Student Life Archives

Bernell Dorrough

College should be a time of exploration and learning. Whether a student comes to Washington University with a set game plan for his or her future, or with absolutely no idea where even to begin, the academic atmosphere should be open to fostering knowledge in all fields. Budding pre-med biologists should be allowed to advance their political knowledge through political sciences classes beyond CNN. History majors studying the history of China might benefit from taking courses in Chinese Language. Anthropology students studying African cultures can expand their interests through African and Afro-American Studies courses. The current cluster system was designed with this rationale in mind: students in Arts and Sciences should be open to taking classes from many departments that fit their interests. For the most part, the cluster system serves its intended purpose.

Similarly, though, art history students should feel free to take classes at the art school, physics majors should be encouraged to explore options at the engineering school, and economics majors should find food for thought in the business school. The cluster system does not allow these courses to meet ArtSci student requirements. When students wander astray from the School of Arts and Sciences, they compromise progress towards completing their clusters. This constraint needs to be removed to make the WU academic environment more inclusive.

Recently, School of Engineering professor Ken Goldman proposed a set of changes to the deans in ArtSci that would implement such a change. His plan calls for the ArtSci cluster system to be broadened to include specific courses from art, architecture, engineering, business and graduate schools. He is not proposing a change to the cluster system itself, but rather a widening of the courses offered within clusters to truly optimize the university’s resources. Professor Goldman’s recommendation is sound, and it should be implemented by WU for the Spring 2004 semester.

The cluster system as it now stands, like the previous distribution system, limits much of course selection for students rightfully anxious about completing their requirements before graduation. In order to complete clusters containing a very limited number of courses, a student must act efficiently to make sure that whenever one of the courses in a cluster is being offered, he or she should take that course before it is either not offered again or the student graduates. This seriously constrains a student’s schedule, and thus limits exploration of academic experiences. By expanding clusters to include more courses from other schools, Professor Goldman’s proposal would help alleviate this problem.

Expanding the cluster system would not only provide expanded options for students looking to explore new areas, it would also allow students with very specific focuses to gain specialized knowledge in their fields that might not be available in their home departments. Take for example a political science student interested in the way corporate contributions influence law making in Washington. While this student is more than welcome to take political science and economics courses touching on these matters, he or she can certainly advance his or her knowledge base by taking business school classes that focus on how these contributions are made, who in a corporation is responsible for making decisions about contributions, and how to determine how much money is necessary to truly influence political change. At the same time, the student would benefit from Law School classes that teach current and proposed campaign finance laws, political lobbying from a legal perspective, and Congressional behavior. If our fictitious, but highly realistic, student were operating under the cluster system, the chances that he would never look to the Business or Law Schools is high. If Professor Goldman’s plan is implemented, the above scenario can become reality, and the student will graduate with a wider and more marketable depth of knowledge.

In a PowerPoint presentation explaining his proposal, Goldman quotes the ArtSci web-site, which states of clusters, “the curriculum was adjusted to take advantage of…the strong tradition of cooperation between faculty working in different intellectual disciplines.” It is time for ArtSci to follow through on its words and not only allow, but encourage, students to click on options other than “School of Arts and Sciences” when they sign onto WebSTAC each semester. It is only when students can feel free to educate themselves, rather than to look at a checklist of potential courses only to settle for less relevant, perhaps less challenging, and certainly less desired courses, that the student will actually fulfill the university’s mission to create well-rounded, informed students.

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.

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.

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?

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 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.

As summer approaches, I realize that for three months I will return home to my family after what seems an eternity of not consistently living with them.

I can deal with the idea that the freedoms I enjoy while living at college may be significantly curbed, but that’s not the half of it.

Perhaps the emancipation that the sunny days bring would not instill the fear of God in me if I were not bound to the terror that is my memory of summers past. For I know that this summer, as have so many, will bring that most dreaded of familial bonding sessions: the summer vacation.

Granted, they always began with good intentions, but from the beginning I always know that I am bound for trauma. Our destination is almost always some remote sanctuary of nature. In recent years, my hopes of holidays in the cities of Europe have sadly dimmed.

One year, our course brought us to North Carolina. In a wooden establishment with one restroom and no air conditioning, a family of five shared three beds for ten days. Do the math.

One of our days in the backcountry was set aside for a vigorous mountain hike, a picnic lunch and tubing. In order to tube, I was told that I required special footwear to protect my feet from what may have lurked in the murky depths.

Our trip to that mecca of practicality, Wal-Mart, confronted us with only one pair of shoes in my size: a pair of $6.99 white shoes with a blue stripe that would best be suited to be worn by a senior on a couples’ cruise and sported with a cheesy sailor’s cap. I allowed my mother to purchase those “shoes” (I use the term liberally) along with some festive watermelon and fish themed beach towels.

When it came time to begin our tubing expedition, those sailor shoes of death began to slowly dig into the backs of my feet. When I saw the blood, I felt I had no choice but to stop and examine the issue at hand. And when I most congenially explained my paradox, I was told to take it like a man and conclude my complaining.

Within five minutes of tubing, my family was far ahead of me as I was hitting every stone in my path. My mom used this as a time to lecture me about how eating that last dessert didn’t help me at all. (As if I had an urge to be next to the family of stick-wielding hicks who surrounded me and who all had a name that was a variation of “MaryJoeBobSue.”)

When I had had enough, I boldly wedged my behind from the hole in the tube, picked it up and fled for my life. After reaching our humble little timeshare on a hill, I ceremoniously threw those vessels of sin into the garbage and lit them on fire with the match that was supposed to start the oven for dinner. Though in me my parents saw a pyromaniac in desperate need of attention, in the flames I saw my freedom.

Yet another summer was reserved for the ol’ college scouting safari. I recall those weeks being filled with my sister’s opposition to the squalor of the dorms, my parents’ colorful verbal labeling of some schools’ admissions policies during the discussion sessions, and the constant battle over incessant cell phone use during the walking tours. Of course, I can’t complain (well, sure I could…) about the ego massages that I would receive upon falling into a rant of dejection after we left each educational institution.

And oh! how these memories live on-and not just in the files of Child Welfare Services. Certainly I still bear the scars of this “quality time,” but in a sick way I look forward to these experiences.

I am not one to get sentimental, but I realize that my opportunities to chalk up my mental problems to well-meant time spent with my family are becoming increasingly scarce. The point is, my family was there to take me to look at colleges. And together, we can look back at my environmental misadventures and laugh about it… now. Okay, I do cry, but I still say cherish the summer and all the horror (and, yes, happiness) it can bring. I may grow weary of the supervision over my life where there is none now, but perhaps this frightening burst of fondness will come back to assuage me.

And who knows, I might just get a care package out of it.

When I consider the word “community” in reference to Washington University, I have a sense of how this word has become defined during my time here. It speaks to the students who inhabit our classrooms, the faculty who lead these classrooms, and the staff who support this faculty. But what of the remaining staff? It is my presumption that most students who attend a university of this expense and caliber would give some degree of respect to the people who seem to immediately be making our experience possible-our professors, our advisors, the staff of our major departments. However, I sincerely believe that stale cafeteria food, overgrown lawns, dirty classrooms and even filthier dormitories would degrade our experience as students.

Matt Damon puts it well when he says, “You dropped a hundred and fifty grand on an education you could have gotten for $1.50 in late fines at the public library.” If we were only seeking educations, we could have found them at the library or (gasp) that crappy community college or public university so close to all of our homes. However, we didn’t go to these schools and, in most cases, didn’t even apply to them. Why? Because we were looking for more than an education. We were seeking a place that could provide all the comforts of home while providing an intellectual community-a place where the standard of teaching is as high as the standard of living. All complaints aside, I believe I’ve found that place here. For me, the fact that WU is my home has come to mean just as much as the fact that it is my school. Why then, aren’t those who make this a home just as valued as those who make it an academic institution?

Or perhaps they are. When I recently spoke to a janitor who cleans one of the academic buildings over night, she told me that she makes just over $6.50 an hour after three years. I hope that wage isn’t supposed to indicate how much we value our cleaning staff. But perhaps we’ve fostered this relationship in other ways. I know that the most important way our university community comes together is as an institution of learning. When I discussed this with a Bear’s Den employee, she told me that the Bon Appetit staff has been asked to stay off campus when they are off the clock. Although I don’t know whether this is a formal edict on behalf of the university (and found no one willing to discuss it when I called the Dining Services office and asked), it seems interesting that some of the greatest resources of our elite institution-our libraries, our weekly Assembly Series, and our campus forums-are off limits to these employees. Apparently, offering all WU employees free education except for the cleaning, lawn, and food staff isn’t enough. If we were looking to push these employees outside the sphere of our community, I’m sure we’ve accomplished it by now.

This column elicited itself because, to me, treating other people as community members is greater than saying please and thank you when we buy lunch in Holmes, or smiling to the cleaning staff when they get to our bathroom. Kindness is certainly admirable, but true respect comes from treating people as if they are important enough to share in a dialogue. STOMP did a brilliant job last semester when they held a discussion between Bon Appetit employees and students. However, we are failing this university, and thus ourselves, if we let the dialogue end there. WU has equipped us with the tools to ask insightful questions, so we need to stop ignoring the elephant in the room. Why is the majority of the Bon Appetit staff black? How about the Hispanic lawn care staff? Or the Bosnian cleaning staff? Why do we contract these employees out when we could hire them directly so they might share the same benefits as other WU employees? Recently, some of St. Louis University’s student body was able to agitate for the administration to hire employees directly, instead of contracting out, which in turn began an overdue dialogue about the status of some members of the SLU community. Although the staff here may not need or desire the same thing, it would be worthwhile to ask.

After all, we are a community.

Bernell Dorrough

The front page of last Friday’s Student Life revealed a development that some students may have anticipated: beginning next fall there will be no kegs allowed at W.I.L.D. This announcement has been in the making for four years, as Team 31 and the administration have tried to phase out the quantity of kegs at the biannual Walk In Lay Down.

The agreement was reached for two reasons: to increase safety at the event and to bring W.I.L.D. in line with both the current and future alcohol policies. It seems, however, that if the goal is to make W.I.L.D. a more alcohol policy-friendly event, they have gone about it in the wrong way.

According to the Parents Handbook website, the University Committee on Alcohol’s policy is guided by the principle that “Safety must come first-which means targeting high-risk times of the year… focusing on hard-liquor violations and ‘pre-partying,’ confining any high-risk drinking that does occur to places where it can be monitored….”

If this is the case, it seems that getting rid of kegs at W.I.L.D. will do nothing to bring it more in line with the policy. First, making it more difficult for students to drink at the event will only increase the probability of “pre-partying,” as the policy phrases it. If there is less chance for students to consume alcohol once at W.I.L.D., they will obviously be more inclined to drink before they come. So, an increase in pre-partying is understandably likely due to the change.

Furthermore, the “high-risk drinking” mentioned is now, by default, more likely to occur where it cannot be monitored, simply because more will happen in dorm rooms and apartments. W.I.L.D. is perhaps one of the safest drinking environments Washington University can offer its students. Any all-day party featuring what is commonly known as a “drunk tent” offers more readily-available medical attention than fraternity events or off-campus parties. There is no event at WU that combines open alcohol consumption and security better than W.I.L.D. Now that drinking is being increasingly forced inside, medical care is going to be harder to come by. Since more people will feel inclined to consume more alcohol before attending W.I.L.D., and probably consume it more quickly at that, medical assistance may be in even higher demand than in previous years.

Another portion of the University Committee on Alcohol’s guiding principles reads, “The campus environment should encourage responsible choices-which means providing plenty of alcohol-free social activities….” If banning kegs at W.I.L.D. is an attempt to turn the game-and-music-filled day into an alcohol-free social activity, it simply won’t work, for several reasons. First, despite its popularity as a day for heavy drinking, W.I.L.D. is not as keg-dependent as some might think. Last semester only 14 kegs graced the Quad, even though the keg registration deadline was more thoroughly publicized than this semester. This semester, nine kegs were registered for Friday’s event-not a drastically smaller number. Beyond that, students over the age of 21 will still be allowed to bring in six-packs of beer. So, if enough people feel inclined to make up for the lack of kegs, they can certainly try.

Many students have also expressed concern that W.I.L.D.’s defining social environment will be altered by the disappearance of the time-honored kegs. This is a legitimate concern as well. The idea of W.I.L.D. is not simply to be an evening concert, but rather to be an entire day of fun and relaxation for the whole student body. If students are at all turned off by the lack of kegs, they will be less likely to arrive early and enjoy the pre-concert atmosphere. Unlike the presence of kegs, however, this change lies entirely in the hands of students. W.I.L.D. doesn’t have to be any less fun than before as long as everyone wants it to be as great a tradition as ever.

WU is widely known as having a “wet” campus, and even as the administration attempts to change that, they will never change the fact that college students like to drink. As long as the alcohol policy permits people to openly consume alcohol at W.I.L.D, what difference does it make where it comes from? Keg, can or bottle, the university is still condoning the consumption of alcohol on its property. If the goal of banning kegs at W.I.L.D. is to reduce drinking once students arrive at the event, than perhaps that may happen. However, if the goal was to reduce the overall amount of alcohol that WU students will consume, the outcome might very well be the exact opposite. What’s more, student safety may be sacrificed in the process.

Bernell Dorrough

Do the names Judith Miller, Dot Richardson, Luis Rodriguez, Bobby Seale, and Kerry Kennedy Cuomo mean anything to you? If you attended any Assembly Series lectures this year they might, but if you are like many students who have classes scheduled during this time, chances are you probably were unable to attend the lectures or did not even know these individuals were speaking on campus.

This past year, the Assembly Series again presented the Washington University community with the opportunity to hear a phenomenal slate of speakers. Wednesday after Wednesday we are offered the chance to pose questions to these prominent leaders, writers, athletes, and activists and learn from their breadth of expertise. Unfortunately for many students though, class conflicts or other commitments prevent them from attending the lectures. Although it must be difficult to schedule classes so that there will never be a course that meets from 11 to 12 on Wednesdays, administrators should make it mandatory that no classes be held during this time so that every WU student will be free to attend the lectures.

If WU is willing to set aside a significant amount of funding for the Assembly Series, it also should be willing to schedule classes around that hour so that all students will always have the time open on their schedules. When row after row in Graham Chapel is hardly full, and a significant number of those present in the audience are not students, a poor message is sent to the speakers and others from outside the WU community. These lectures obviously are not a major priority to the people on this campus if we are not willing, or in many cases, unable to attend them.

According to Barbara Rea, director of major projects in the WU Public Affairs office, it is strongly encouraged that classes not be held during this one-hour block every Wednesday; nevertheless, it is clear that each undergraduate school does not honor this request as the Spring 2003 course listings reveal that all five undergraduate schools offered classes during the hour that the Assembly Series lectures are held. For example, this semester the School of Business scheduled several required courses such as financial accounting, microeconomics, and organizational behavior during some portion of the 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. hour on Wednesday. The economics department also offered three courses during this time period, which is not atypical of any other department in Arts and Sciences.

Earlier this semester, a student group I am involved with co-sponsored an Assembly Series lecture. In order to even attend the talk, I spoke to both of my professors beforehand to explain to them why I would be absent from class that day. Then I had to schedule time to meet with one of those professors to review the material covered that day in class so I would be prepared for an upcoming exam. While both of these professors were understanding and even encouraged my involvement with this particular lecture, the fact remains that I had to go to such great lengths to hear the speaker. If classes were not scheduled during the time the talks take place, then students might be more willing to attend the speeches and possibly co-sponsor lectures with their student groups. WU students are already involved in a myriad of activities, both inside and outside the classroom, and the current system of scheduling classes during this time limits their ability to get more involved with the Assembly Series and use it as a complement to their academic and extracurricular pursuits.

Without a doubt, scheduling classes is a daunting task for the deans, registrars, and faculty in each school at WU. Nevertheless, if WU is committed to bringing these great speakers to campus, more should be done to ensure that students are at least able to attend the lectures. Furthermore, if it proves to be impossible to avoid having a class during that hour, then students should not be penalized for attempting to extend and apply their knowledge outside the classroom. The Assembly Series is one of the most important avenues we have to hear from nationally recognized scholars and leaders. All learning does not necessarily have to occur in the classroom. By limiting students’ opportunity to engage in these lectures, WU is doing itself and the intellectual development of its students a great disservice.