Student Life Archives

Stein ‘toon ill-conceived

Dear Editor:

Josh Stein’s editorial cartoon on Dec. 7 concerning the Immokalee tomato pickers and Taco Bell was, unfortunately, inaccurate and poorly thought-out. Stein apparently neglected to check his facts: due to boycott pressure, Taco Bell signed an agreement with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in March, agreeing to the wage raise (the press release can be found here: www.ciw-online.org/we%20won.html).

Though Stein raises a valid concern (that reducing demand for tomatoes may reduce the number of jobs available), the boycott – which was initiated, coordinated, and led by workers, not “self-righteous protestors” – relied upon Taco Bell being more willing to spend the money to raise wages than to lose a greater sum of money to the boycott long before the loss of business would affect the workers. And, if Stein had taken the time to check his facts, he would have discovered that the workers were right.

Joe Thomas
Class of 2007

Our beloved ‘fountain’

Dear Editor:

We would like to propose to your readers that all students, from this day forward, refer to the giant concrete geometric shapes as “the Fountain,” both for lack of a better term and for lack of a better fountain.

Liz Kramer
Maya Solomon
Class of 2008

While describing the effects of the war in Iraq on future public opinion over American conflicts, Ohio State political scientist John Mueller remarked that “what you’re going to get after this is ‘We don’t want to do that again – No more Iraqs’ just as after Vietnam the syndrome was ‘No more Vietnams.'” On the surface, this is not a terribly insightful prediction. But what is interesting is his comparison between the war in Iraq and the Vietnam War. Although inadvertent, Mr. Mueller highlighted a growing sentiment among Americans that there are parallels between Iraq and Vietnam. And this sentiment has crossed over into the realm of politics. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel stated that the war in Iraq is “not dissimilar to where we were in Vietnam,” and that “the longer we stay there, the more similarities to Vietnam are going to come together.

It’s not surprising to see these parallels emerge. Both wars employed guerilla warfare and drew low approval ratings and widespread protests. President Bush recently announced that the military was going to begin utilizing a “clear, hold and build” strategy designed to combat insurgents. The last time such tactics were employed was during the latter part of the Vietnam War. Indeed, the similarities between the two conflicts certainly exist. But it is a mistake to assume that Vietnam is the only historical reference that can be compared to Iraq. In fact, in terms of war rhetoric, Iraq bears a much better resemblance to World War I than Vietnam.

On the eve of the United States’ entrance into World War I, it was President Woodrow Wilson who implored Congress that “the world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty.” A free, democratic Europe was all that Wilson needed to justify American intervention. But Wilson’s lofty rhetoric came crashing down during the aftermath of World War I as it became increasingly clear that the fight “for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments” would not be won. Germany’s new liberal democracy was powerless to stop a period of severe civil strife that plunged the nation into chaos. Institutional problems, as well as the severe punishments imposed by the Treaty of Versailles, would eventually contribute to the collapse of this fledgling liberal republic and the subsequent rise of Nazism. In Russia and other nations, socialist revolutions would take hold and deny any hope for democracy to millions of people. And in the Middle East, the brutal history of modern Iraq began when the League of Nations installed a Sunni king to rule over three disparate provinces from the former Ottoman Empire. President Wilson was undoubtedly disillusioned with the actual fruits of his grand vision.

A similar gap between rhetoric and reality is now apparent when listening to President Bush discuss Iraq’s transition from tyranny to democracy. The Iraq that exists today is something far less than the country that he describes as “a free nation that can govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself.” The newly created Iraqi constitution is a bland document that fails to reconcile the ethnic and religious tensions between the Sunni, Kurdish and Shia communities. It also grants considerable autonomy to Iraqi provinces, creating a fractured country that deprives the Sunnis of their traditional hold on power. While 79 percent of Iraqis approved the constitution, an overwhelming 81 percent of voters rejected it in the Sunni-dominated Sallahudin province. Additionally, the Sunni community has very little representation in the Iraqi security forces and remains supportive of the Baathist element of the insurgency. Economically, the country has high levels of unemployment and a basic infrastructure that is so crippled and ineffective that 60 percent of Iraqis still depend on foreign humanitarian aid for food and water. Iraq is a hollow democracy where the government cannot provide for its citizens, an entire ethnic group is marginalized and unity is effectively dead. No, this is nothing like what the United States originally sought for Iraq.

Yet even though there is very little hope that Iraq will transform into a liberal democratic bastion for the rest of the Middle East, there are still reasons to continue fighting for it. Lawrence Kaplan, senior editor of “The New Republic” remarked that while there is very little left to fight for, “there’s plenty left to fight against in Iraq.” And he’s right. The consequences of allowing Al Qaeda and Sunni terrorists to bring down the Iraqi government and transform it into a haven for their own would be severe enough to jeopardize global security. Additionally, U.S. forces are quite possibly the only reason that current ethnic and religious tensions have not yet plunged the country into a civil war that would kill many more Iraqis. The gap between President Bush’s lofty rhetoric and the reality in Iraq can probably never be closed, but it can be narrowed. The goal of defeating an insurgency is not as admirable or as glamorous as transforming Iraq into a liberal democracy, but it is no less important. It is, as Lawrence Kaplan continued, “a different war now, a war worth fighting but a war without ideals.”

Nathan is a sophomore in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Dan Daranciang

As an alumnus who has had personal experience with plagiarism and its consequences while a student at Wash. U., I would like to offer this candid essay to readers. The lesson I learned from my experience is two-fold: if you’re planning on plagiarizing, don’t get caught, and if your decision is hanging on the possible consequences of getting caught, simply consider the time, money and explanations to friends and family your actions will cost you.

Of course, the lessons I was supposed to learn were that my actions had been dishonest, lacked integrity and deserved punishment by failure. It was also argued that through my actions I was cheating other students. Of course, this is only true if a school is promoting the competition of students against one another for grades, and that there should be no sense of shared responsibility for students to help educate one another. During my academic integrity board meeting, I challenged the board’s assertions and their accompanying punishment, explaining that there was indeed a great deal of academic dishonesty that needed to be corrected, however, it was the lack of academic integrity in the everyday classrooms, South 40 dorm rooms and off-campus apartments where the problems were occurring. What I was referring to at the time was the widespread intellectual apathy that is the culture of higher education at Wash. U. and throughout this country. It is this apathy that creates a breeding ground for academic misdeeds such as plagiarism.

It was no surprise to learn in the article “Cheaters ‘fess up” in Student Life, published this past Monday, that nearly 40 percent of Wash. U. students have admitted to plagiarizing. This enormous fact leads us directly to the real lessons of plagiarism. The lesson to be learned is not that students who plagiarize are dishonest and lazy. Rather, the lesson is that the story we tell ourselves – the story that students, particularly those at top-ranked schools like Wash. U., are serious about their own learning and intellectual development – is a myth. For those of us who truly care about academic integrity, it is this myth that needs to be critically examined, for only then might we hope to see young adults who love to learn and who learn what they love.

By highlighting the misdeed of cheating, we should be shining an equal, if not brighter, spotlight on the conditions that are breeding apathy and acts of plagiarism in so many students. What we immediately find ourselves looking at is the central theme of education in society today. This theme is that school systems (not teachers) take away students’ natural desires to learn, creating in its place a game in which students will do whatever it takes, including cheating, to beat the system. Whereas a real education would involve students doing real work, engaging in deep discussions that are relevant to their lives and spending time developing relationships with other students and their professors that involve useful feedback, students find themselves in school systems where learning is mandated from the top down, where students are subjected to overcrowded classrooms, tested to death, made to believe grades are gods and where subjects are atomized and taught as independent from all other subjects.

An essay on this topic deserves to be concluded with solutions. The solutions, however, must come primarily from current students, and must involve a restructuring of school priorities. Faculty such as Dean Killen and researchers such as Professor McCabe will have to wait until students’ learning becomes as high a priority as things like applicant SAT scores, alumni donations, college rankings and professional research and publishing before they see the rates of plagiarism drop. In the meantime, individuals may use this essay as a conversation starter, or go ahead and put your name on top and take credit for it yourself.

Dan is an alumnus of the Class of 2003 and runs the Web site www.xanga.com/dansjournal. He can be contacted via e-mail at dan_lilienthal@yahoo.com.

“You have to see things through the eyes of the people you are trying to help.” With these words from his mentor, Ella Baker, Curtis Mohammed, active in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and social causes around the world for more than four decades, proved the Civil Rights Movement lives. Believed dead after the turmoil of Vietnam, Black Power/White Backlash and the failures of liberalism to solve the nation’s woes, Mohammed’s presentation last week at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work on the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund erased that misconception.

The sad truth for its continued existence: racism. And according to Mohammed, it has not chosen to embody more subtle shapes in today’s society. The Ninth Ward of New Orleans – where race and class mix into a diabolical stew stirred by historical shame – provides a perfect, tragic example. Not only has this country confined the residents to poverty, oppressed by racism which prevents education, quality jobs, health care and opportunities, but with the brutal assault of Hurricane Katrina, the government (federal, state and local) basically sentenced residents to suffering and death.

As a country we had planned for these types of emergencies. We knew the consequences of each category of hurricane. In the days before Katrina, Max Mayfield from the National Hurricane Center had spoken with officials at the White House, the state of Louisiana and the city of New Orleans and urged evacuation, but nothing happened. Meanwhile, 57,000 families did not have transportation out! In the aftermath, survivors we sre trapped in terrible conditions at the Superdome and the city hospital; blacks were labeled as looters in the news media, while whites were instead “finding things.” Today, many parts of white New Orleans are already fixed, while black and minority communities still lay in waste and the government offers a paltry $26,000 for property.

But positives emerge. In its plans to rebuild the minority communities of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region, the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund echoes the common practices of the Civil Rights Movement with grassroots organizing at its best. Self-determination replaces a paternal reliance on whites – the continued manipulation of largess overturned by the seizure of power. Revolutionarily, the relief fund does not seek to keep blacks out of the process, but to empower them with full control. The message: it’s your city, go remake in the ways you see fit.

In New Orleans warehouses right now, models of the city are laid out across the floors. If the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund has its way, residents can come, peer down and select locations for playgrounds, schools, grocery stores, their future lives. Their motto: why rely on a government that tried to kill you? And so, the battle royale wages on, as the government and agencies like the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund fight to determine the shape of post-hurricane New Orleans. If they can maximize the use of space – a tool linked to segregationist practices for decades – and if they can avoid the pitfalls of organizational fragmentation which haunted the direct action Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, positives will result.

I encourage you to keep in mind that there is still a struggle going on; watch for it in the events of this country. And check out the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund Web site; see if you can help.

Kevin is a senior in Arts & Sciences.

It’s getting to be that time of year again. For me, this time of year is not associated with holiday spirit but with the inevitable fight to find a summer internship or, this year, a job. This task always starts out very well and with high hopes. You find 10 possibilities at great organizations where your r‚sum‚ and experience match exactly the type of person they’re looking for. And then you, a rising senior, do not even get an interview. And why is it, you might ask, that a qualified applicant at one of the best universities in the nation gets totally shot down? You don’t have any connections.

Connections are everything in the world of job hunting. “It’s not who you are; it’s who you know” holds heartbreakingly true. Family connections are what help Bob, the incoming freshman, get that prestigious internship with the stock exchange that you failed to land an interview for, despite your superior qualifications. His uncle happens to know the guy who rings the bell to open the stock exchange. He is hired without an interview.

And this year for the Class of 2006, the stakes go up another notch. Unless you are one of the lucky ones who knows exactly what you are doing with the next 24 years of your life and are interviewing for medical schools or sending out scores to law schools, you are now in the job pool. And if you are even luckier, you are within the padded confines of the business school application process, where you have already been hired. Ten months in advance. For the rest of us poor souls, job applications are not even available for another few months.

Okay. Let’s look at this positively. There are a few people who are hired on their own merits – very few. And they do just as well as people who are hired through the other process of “networking.” It’s just that first step of getting your foot in the door. Whether it’s for an internship or a real-life job, employers are just looking for an easy way to whittle down their applicant pool. And really, can you blame them? Well, yes – but in their defense, connections are a quick, painless way to pick an intern. And they already have an added reference.

Rather than just spend half a page complaining about it, is there any way to break this cycle? After talking to friends, bosses and my parents, the consensus is no. If you want to get hired quickly and painlessly, it helps to know someone. And having the title CEO follow their name would be particularly helpful. The Career Center even admits to this unfortunate part of getting your foot into the door of the real world by arranging many “networking” opportunities for internship and job seekers. In my opinion, these networking events are very helpful, because the school is basically saying, “We know you can’t get a job on your own, but we have a huge amount of alumni who might know someone who knows someone in a field that you’re interested in. Please yak it up with them.”

So what am I going to do about it? Apply to hundreds, possibly thousands of jobs. Maybe look into finding the address of the Speaker of the House. And start walking his dog. And maybe I’ll have a job by the time my roommates graduate from Harvard Medical School.

Dara is a senior in Arts & Sciences.