Letter to the Editor – Issue 6

Posted on 08. Feb, 2010 by Staff in Editorial

Dear Editor,

I’ll try to keep this short and to the point.  You asked for feedback so here it is.  Part of your problem with the newspaper and the reason no one reads it is because you’re not writing about what the students care about.  How do you know what students care about?  Whatever they give their time for.  We’re all so busy that if we take time away from studying to do something, that means that it is important to us.

You reported in the article about intramurals that somewhere around half of our student body is involved in intramurals.  So write about it!  If that many are involved obviously its something that we care about and therefore will be interested in reading about.  Give summaries of what teams won, outstanding players, predictions for playoffs.

Write about our PUC Pioneers.  Give us recaps of the games and information about upcoming games.  Hundreds of people show up for home games so it must be important to them.  I realize that not everyone is involved in or cares about sports so include other things students care about.

Write about campus clubs and ministries.  Your article “Do the Write Thing” about Amnesty International was great!  It wasn’t too long but was about something that our students did to help others, showcased their work.  Write about Kid’s Reach or Homeless ministry and include pictures.  Write about club events like the ASA or upcoming Business/SA ski trip.  Write about how broom-ball turned out when SA offered it.  And show us pictures of it!  Everyone likes to see themselves in something.  That’s why backtalk was so popular.  You could see yourself or your friends and it was in a manner that was short and sweet.  Interviews are nice but if there are too many and they are too long, it loses meaning.

If you really feel that there should be some academic articles, great!  That is what some people care about.  So have an academic article in each issue.  It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.  Other newspapers have a page for different topics so people can read about what they care about.  We are a diverse group of people and have different interests, so be diverse in your writing and reporting.

Nonacademic and no big words does not equal low quality.  You can still have a high quality newspaper and have a lot more readers if you look at your audience and write about what we care about.

Chelsea Bartlett

Chelsea,

Thank you so much for your feedback.  We’re glad that you enjoyed the last issue.

We are also aware that if sports deficiency were a disease, we would have coded a long time ago.  This is for three reasons: 1) The editor actually has difficulty identifying the differences between basketball and football. 2) Any time we start talking about throwing objects through holes, we just end up referencing Freud and falling on the floor laughing. 3) We frequently get lost heading to the gym.

If this is something that the student body wishes to remedy—and judging by your letter, it seems that it is—we would absolutely love for someone to become our sports correspondent.  Because, let’s face it, if it were left up to us, Axis and Allies would be a major sport.

We appreciate your readership.  If the rest of you feel the way Chelsea does, please let us know.  We’re still in planning stages for our fourth issue this quarter.  If you would like to see something like our last issue, send us an email!

Keep reading,

C2 Staff

In Order to Form a More Perfect PUC: A Few Suggestions

Posted on 18. Nov, 2009 by Staff in Editorial

As we have several times mentioned in previous issues, PUC’s Student Senate is in the process of a reworking the constitution regarding the SA, clubs, and other aspects of student life.  We at the C2 have decided to take a leaf from the books of many major newspapers past and present, and therefore have chosen to print our own considerations on the topic, in order to both create and facilitate discussion, and raise student awareness of the inner-workings of your government in general.  The primary two issues on which we would like to stake some sort of stance are on the formation of clubs, and the still theoretical idea of a Publications VP.

In order to fully support our opinion on club formation, we would like to examine the fundamental, institutional motivation in club formation.  A group of people can meet consistently to do whatever they so choose without officially being a PUC club (and we know of at least a few that do so).  What, therefore, is the institutional benefit of being a club?

To become official, a group must fill out the paperwork with Student Services and be deemed an appropriate reflection of the PUC institution as a whole.  Once this process is completed, and the club is “official,” and therefore … gets a booth at Fall and Spring fests.  Ah, yes, and has a better chance of getting the Student Services stamp on its posters, “use of college facilities for programs and meetings at no charge,” “utilization of college business support services,” and a “student nominated and college administration approved adviser” (Organize a New Club, puc.edu).  In short, becoming a club means that said club will be allowed without much hindrance to try to fund itself.

On the other hand, a group of students with common interests will be able to communicate through myriad other forms than posters and the ever-present Announce emails, and barring scheduling conflicts, an unofficial club can basically use whatever campus facilities are open.  We are not trying to incite a rash of civil disobedience or unofficial clubs; what we are arguing, however, is that Senate owes it to the student body to facilitate student life.  Therefore, let it be proposed that Senate set aside an amount of funding for clubs, and the process of club application and acceptance be relegated to the Senate.  Moneys could come from a system with universal funding for each club, and further funding by application.  Even if twenty clubs formed and each received $200, or even $100, Senate would still have plenty of funds available, and those clubs would have money to at least get started; for a small club, $200 could be all they might need for the year, or enough to help them grow into a large club.  Ultimately, we propose this because at the present, previously standing clubs exist, but there is little motivation to form a new club.  Senate’s money is our money; if it can fund and foster student growth, then it should.  This legislation would move PUC clubs from the margins and into the forefront of social life.  The details, of course, would need to be hammered out by the constitutional committee, but the idea remains.

Our second proposal is the creation of a Publication VP in the SA, and a rather radical restructuring of the publication branch of the SA as it currently exists.  Offices like Funnybook, Yearbook, and our own have little time (or relevancy) to be public SA officers, and more importantly, should not be filled democratically.  The general student body may have no clue regarding the degree of competency of a C2 Editor candidate; our own editor won last year’s election (against himself) with a mostly nonsensical poem posing as a speech—and the extent of his journalism experience is that he took Newswriting last quarter.  It would be far more preferable for these positions (Funnybook, Yearbook, etc.) to be filled by application.  Potential editors would be interviewed by a committee of Communication, Graphic Design, English, etc. professors, rather than chosen by a potentially unknowing student body.  The editor of the NY Times was not elected by New York City.

Instead, we propose the creation of a Publications VP.  This person would run on a platform, say, more funding for the C2 and Quicksilver, less for PUC Cast, and joining Video Yearbook and Yearbook into one publication (as a completely arbitrary example).  The student body would therefore actually be voting on something substantive, rather than that the C2 candidate has gorgeous hair and writes pretty.  This VP, in conjunction with the President, Financial VP, and hired editors, would determine funding for publications for the next year.

Again, these are simply ideas.  Remember, because we feel compelled to mimic our State and Federal governments, the SA is apparently a Republic: the senators represent you and your opinions.  If you like ours, tell your senator.  If you hate ours, tell your senator.  Else this will be a constitution by the Senate, with little input from a potentially apathetic people.

YAF, or Why Conservatives are not Evil

Posted on 18. Nov, 2009 by Peter Katz in Campus

Americans have no concept of politics.

Dr. David Trim, a visiting professor from England, in explaining his political affiliation, told us, “In England, there are two parties.  There are the Whigs, who are like the Democrats, and the more conservative Tories, who are like the Democrats.”  In short, the American notion that Democrats are liberals and Republicans are conservatives—perhaps more importantly, that those equations can be reversed, yielding the notion that conservatives are Republican and liberals are Democrats—is unfortunately US-centric.

A quick political science lesson.  “Conservative” has nothing inherently to do with religion, having a lot of money, being from the South, or owning rifles.  “Liberal” has nothing inherently to do with global warming, health care, being from New York, or being anti-war.  Conservative philosophy, which is what concerns this article, has to do with retention of tradition and community through continuity.  Much of conservative philosophy has roots in Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, in which he outlines a position claiming that society is the giving up of rights in order to protect from mob rule, and that the government gives back certain rights; he ridicules the French for throwing off tradition in favor of abstract rights he claims do not exist as natural givens.

One of the major players in modern conservatism was William Buckley, who constructed a conservatism based on principles the retention of American traditions such as free market, limited federal power, and social order.  These notions are, ironically enough, principles of political liberalism (absolutely not in the sense of American politics), which stresses individual freedom and free market; clearly, no definition is stable, since the definition of the modern conservative rings true with the early French Revolution and the policy makers following American Revolution—who were labeled as liberals by the rest of Europe.  Liberal and conservative, in practice, are not even necessarily opposites; our tradition was two centuries past’s liberalism.

Our campus recently started a chapter of Young Americans for Freedom, a national organization that supports a model similar to Buckley and Burke’s conservatism (but, of course, different; history, contrary to popular opinion, does not repeat itself so linearly as to make ideological clones).  YAF’s statement of purpose includes declarations that “political freedom cannot long exist without economic freedom,” that, “when government ventures beyond these rightful functions [internal order, national defense, justice], it accumulates power, which tends to diminish order and liberty,” and that “when government interferes with the work of the market economy, it tends to reduce the moral and physical strength of the nation.”  In short: free market, small central government, and personal liberty as perceived through economic agency.  In shorter: conservatism.

The primary problem with American politics, if I may be so bold as to declare such a ridiculous statement, is not partisanship, but rather, blind partisanship.  The notion that to be a conservative (and therefore, in the American mind, a Republican) to the American means that one must be anti-gay-marriage (and therefore a homophobe), anti-big-government (and therefore hate poor people), anti-abortion (and therefore a misogynist), and pro-social-order via morality (and therefore a religious nutcase).  Conservatism as an ideology says nothing explicitly about homophobia, nothing about abortion, nothing about religion, nothing about class.  But the American political mind feels that, since conservative = Republican, all of these assumptions must be true.

What makes this problem so virulent is the reactionary nature of American politics, and politics in general.  It is safe to assert that many Americans did not much appreciate George W. Bush’s administrative policies; it is unfortunately more accurate to assert that a good deal of Americans hated George W. Bush because it was the thing to do.  After Clinton, it was cool to be conservative; after Bush, it is cool to be liberal.  The war in Iraq and Afghanistan had little to do with conservative politics – except the notion of aggressive foreign policy – and more to do with the Bush administration.  One would note that there are still troops in both countries; clearly, the real world is a little more complicated than Republican and Democrat.  Nevertheless, because we are so reactionary, somehow, to be a Republican is to be closed minded, to hate humanity in general, particularly minorities and freedom (ironic, no?).

My point, therefore, is that conservative does not yield evil: Republican does not yield evil, and more importantly, conservative does not yield Republican.  American political parties are (supposedly) an amalgamation of stances on specific issues that may or may not have to do with conservatism or liberalism, and may even be contradictory (abortion and the death penalty being the pedantic examples).  YAF represents a modern conservative ideology regarding the market, the power of the federal government, and American tradition.  To claim that a conservative group is a hate group is to be blind to the greater questions of politics and the recognition that “Republican” and “Democrat” as we know them are recent inventions with only tangential correlation to the fundamentals of conservatism/democracy/liberalism.

YAF is an organization of students who believe in American tradition, free market, and limited federal government, not a hate group.  There is perhaps no one so closed-minded as the American alleged liberal who hates the very notion of conservatives (or Republicans) simply because they are not Democrats.  Such a person is neither liberal, nor conservative – simply ignorant.

Facing the Light: Ethnicity, Community, and Exclusivity

Posted on 11. Oct, 2009 by Peter Katz in Debate

C2 was planning on writing an article about ethnicity and clubs.  Peter Katz asked Bryonn Bain about it, and we decided that his response was better than anything we could come up with.  Below is an excerpt of that interview. – JP

C2: One of the topics we’re bringing up for discussion in this issue is ethnicity, specifically how clubs on campus have a tendency to be divided by ethnicity.  Do you have any thoughts on that?

BB:  Wow, okay, this is going to be totally off the top of my head.  I do think that one of the most exciting things about college is that you have a privilege that most people don’t have: to spend four years reading books, writing papers to refine your ideas about what you think about those books and about the world, about what is truth, justice, freedom, spirituality.  It’s important to have a marketplace of ideas that’s as open as possible to really exchange those ideas, so that you can have the greatest, most diverse pool of thought to pull from.  I think it’s inevitable that as institutions like higher education that are “traditionally” white form begin to become more diverse, there will be groups that are based on ethnicity to make them stronger, to make them better able to deal with an institution that is not used to dealing with their experience.  Many social movements go from identity to social interest; once you figure out who you are, you work to moving toward interests.  Common interests may ultimately link multiple ethnicities together.  It’s important folks don’t get stuck, but its’ important for them to have a process, to have an internal conversation within their community.  One of my friends worked at a rape crisis center, and she says that women who experience domestic violence often times move to closed ranks, to a circle of just women.  They prefer not to have men as a part of the process.  I had a student who was raped, and I was one of the first people she called, asking how to deal with the police and so forth—but I wouldn’t expect her way of dealing with a crisis to be everyone’s way.  For the young women who don’t want men involved, I think it’s important to have that space.  Racism, like sexism, also creates trauma; it is an assault, it also creates violence—sometimes psychological, sometimes emotional, sometimes physical.  Take, for example, the constant indoctrination of “white Jesus.”  It’s in part a matter of historical accuracy—we know there weren’t any Scandinavians hanging out in the Holy Land at that time—and if we didn’t have this sort of history of problems, we could not be bothered about it.  But it’s consistent with the legacy of white supremacy.  Those kind of symbols that many institutions, including the church, have not fully dealt with yet—those are the reason that we absolutely need to have groups based on ethnicity to figure out how to challenge these things.

[…]

It’s like the allegory of the cave [Plato]; you come out of the cave, step out of the shadows, and the sun burns your eyes because you see the light.  There’s a reaction, there’s pain, there’s fear.  In some ways, I think that pain is a necessary part of what this experience should be in college.  I think people who are in tune with one another should understand that there are times when those people need to be within their groups, so that they can deal with that pain, that growth, in hopes that at some point in time, there will be a space for those groups to work together.