Student Life Archives

Jess Rogen

A large number of students at Washington University would agree with this statement: AIDS is not our problem. Most of us do not encounter someone who is HIV positive. We feel that it is a problem with which we will never have to ever deal. AIDS is out of control in Africa, not here in the United States, not here in St. Louis, and not on the campus of Wash. U. Yet while not at the same epidemic proportion, AIDS is here in the U.S., and I would venture to guarantee that that it is also on our campus.

In 1995, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American College Health Association estimated that one in 500 college students is infected with HIV. Adolescents in the United States are currently one of the highest at-risk groups. Infection rates are also high among our age group for all sexually transmitted diseases. In 2000, the National Institutes of Health reported that approximately two thirds of all new STD infections in the United States were among individuals under the age of 25. An STD such as genital herpes causes the risk of HIV transmission to be as high as nine times greater for carriers than for those without it. How many people on this campus either do not know or do not tell that they have an STD?

Why do students at Washington University believe that this virus cannot touch us? I have heard it commented at this school that it is difficult to “catch” AIDS, and we really do not need to worry. In reality, it takes only one single act of unprotected sex to transmit HIV. Unprotected sex happens on this campus, and the fear of pregnancy overrides thinking about fears of STDs. We must become more aware.

On Friday, Dec. 2 at 5 p.m. in Laboratory Sciences 300, guest speaker Joel Goldman will present “Sex Under the Influence.” Joel went to college just like us. He liked to have a good time and party. He was the president of his fraternity and popular on campus. Today, Joel is HIV positive. When college was over, he continued to party, drink and have unprotected sex. His life has changed forever. We can learn from stories like Joel’s. The lesson is not to stop partying or having fun. We learn that the power to be aware is the power to protect one’s future.

Tomorrow is World AIDS Day, and Washington University is observing World AIDS Week. The international theme is “Stop AIDS: Keep the Promise.” Everyone should attend the nightly events. We can keep the promise by doing our part this week and every week to help raise awareness on campus. Wear a red ribbon. Learn how to use a condom (and then actually use it). Ask about getting tested. And educate yourself. Be smart and know the issues. Protect yourself and the ones you love – and your fellow students at Wash. U.

Mark is a senior in Arts & Sciences.

What a difference a year can make. Two years ago, the NHL was in a mire, trapped in a code of laws that prioritized defense, and the boar that laid within. One lockout later, the NHL decided to emphasize offense, and the result has been a far superior product to what hockey fans had to endure before.

Last Saturday, my brother and I went to Madison Square Garden to join 18,200 people in watching our hometown Rangers face the Washington Capitals. It was my first Rangers game, and second NHL game this season (although it is debatable whether the Blues can be considered an NHL team). Given that the Rangers had an actual shot at winning, I was excited.

Within minutes of the game starting, it was obvious that this was not a game for those with bad necks. There was end-to-end action, with both teams having scoring chances early. Both goalies were solid, though. The goalies were two men at opposite ends of their hockey career. The Rangers had rookie Henrik Lundqvist in net, while his counterpart for Washington, Olaf Kolzig, has been in the NHL for as long as I can remember. Despite the differences, each was spectacular.

The Rangers scored initially, late in the first period, getting their first shorthanded goal of the season. They would add another goal just 14 seconds into the second period. The Capitals would soon strike back though, scoring twice in the period. Unlike in other major sports, the big stars for either team were mostly silent. Former MVP Jaromir Jagr on the home team and super rookie Alexander Ovechkin for the visitors were clearly the best players on the ice, but as far as points go, all Ovechkin mustered was a measly secondary assist, and Jagr was kept scoreless.

Lundqvist and Kolzig dominated throughout a tense third period. The Capitals played better, but Lundqvist was unwavering, just like Kolzig for the Rangers few scoring chances. Already dramatic, the game took an intriguing turn in overtime, when the Capitals called Jagr on using an illegal stick. If the stick was indeed illegal, Jagr would be sent to the penalty box for two minutes, and the Capitals would have a huge power play to start the sudden death period, but if Jagr was exonerated, then it would be the Rangers who would have a power play. The Capitals were correct though, and the crowd let out a collective groan, scared that the game had slipped away. But yet again, Henrik was there, and overtime went by without a goal. Thus, we got to witness The Most Exciting Play In Sports: the shootout.

The shootout is a product of the new changes, implemented to end ties and add excitement to the game. As the overtime period ended, a blind man in New Jersey would have been able to see that the shootout had achieved its desired effect. Everybody in the sold out crowd rose to their feet, screaming “HEN-RIK” to support Lundqvist. The first shooter for the Caps was Ovechkin, who had yet to be stopped in a shootout. But our Swedish hero saved the day again, stoning Ovechkin cold. Unfortunately, Kolzig did the same for our star, and after the three “regulation” rounds, the score ended up tied at 1. Lundqvist stopped the first sudden death shot, bringing up Petr Prucha, the winner of two previous shootouts. With the raucous crowd screaming, Prucha came in for what would certainly be the game winner. But Olie the Goalie thought otherwise, and we kept going.

No one, from Ort to Harvard Boy to Toots, could send us home happy until we got to the record 15th round. The Rangers had only two healthy skaters left to shoot. Henrik was still relentless, making what would be his 47th save of the night. Out came Marek Malik. Malik is known more for making big hits than big shots – he had yet to score a goal all season. Getting tired and hoarse, the crowd was a bit quieter for Malik. He, for some ungodly reason, tried to make a trick shot. He faked a backhand, then shot from the forehand with his stick between his legs. We were all shocked. And so was Kolzig. The puck flew by him, clearing the Rangers bench and drawing deafening screams from the crowd. The Rangers were the winners, and many of the 18,200 people in attendance spilled out onto 33rd and 7th yelling “We want the Cup!” only a quarter of the way through the season.

The whole game – the big saves, the chants of “asshole” to the referee, the shootout – was perhaps the most exciting sporting event I have ever attended. While not unbearable before, hockey is certainly about to regain its place as the fastest growing sport in the U.S. (NASCAR? Please.) It took a disaster for the NHL to reform to get themselves back on track. The NHL should serve as a lesson for campus groups that are starting to have some trouble. If campus groups are starting to see their attendance dip, their impact lessen, they shouldn’t try to simply increase advertising. Change the ways you go about business to make your group more appealing before something terrible happens. Or implement a shootout.

Daniel is a sophomore in Arts & Sciences and a Forum Editor.

After Katrina hit, the citizens of the United States (though perhaps not the government) showed amazing generosity in donating billions of dollars to the Red Cross and other organizations. These donations went towards providing food and cloths to Katrina survivors, finding housing and meeting the survivors’ basic survival needs. The generosity of Americans should not be understated, and clearly prevented the catastrophe from being much worse – yet it is becoming increasingly clear that unless systematic changes are made in the way the government is rebuilding New Orleans and other Gulf Coast towns, we will never be able to say that most of the Katrina survivors have “recovered” from the crisis.

First, the federal government, in typical Bush Administration fashion, decided to award no-bid contracts to companies such as Halliburton and Bechtel for the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast. These companies are choosing to bring in many outside groups for construction rather than employing local people. I just spoke with a former New Orleans resident who told me that his friends in the construction industry, who have years of experience doing hurricane repairs, can’t find work. Adding to this absurdity is the fact that, according to a Nov. 11 article on MSNBC.com, the government has still not hired more minority firms for the reconstruction, even after promising to do so several months ago.

Most of the reconstruction efforts thus far have gone towards rebuilding the tourism industries, casinos and oil operations. Whole sections of town have not yet been touched, but the city’s cash cows are starting to thrive again. And after millions of dollars are spent on rebuilding the “pretty” parts of town, one has to wonder how much effort the government will put into helping out the poorer communities comprised of the people who suffered most from the hurricane and the pathetic government response.

So where is the people’s voice in all of this? It has been (at least partially) effectively silenced by the federal government. According to The Washington Post, the federal government is not allowing the contact information for Katrina survivors to be released, oftentimes even to family members. This has made it extremely difficult for survivors to speak with a unified voice. As long as survivors are divided, there is very little hope that they can organize to get their own desires incorporated into the rebuilding plan.

This is why groups like the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund and Oversight Coalition (PHRF) are so important. The PHRF has been doing a national outreach program to contact and connect Katrina survivors. In addition to providing basic needs for survivors, they are collecting stories and questionnaires from them that will be presented to political leaders. Most importantly, they are forming an oversight coalition made up of the people who were affected most by this tragedy and who can best speak to the needs of the community. By ensuring that survivors empower themselves, the PHRF ensures that the voice of the people will not be ignored.

Curtis Muhammad, one of the founding members of the PHRF, will be visiting St. Louis and Washington University this weekend. Mr. Muhammad is a veteran of the civil rights movement as one of the original members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and has been a community activist in New Orleans for the past 30 years. On Friday at 3 p.m. in the Brown Lounge at the GWB School of Social Work, he is going to be giving a talk detailing the history of inadequate disaster responses in minority communities, including during the aftermath of Katrina. Then, on Saturday, he will introduce a screening of the movie “Freedom Song” based on his life and featuring Danny Glover and a soundtrack from Sweet Honey in the Rock. The screening will take place in Brown 100.

Ensuring that Hurricane Katrina doesn’t destroy the lives of tens of thousands of people will take a long-term commitment from U.S. citizens. Students who are interested in making this commitment should check out one of Mr. Muhammad’s events.

Adam is a graduate student in Arts & Sciences.

Rage murders have affected every American. The words that come after mass-murders in schools and workplaces are often callow, made-for-television expressions of sympathy for the survivors, followed by a thorough demonizing of the killers and finally a short period of navel-gazing trying to explain how the school or work environment might’ve contributed to the outbreak of violence and then the story is dropped before any damaging conclusions can be reached and then intrepid reporters go chasing the latest missing blonde.

Mark Ames doesn’t look away in his new book, “Going Postal.” In the course of researching the book, Ames traveled around the country to examine the circumstances that lead to many school and workplace murders and their consequences. He doesn’t glamorize mass-murderers. He treats them as rational human beings who have been pushed to their limit by mad systems and casual cruelty – not as monsters, as they are often called. In many instances, even victims who were maimed during school and office shootings have a great deal of sympathy for the murderers – something nearly always left out of media accounts of rage killings.

Ames supports his case by looking at the public reaction to other isolated, “crazy,” murders in American history – he compares modern office and school shootings to slave rebellions and other uprisings. While this might seem sensationalistic, the charge is supported by thorough and intelligently presented research. The public reactions to disasters like Columbine are shown to eerily mirror those that occurred after Shays’s Rebellion or John Brown’s massacre. The lives of slaves in the Antebellum South are compared with the lives of modern office workers while maintaining sensitivity and proper context – never allowing his book to devolve into a dull repetition of the clich‚s favored by the political fringe of the left or the right.

Mark Ames isn’t looking to make a case for overthrowing capitalism or to immanentize the Eschaton. His argument doesn’t rely on ever-increasing body counts. Slave rebellions were notoriously infrequent; and few people would make the case that black slavery was less brutal than the American school system. The nature of the murders suggests that something is fundamentally rotten about the institutions that spawn them. “Going Postal” offers a fresh look at these crimes that will hopefully influence the debates that always appear after someone shoots up a school or a cubical farm.

The issue of rage murders tends to stay in the dark, only becoming a subject of debate when another person snaps. It’s a useless and voyeuristic cycle, and if the level of paranoia that permeates American society is to be reduced, this issue needs to be subjected to prolonged attention and debate – and the trite solutions like expelling children for obscene drawings or off-color jokes should be ignored and ridiculed.

Many students at the University will work in a corporation after graduation. The majority of these businesses are guided by similar management philosophies, and have similar office cultures. Most students have attended schools organized around the same basic principles. “Going Postal” discusses how these peculiar American institutions can break people by treating them like sub-humans.

This book is worth buying, even if you don’t generally have time to read or find books boring. Ames doesn’t moralize, doesn’t worry about offending people and is an unashamed lover of black humor. It’s a heartfelt attempt to comprehend the most divisive and anxiety-inducing crimes in the country – it deserves to be read.

John is a sophomore in Arts & Sciences.

Ever since Olin Library’s completion, many students have flocked to its nooks and crannies on a more regular basis. But during finals, many people venture in that may not have otherwise given the building a second look. Some students are forced in to do research for final projects, or perhaps because their roommates like to drink more than study. Whatever the reason, there tend to be some new faces in the library during the last few weeks of the semester, and these newcomers sometimes just don’t understand – or at least don’t follow – library etiquette. So here’s how it works:

Turn your cell phone off! This is no joke. It is annoying, disrupting and rude to have cell phones ringing in an environment that’s intended to facilitate concentration. Even though this should probably be self-evident, if you make a mistake and leave your phone on, do not answer it in the library. It’s bad enough to have 10 people talking on their phones in the hallway; those doors are surely not soundproofed. But as distracting as the muffled exclamations are from out in the stairway, it’s even worse when the person at the desk next to you is updating their boyfriend or girlfriend about what page they’re on.

Just because you and your friends are in one of those private study rooms does not mean that it becomes necessary to shout. Those rooms are also not soundproofed; they are designated for groups of people that need to quietly discuss academia. They aren’t there for stand-up comedy, raucous gossip sessions or guitar practice.

The library does not house mixers during finals. If you see one or eight of your friends, do not feel that it is necessary to have a long conversation, particularly if you are not the kind of person who is skilled at controlling the volume of your voice. If it’s really that important, go somewhere else. Otherwise, smile, nod and do what you came to the library to do.

If you plan to vacate the spot you’ve staked out in the library for more than 10 minutes, please take your stuff with you. Not only could your stuff get stolen by the not-so-nice population, but now the nicer people have nowhere to study. If you have to get a drink or take a quick break, fine. But if you’re going home and coming back three hours later, you cannot reserve your spot until you come back.

The holidays are upon us, folks. ‘Tis the season to be quiet and polite in the library. Please.