Posted on April 15 at 6:18 p.m.Suggest removal

this proves that censorship at the Daily is totally arbitrary

On

Posted on February 8 at 3:09 p.m.Suggest removal

Oh, practical Paige, you're so right. And, I have to agree with the Daily on this one - perhaps instead of canceling scheduled activities, though, we could just make it policy to take time out our lives and work to rest? Much of the rest of the world makes a habit of this, and I don't think it would adversely affect our productivity. Conversely, I personally feel refreshed and return to work with renewed energy and intense concentration after a well deserved rest.

Here's to vacations!!!!

On

Posted on February 8 at 3:05 p.m.Suggest removal

Probably longer than you. This isn't a chat room or 4chan. It's the web page of a university newspaper. At least, nominally. The internet is a tool, used for a multitude of purposes, and expecting college students to use their brains in this venue doesn't make me naive, I'm just trying to raise the bar and ask for some quality, for a valuable conversation to be had.

Though you are certainly letting me down by implying that I am somehow misinformed rather than actually giving your opinions on the questions I raised. Perhaps you are simply being defensive, or are you too lazy to rise to the challenge? Go punk on some greek students then, plenty of fun to be had for people who only want conflict...

On

Posted on February 7 at 4:14 p.m.Suggest removal

I see your larger point, Ms. Skupin, but am unconvinced by most of your arguments nonetheless. I think it would help you to use specific examples rather than relying solely on generalities.

"a country we can improve when we need to"...

This sounds a bit flippant when one examines the experiences of the people who lived through the "improvements" you are talking about, as if social change happens as an afterthought, like correcting a spelling error.

Let's not forget that many people struggled long and hard and gave their lives to fight for change in some of the social changes you mentioned, and did so against the laws, policies, and history that did in very real and tangible ways dictate their way of life.

If our "way of life" is not our laws, policies, and history, but so much more... what? Our faith in democracy... but this has much to do with our political system that would seem to fall close by laws and policies, our attitudes about politics.

And what else? What is our "way of life," "who we are" that we should not apologize for? One aspect of our "way of life" that comes to mind that we should apologize for is our exorbitant and disproportionate consumption of the earth's resources, both finite and renewable... we have work yet to do, things that need fixin'.

"When the crisis is over and the problem is solved, there is nothing left to feel embarrassed about."

I think it's important to remember that when such massive "problems" such as slavery exist in a society, the damage done almost always lingers for generations. After Lincoln "solved" the slavery issue, should southerners have been "embarrassed" about the Jim Crow laws that sprang up to replace the old system of oppression?

I think we do have some things to be embarrassed about. Sure, women can vote, but what about representation in our government (still mostly old white dudes last time I checked), what about equal pay for equal work, what about the staggering amounts of domestic violence and sexual abuse suffered by women? That's certainly embarrassing. People of color in this country still have less access to education, health care, have a much higher chance of living in poverty and still, yes, still, suffer from racial discrimination in many ways. Racism has not been "solved," neither has sexism. We should be embarrassed about that, indeed, abuse of other human beings is shameful, the fact that it continues is shameful. Oh how recent, Abu Ghraib...

Perhaps we can take away from your article a sentiment of "lets be positive about the worth and future of our country." Certainly, there is always a danger of being paralyzed by guilt. Still, I'd prefer to leave behind the attitude of defensive complacency and move forward instead with an attitude of constructive, informed criticism.

On

Posted on February 7 at 1:52 p.m.Suggest removal

dio, cut the crap with the ad hominem attacks. stick to responding to ideas. (this means you have to remove phrases like "he sucks" from your answers.)

I agree with some of what you said, but I can't agree with your snobbish attitude. Remember to respect that people can have differences of opinion.

ditto leimapapa. if you disagree, can you do better than to accuse someone of indulging in "mental masturbation" and being un-hip? How about trying to respond to the actual content of the article? What, exactly, is the drivel?

On

Posted on February 7 at 10:46 a.m.Suggest removal

Also, there is something to be said for the third world citizens of our first world country. For example... "Non-consenting sterilizations of women - poor white, Spanish speaking, welfare recipients, poor women of color - women in prison among them - during the 1970s were being conducted and sponsored by the U.S. government. One third of the female population of Puerto Rico was sterilized during that period." (quoted in Ana Castillo, "Massacre of the Dreamers," see also Angela Davis, "Women, Culture, and Politics")

On

Posted on February 7 at 9 a.m.Suggest removal

I am disappointed in the commentary on this article. As university students, let's try to read between the lines of the article above, and make intelligent responses that refrain from knee-jerk reactions to vocabulary and ad hominem attacks that try to place us in camps of two types:
1. Religious fanatics, sexuality deniers, freedom haters, persecutors of women, delusional conservatives who don't see the practical benefits to society of birth control and want to impose their values on everyone else
2. Loose moraled, std infested, irresponsible baby killers who don't take sex seriously enough and refuse to take responsibility for their actions

Lets assume, for a moment, that the people posting on this forum genuinely care about humanity, about their loved ones, about relationships, about happiness, but we disagree about the finer points: how do healthy sexual relationships look? What tactics can we use to promote sexual health in our society, for a variety of people that have differing beliefs about what a healthy sexual life is?

I think we can have a better conversation than this. So stop with the ad hominem attacks and aggressive language and THINK.

On

Posted on February 7 at 8:42 a.m.Suggest removal

I think you've hit it on the head with this article. Rape and domestic abuse statistics offer more evidence that women suffer disproportionately, almost exclusively, abuse of our bodies. But the subject you've tackled is one that's more difficult to analyze because, for all appearances, we're doing it to ourselves... skipping meals, signing up for plastic surgery, spending insane amounts of money and time on make up, hair, uncomfortable clothes... but willingness to do damage to oneself is a sign of illness. So what is our illness, where does it come from? Until we can diagnose that properly, we will all be sick. After all, we all come out of wombs, the abuse of women's bodies is, in the long term, a problem for men too.

On

Posted on September 2 at 2:16 p.m.Suggest removal

This passage struck me as both particularly honest and offensive:

"Before arriving, I’d imagined my faithful friends and me walking quietly yet purposefully up to the trailer, getting our food and stealing away like phantoms into the night before the inevitable gangs descended upon our soft, suburban underbellies. But thankfully, things didn’t turn out that way. It seemed like every gangster and wannabe gangster had been drawn here like iron filings to a magnet. I probably unfairly thought most of the honest people there were gangsters. Not that long ago Bobo’s was the site of a drive-by where six people were injured."

It is this sentence where West openly recognizes his own prejudice:
"I probably unfairly thought most of the honest people were gangsters."
For some reason this recognition did not cause him to pause and reevaluate whether the style he chose for his story would cause the kind of reaction it did, and he now will spend his fifteen minutes of fame as the whipping boy for the naive and racially insensitive among us - all for the delivery, however uncouth, of his story of crossing social boundaries that do, in fact, still exist, intangible as they may be.

Even perfectly executed political correctness cannot in itself change the fact that black, brown, red, yellow, female, poor - anyone person type who couldn't vote when our country was founded or for generations thereafter - are statistically more likely to be underprivileged in our society. These inequities don't right themselves overnight, no matter how much we talk about them as if they have.

On

Posted on September 2 at 2:15 p.m.Suggest removal

OUstudent2013, I have to disagree with you - the assumption that the mentioned "thugs and gangsters" were African American were not based on his superficial descriptions alone. West did not use the word "black," but 23rd and MLK is an area of town where mostly African Americans reside, though it is true that people of other races visit Bobo's too. Actually, I've heard that nurses who work at the hospital also frequent the joint (though more likely at lunch than at 2am).

For me, the sentence that was the most offensive, largely because of the logical structure, was the one at the end of the opening paragraph in which he said that he feared death by drive-by shooting because, being white and naive, he assumed he'd be a prime target for gangsters and thugs.

In this sentence, he draws a distinction between himself - person type A, defined as white and naive - and another type of person, let's call it a type B - who are made up of gangsters and thugs - and who are, by logical extension, non-white.

West is somewhat aware that the subject matter of his opinion piece is not so much the fried chicken as it is the lingering racial tensions and inequities that still exist in our society, and he gives several clues to this awareness - referring to himself as naive, using overly dramatic language to describe a simple fast food run, etc. I think this article was meant to be somewhat tongue in cheek. But West never quite reaches the level of self awareness that our generation has mastered - the politically correct discussion of things not as they are, but as we wish they were.

On