Response to Affirmative Action critics

Well, the school year is over and I've already graduated, but the tough task of Daily Columnists doesn't end there - I just found some responses to my Affirmative Action column which I would like to address. First of all, I realize that men are 49% of the population - that's why I called them a minority, mostly ironically.

Secondly, the stats I mentioned are not incomparable, but if you need more data, I will gladly provide it. If you go school by school and look at the admission data, you will find a trend slightly higher acceptance rates (3 to 4 percent) for men than women. This may not seem like much, but when Northwestern receives 25,000 applications in a year, that amounts to up to a thousand women who were denied only because of their gender. Check the facts for yourself:

http://www.ugadm.northwestern.edu/commondata/2007-08/c.htm
http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Institutional_Research/documents/Brown_CDS07_08.pdf
http://www.yale.edu/oir/cds.pdf

If you don't think it should be called Affirmative Action, fine - come up with a more negative name, because it seems to me to be a pretty hideous practice. As to the equal-gender environment argument, I couldn't open a sports bar and deny service to women because it made my male patrons uncomfortable, could I? Why then should we allow the same from collegiate admissions?

Last trivia

São Paulo, Brazil. Note that if we counted squatters in the urban agglomeration, Mexico City might edge it out, but since that's not in the Southern Hemisphere, that shouldn't have fooled anyone.

Trivia again

The answer: Funnyman Jackie Gleason. Some joke, huh?

Trivia for the week

And I'm back. The answer to this question was the original Super Mario Brothers for the Nintendo Entertainment System (note that I'm excluding PC games - otherwise I believe "The Sims" wins out).

Peace (changed my mind).

Addendum #2 and Trivia

Sorry it's taking me so long to get around to this, but I am now adding info to column #2. I was a little surprised that this didn't yield a single piece of hate mail for me even though I bashed John Kennedy and Barack Obama in a single blow - I guess Academia isn't the haven of liberalism it used to be.

I did have one friend e-mail me to point out that there are points over which reasonable people can disagree in regard to NAFTA. I'll certainly grant that point, but I don't believe that any of Obama's anti-NAFTA rhetoric in Ohio stemmed from these concerns so much as a desire to pander to the pro-protectionist demographic. To be fair, Hillary also attacked free trade in Ohio, although I doubt whether she would be foolish enough to actually go through with her threats. Obama, like Kennedy, might actually go through with his bad promises.

The answer to this week's question, as those of you who were at Pub Trivia last night know, is Java, edging out Honshu by 21 million people.

War. (I feel that 'Peace' is an overused closing line for blog posts these days)

Our Generation's Greatest Strength/Weakness

I have to say that our generation's great strength is our snazzy fashion sense. Seriously, I think we're the first generation in a long time that won't have to look back and cringe when we see old photos of ourselves. Think of the '80s with their scrunchies, neon and shoulder pads. Then there's the awfulness of the '90s grunge movement.

I once had a black t-shirt with a cat on it that I wore with plaid black-and-white SKORTS. Insane, I know, but we've all gotten better.

Our greatest weakness must then be that we suffer Bai Ling to live. 

The Fug Girls are right. She's got heinous fashion sense. And if her pictures are the only ones that survive the nuclear meltdown or next Ice Age, then we're all in for some heavy mocking from the future.

Our Generation's Strengths Vis-à-vis Despair

I was thinking about the division of our generation's identity in relation to global problems. On one hand we've got an extraordinary messed up world to deal with and the scope of the problems are overwhelming in their complexity and numbers. Yet, when I look around on campus, I see little to sour my belief in human ingenuity and much to bolster my optimism.

To my eye, environmental issues are the most threatening challenges facing us and future generations. Studying them is something of an exercise in zen-defeatism. The literature reads like a manual to disaster. I've become a connoisseur of the openings to books about the environmental. They all open in the same way - a one or two page wrestling match between author and issues that attempts to condense apocalyptic evidence into a manifesto of imminent destruction. They all pretty much say the same thing - that we're screwed. Of course, most academics are of the more optimistic type, and they follow their doomsdaying with brilliant suggestions for prescription and proscription... but their initial stomach-punching introductions leave me with a sinking feeling even through the most hopeful of articles: Why haven't the solutions been implemented? What has gone wrong?

Those questions have no easy answers, but it's easy to weigh ourselves down in the non-answer of apathy or lack of political will. Discouragement abounds in activists. A professor told me once that "if you're protesting you're inherently a loser." This is true. But so much the sweeter is winning after you've tasted defeat. Something has changed on campus recently in relation to environmental issues. With the establishment of a green residence next year, the expansion of on campus recycling, and the overwhelmingly positive response of administrators to student efforts to spearhead environmental initiatives, it seems clear that the University has hit its tipping point. Last year I would have been skeptical of NU's commitment to the environment, but this year I am sure that it is strong.

And what did it take to finally hit our green stride? A combination of things - years of little-noticed pressure from within the administration, building student support, and finally the efforts of a few dedicated student activists to galvanize green sentiments into useful political clout. The initiatives that we're seeing now are the tip of the iceberg, with a complex set of committees, actions, and individuals floating beneath the surface. Locally, change is coming from top, bottom, and all points in between.

So - our generation's biggest strength and weakness? Our weakness is defeatism - if we take our raison d' etre as improving the state of the world and humankind, the problems are overwhelming, and it's easy to just sit back and be comfortable. Or strength is our ability to look locally at the positive political changes, positive coalitions, and positive attitudes that prevail - and then to take action on the basis of that hope.