Mar 9 | 12:00 am
On Thursday Feb. 25, the group responsible for the Generic Good Morning Message — famous for its racist joke last year about College President Jim Yong Kim (“E-mail on Kim stirs controversy,” Mar. 5, 2009) — sent one containing an offensive and disrespectful joke parodying Christianity and Jesus Christ.
More»Mar 9 | 12:00 am
Last week I saw something strange while waiting for my morning omelette at Collis Cafe. After the lady asked the obligatory “egg-white or regular?” the student in front of me answered that he wanted half of each.
More»Mar 8 | 12:00 am
“Happy Birthday,” wrote Spencer. The words, slipshod and shallow after so much silence, still profane my Facebook wall like graffiti. “Happy Birthday.” No modifying clause, no follow-up question, no emoticon, no endearing nickname, no inside joke and of course, no exclamation point. It was a short message that went a long way in representing a painful symbol of a collapsing relationship.
Mar 8 | 12:00 am
Friday’s Verbum Ultimum discussed the Student and Presidential Alcohol Harm Reduction Committee. What steps must this new committee take if it is to be effective?
Mar 5 | 12:00 am
**Correction Appended** When Hanover Police announced its intention to implement compliance checks and sting operation at Greek organizations (“Stricter alcohol plans outrage Greek orgs.,” Feb. 5), it highlighted that there are two related, but distinct, aspects of drinking at the College that must be addressed: underage drinking and health risks. In reaction to this announcement, College President Jim Yong Kim formed the Student and Presidential Alcohol Harm Reduction Committee (“Kim starts committee to address alcohol use,” March 1), but failed to adequately address both concerns.
Mar 5 | 12:00 am
As freshmen, we can respect tradition and absorb taunts deeming us the “worst class ever,” but we should not have to accept what we believe are the worst classes ever — courses that don’t truly interest us — just because we cannot receive spots in our first choices. The trend is clear: many students, particularly freshmen, often do not receive their first-choice class selections. It seems that the College has done little to address this problem, meaning that first-years, the tadpoles of Occom Pond, suffer.
Mar 5 | 12:00 am
To the Editor: Zachary Gottlieb ’10 is both funny and accurate in his take on Dartmouth speech patterns (“Eating My Words,” Feb. 24). The pattern I remember from the1950s seemed to thrive on rapid, functional inelegance. I had hoped that the arrival of Dartmouth women in the ’70s would produce an upgrade. It seems that what we got instead is an intensification of what we already had.
Mar 5 | 12:00 am
To the Editor: I would like to respond to the Short Answer by Brendan Woods (March 1) which invited a Greek house to take the lead in resolving gender issues on campus. As president of a local Greek sorority, I think this comment serves to show that despite our efforts to be those houses, we can do more to make ourselves available to campus. Therefore, I call on all local sororities to increase our visibility as a social space for all those seeking a space where gender is never a source of debasement. I also would ask the College, in an attempt to mitigate gender tensions on campus, to reconsider the moratorium on local sororities.
Mar 4 | 12:00 am
Latin America recently became the site of a natural disaster of unfathomable power. A country that had suffered under a dictatorship for years and has only recently found democracy was struck by a devastating earthquake that claimed the lives of hundreds of civilians and caused millions of dollars of infrastructure damage. Looting followed, forcing the president to all but threaten her citizens to stop. I could be speaking about either the Haitian or the Chilean earthquake, but only one is advertised on this campus, and only one is receiving our aid. Is it that our altruism has run out, or that there was never true altruism at all?
Mar 4 | 12:00 am
Thursday’s health care summit — the latest in a string of sad, farcical attempts to produce a bipartisan compromise bill — has predictably come up short (Congressional Republicans, for their part, declared the summit a failure while it was still in progress ). Now, Congressional Democrats finally appear poised to do what they should have done months ago when they still had public opinion on their side. Democrats should ram a health care bill through the Senate using the budget reconciliation procedure. This welcome step would allow a bill to pass through Senate debate with a mere 50 votes (Vice President Biden holding the tiebreaker) as opposed to 60 through the more common cloture procedure. It has been denounced by opponents on the right as a shady maneuver that undermines the spirit of democracy itself.
Mar 4 | 12:00 am
To the Editor: Arguing , as Dana Venerable ’13 does (“Ke$ha Album Lacks Variety, Novelty,” March 1), that Ke$ha’s debut album “Animal” “[focuses] purely on her party-girl image” is inaccurate. Accusing her of biting Lady Gaga and Katy Perry stylistically is equally unreasonable. And asserting that “Animal” lacks variety and novelty ignores Ke$ha’s creativity altogether.
Mar 3 | 12:00 am
There’s nothing quite so amusing as “the conversation” — that is, the conversation about race, sex and other universally divisive issues that we are always urged to have, but never really can have. Last week, a prime specimen of this overwhelming futility presented itself, ready for dissection. I mean, of course, the signs posted and lingerie angrily strewn about the steps of three Greek houses (“Signs contend Greek orgs. are racist, sexist,” Feb. 25). I take it for granted that everyone thinks this was a silly and unskillful way to communicate a point, and I agree. And it wasn’t just the way the point was communicated that made it ridiculous, but the point itself was off-balance — I mean, going after Chi Gamma Epsilon for a shirt printed in 2007, when no current members were responsible for the shirts? It exemplifies reasons why we can’t listen to each other, even in more civilized quarters, when we talk about gender and race.
Mar 3 | 12:00 am
March’s arrival reminds us that another Black History Month has come and gone. For some, those 28 days of February were a revival, a re-excitement of sorts that celebrated the African-American community’s rich history. For others, the month went by almost unnoticed. But for me, this past February raised doubt in my mind that celebrating black history for only a month is an effective means of fostering understanding. Dwelling on this, I came to question whether or not Black History Month still serves a purpose in its current form in twenty-first century America.
Mar 2 | 12:00 am
Slytherin trading cards, a Hogwarts Lego set, a Forbidden Forest plush pillow set: our love of all things supposedly magical truly is an addiction. We’re always chasing that initial high – the first words that plunged us into a world so spectacularly unlike our own. But, therein lies the problem. The more Harry unPotter we consume, the less novel it becomes, and the more we need to buy — a cycle destined to leave us perpetually unfulfilled.
Mar 2 | 12:00 am
Many people on campus have bandied about the phrase “social justice” over the past few weeks. But while opposition to employee layoffs has been open and vocal, there has been a mysterious silence from Parkhurst surrounding an incident that made a student feel unwelcome at Dartmouth.