applaud the university’s attempt at even this small enforcement of its stated alcohol policies. Unfortunately, I am consistently amazed at the ways the university has chosen not to enforce the policy, but actually promote alcoholism among its students. University orientation programs for incoming freshmen include a required talk on “drinking responsibly.” This sounded like a good idea, yet I was unpleasantly surprised when one of the role models at the assembly publicly invited students to give her a call whenever they wanted to get “hooked up” with alcohol. Student Union pledges to help enforce university alcohol policies for underage undergraduate students, yet students on my freshman floor regularly return from the SU-sponsored Happy Hour at The Rat drunk on beer that has been placed on the counter for all comers. These same students regularly distribute alcoholic mixed drinks to hundreds of other freshmen at parties on my floor. When asked the contents, they only reply that “It’ll get you [messed] up!” As soon as they run out of alcohol, they head off to fraternity parties in search of more liquor. Where are the RAs during all of this? They’ve conveniently disappeared for the night.

Few ways exist to escape the tyranny of campus drinking. While the administration purports to be supportive of alternate lifestyles, it does little to aid those students who wish to live an even more controversial lifestyle-a substance-free one. Residential Life only allots a mere 5.3% of its upper-class undergraduate housing as substance free: approximately 124 spots are regularly fixed as substance free out of 2359 total upper-class spaces on the South 40, notwithstanding spaces allotted to RAs. Friends of mine at other universities are confused when I say I want to live in “sub-free” housing-on their campuses, every dorm is substance-free.

Yes, there are benefits to living on a campus where students are held to a high standard of personal responsibility. Yet when inexperienced underage students in freshmen dorms are binge drinking within weeks of arriving on campus and prospective freshmen who visit during the spring and summer are treated to free alcohol by their hosts, one must question the wisdom of the university’s lax stance on underage drinking.

Many students, such as the authors of the recent Sophomore Class Newsletter, feel so comfortable with alcoholic drink recipes that they publish them in campus publications with no fear of possible repercussions. One need not look far to see how they came by the idea that such expressions are okay. All the occurrences I’ve previously mentioned highlight the strong undercurrent supporting alcohol culture at Washington University.

At many universities, on-campus drinking is a big secret that is exposed only when there is a scandal and someone gets hurt. Here at WU, students don’t need to worry about scandal because they have the implicit backing of the administration. Thus, students end up living in dorms which consistently reek of alcohol, the floors sticky with liquor and vomit. Yet few students publicly complain and little is changed. Sure, we like to preserve everyone’s view of WU as an idyllic learning environment. But in truth, we live on a campus that only purports to be in compliance with federal and state laws, while much of the underage population is alcohol-dependent. I urge administrators and campus police alike to stop tolerance and promotion of alcoholism on campus. A scandal should not have to occur before significant steps are taken to end underage drinking at WU.

In a recent column Shawn Redden asks, “[W]hy not [punish] anyone with a CD burner?…Of course this isn’t plausible; it’s so ridiculous on its face as to barely warrant ridicule.” Would that it were so. The technology to do just that will begin appearing on a wide scale this summer: the U.S. government and multinational corporations are about to give themselves more invasive and coercive surveillance power than Hitler or Stalin ever could have wished. Some of that technology may already be installed on campus by fall. Have a nice break.

United under the name “Trusted Computing Group” (previously “Trusted Computing Platform Alliance”), Intel, AMD, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, and other PC giants-with quiet but explicit approval from both Congress and the White House-are about to lay the technological infrastructure for universal control over the flow of information. Achieving such control, of course, requires fairly precise knowledge of what people are trying to do with said information-knowledge that most of us consider deeply private and personal. In sum, they want to bug everyone’s machine.

And it gets worse. Hardwired into computer chips (Intel’s will be called “LaGrande”), the bug will not merely analyze what you’re doing (and probably report anything suspicious) but will in fact control your computer, acting in ways you don’t want and not acting in ways you do want. While file-sharing may seem the obvious target of the TCG, any bozo can see that this technology will lead to government and corporate strong-arming that goes far beyond protecting intellectual property. TCG technology seems partly designed to put silicon teeth into 1998’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which has caused serious academic problems even without TCG hardware. Even though I theoretically have fair-use rights to material on DVDs, I’m not supposed to use that material for various educational activities during class because the DMCA outlaws the necessary technological procedure. Currently I control the computers I use, so I can ignore the DMCA, but the TCG aims to make that impossible. Go ask Shirley Baker, Vice-Chancellor for Information Technology, how else the DMCA has assaulted academic work: you’ll get an earful. Science majors should read http://www.science-mag.org/cgi/content/full/293/5537/2028. For more in-depth technical information on the TCG, go to http://www.-cl.c-am.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html, posted by an internationally respected computer scientist at Cambridge Univer-sity.

A misleadingly titled bill currently in the Senate, the “Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act,” would require TCG technology in all American digital-information devices. Legislation can be fought, however. More troubling is the silent, forced adoption of this technology via an exploitative cartel: every major PC player has climbed on the bandwagon. TCG computer parts will be regularly installed in new computers from all major PC vendors (Dell, Compaq, etc.) starting midsummer. But don’t expect any advertising.

The TCG hasn’t thrust their fingers into everyone’s private and professional lives yet. There’s still a chance to forestall it. But our computing staff won’t act on its own. When I learned that the Gradlab is going to be equipped with new computers this summer, I took my concerns to Gavin Foster, Instructional Technologist for Arts & Sciences Computing, requesting (as a user of the Gradlab) that when the computing staff makes purchasing decisions, to please avoid TCG machines, or at the very least tell Washington University’s supplier that we prefer non-TCG machines. “Here, it’s all about cost,” he replied. “Try talking to [Executive Vice-Chancellor] Ed Macias.” A&S Computing itself, apparently, has little power to push such issues.

“Just stay offline,” Dr. Foster joked as we parted. I know him personally; he was being casually friendly, not malicious. But the TCG harbors no casual friendliness toward academics, and WU should oppose it. The university consumes massive amounts of computing technology. As such, we are in a position to send a high-profile message about the TCG’s aims by telling our suppliers that we won’t buy computing equipment infected with such invasive technology. Vice-Chancellor Macias?

This past winter, Trent Lott notoriously commented that “when Strom Thurmond ran for president we [Miss-issippi] voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either.” What followed his segregationist, racist remarks can only be described as Lott’s personal hell. The constant news coverage began immediately, and the public outcry eventually led to his resignation as Senate Republican leader on Dec. 20.

On Monday April 21, 2003, Pennsylv-ania senator Rick Santorum, in an interview with the Associated Press, stated that “if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual (gay) sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything.” The current lack of news coverage on this remark, considering the recent dearth of war coverage in favor of a homicide case, versus the press reaction to Senator Lott’s remarks illustrates a larger problem.

The larger issue is that few Americans recognize homophobia with race as evil, or even as politcally incorrect. This is not a simple political question; it affects your own lives and the lives of your friends.

For instance, at Spectrum Alliance’s Gay Rights forum last semester, one panelist’s use of the word “nigger” elicited an exclamation of “Ouch!” and indignant murmuring, while his use of “fag” went unnoticed. In fact, as I write this, I wonder whether Student Life will censor “nigger,” while I have no doubt “fag” will remain untouched. The dichotomy between the popular reactions to the two words illustrates my point: racism is evil, homophobia is tolerated.

And when it’s not tolerated, it’s celebrated. Both the Washington Witness and the Southpaw have reported on physics Professor Jonathan Katz, who says that “I am a homophobe, and proud,” and compares homosexuality to drug use and adultery, while declaring it to be “unnatural.” Would Washington University have hired someone who said “I am a racist, and proud,” and proceeded to declare that some of his students are stupid because they’re black? I doubt it. Where is the outcry against the bigoted opinions of Professor Katz? How do his gay students feel in class when their professor has declared that their sexual preferences are unnatural? Why doesn’t anyone seem to care?

People don’t care because, while racism is no longer officially institutionalized, homophobia still is both in the law and in religion. Rather than accepting that, like the racist policies of the past, both the law and many religions are propagating hate, homophobes can step back, point to the law or the Bible and declare how morally reprehensible homosexuals are, while defending their own moral stature. This is what keeps gay couples from attending Senior Proms and Fraternity Formals, whether officially or de facto. Unlike racism, homophobia is still just an “opinion.” Therefore it’s acceptable to encourage heterosexist events without worrying about the feelings of gay students.

This is not to say that racism and homophobia are the same thing. Racial minorities in America have had a far different experience of oppression than (homo)sexual minorities. The solutions to the two problems are very different. Activists for both stand at separate points in the progression to true equality and acceptance, but the reaction to such oppression should be the same. We should be just as careful to use euphemisms like “the f-word” as “the n-word.”

It’s beyond time to respond to this rampant heterosexist callousness. Write to your senator urging an official condemnation of Senator Santorum’s rema-rks, write to Prof. Katz expressing your disapproval at his open hate which inevitably leads to a counterproductive classroom, and please scream “Ouch!” when you hear someone called a fag.

Bernell Dorrough

Affirmative action (AA) policies are not merely desirable or beneficial. They are just. People sometimes defend AA because they value diversity. This puts AA on shaky grounds, because this defense only holds if you indeed value diversity. A Klansman, then, has a strong rebuttal to AA. I want to put AA on much firmer grounds than personal preference. Although I focus on racial concerns for brevity, this argument can and should be generalized to other minorities, including sexual minorities. I am indebted to Andrew Ross for reminding me that justice does not only apply to race.

I borrow a concept from John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice: hypothetical consent. Basically, ask yourself the question: what social policies would I consent to if I had no knowledge of the particulars of my life?

Just decisions are made from impartial viewpoints. In life, we are clearly not impartial. For example, as far as AA goes, it seems fair to say that more minorities support the policy than whites do. What we have to do to make just choices, therefore, is abstract away from our particular situation and characteristics in life. Only the social preferences we express from an impartial perspective are just.

Since I’m focusing on racial AA, the only traits you’ll have to discount in your decision-making are your race and social class. Imagine that you were to be reincarnated into a world exactly like ours, with the same natural talents. You do not know what race or ethnicity you’ll belong to, or what childhood environment you’ll have.

Now, the question you have to consider: what kind of society would I like to be reincarnated into? Clearly, you would not like a society that has any sort of racism, much less so if the racism is allowed to translate into policy decisions. Racism in hiring practices, for example, would not be desirable. Slavery based on race is out.

But this is not so controversial. Of course racism and slavery are unjust. Of course the ideal society would be color-blind. And this is exactly why AA is unjust: it is essentially racism, opponents say.

I remind you of one guarantee my thought-experiment provides: the society you’ll be reincarnated in will have informal and institutionalized racism. It will be officially denied and usually kept covert, of course. But it is clear that one race will be far more powerful and wealthy than other races, and will use racist decision-making to perpetuate that advantage. Of course, you have no way of knowing what the odds are of belonging to this powerful race.

Given this society, it is only rational to demand AA policies. I take it that most people agree that success should be based on your personal merits. Skin color is clearly not a merit. AA eliminates racist decision-making, or at least limits it.

One objection is that race is linked to some innate mental capacity or natural talent. Discrimination against one race is not against its skin color per se, but against their likelihood of being less qualified than a member of another, genetically better, race. Science has refuted claims that personal talent has anything to do with the genes that determine skin color. For example, Murray and Hernstein’s The Bell Curve, which argued that blacks had lower IQs than whites and Asians, received scathing peer-reviews, including from Stephen J. Gould.

We have agreed that success should depend on merit, and I have shown that race has nothing to do with merit. Therefore, a just society, which does not take race into account in decisions, would have proportional representation from all races/ethnicities in all jobs and offices. If one race makes up 50 percent of the population, they should make up 50 percent of medical students, judges, and janitors. If there are other factors, such as education or social circumstance that would change this, they must be corrected so that proportionality is restored. Otherwise education (or whatever factor) becomes the rationale for unjust racism. In any case, you cannot rationally want your success to depend on the random chance of being born into a wealthy environment. Proportional representation across the board, for all jobs and offices in a society, is the only demonstration that the society is racially just.

I am not necessarily advocating quotas, rather any program that promotes proportional racial representation. If you were to be reincarnated, wouldn’t you demand strong protections against discrimination based solely on your race or ethnicity? It would be irrational to allow others who are equally talented to be more successful than you solely because they have the right skin color or were born into a rich family. This is why, from an impartial view, all of us would agree to strong AA. And this is why strong AA is just.