Editorial: T-breds, take off blinders

Posted by the Editorial Board

The second and third rounds of the field hockey championships this weekend gathered one of the loudest and most enthusiastic crowds for an athletic event the college has seen in years. As the team heads down to Virginia for the semifinals, students applaud a superbly played season. But why was this the first game to attract student attention in so long?

The historically poor turnout for the college's athletic events always wins the same responses: an apathetic student body, a campus-wide lack of school spirit or a school divided between the arts and the athletics. But these kinds of easy labels avoid confronting the much more nuanced culture of student involvement at the college.

We are not a passive student body. An average day at the college sees lectures, games, dance performances, theater productions, music workshops, student exhibits and more club meetings than any one person could attend. Our students devote themselves passionately to their interests, dedicating hours to practices and rehearsals to achieve their best.

But it's hard to ignore how the events that clubs and teams spend hours putting together only gather crowds that can be counted in the single digits. It's embarrassing when departments bring impressive speakers, but the auditoriums echo with the empty seats. Moorebid Ball, The Big Show, Junior Ring, Fun Day – these events, which win mobs of attendees, remain exceptions to a general campus mentality of polite disinterest in their classmates' contributions.

This is a college of participants, not spectators. The empty bleachers at our athletes' games represent a larger campus culture of active participation over passive observation. It's hard to denounce a student body that wants to be on the field, not in the seats. But as long as paintings hang in empty galleries and athletes score goals to resounding silence, there will be a sense of irritated dissatisfaction hanging over the laudable accomplishments that so many students pour hours into achieving.

It's a saccharine cliché, but colleges need school spirit. It keeps students in the classrooms, unites a college divided by diverse interests and ensures that alumni return to their alma mater years after graduation. But we do not express pride in our school just by spending hours practicing and rehearsing. School spirit is forged in full auditoriums, sold-out box offices and roars of approval from the bleachers. When the field hockey team competes against Bowdoin College on Nov. 20, they will play better with the knowledge that they have the support of their classmates at home.

This is the kind of support the college should strive for. Instead of clubs and teams bemoaning poor attendance quietly behind closed doors, a community discussion should acknowledge that the issue is campus-wide. The cast of the Blackbox production should partner up with the players on the Women's Soccer team, with each cheering the other along. If the Bandersnatchers spend a week attending Irish Dance rehearsals, the dancers can do the same. Lectures put on by the Physics Club could see steady attendance from members of the International Affairs Club, knowing the attention will be reciprocated. Formal agreements will form into habitual support: out of that, school spirit will grow.

When the field hockey team won game after game this weekend, they did so with singers, artists and dancers in the stands. That image should become a mission statement for the college as it moves forward. Students here dedicate themselves to their interests, but we need to just as passionately support those of our classmates. We need to learn how to sit in the stands, not just play on the field.

Go gently into that good night: Daydreams

Posted by Rick Chrisman

Dear students,

I see you on the way to classes, I see you coming out of the Dining Hall, I see you laughing with friends, I see your faces sometimes a little vacant, sometimes crestfallen, often thoughtful, mostly lively. I see you and I say to myself, You are paragons. Yes, paragons. Every student, each and everyone of you, are paragons, I say!

Paragon — a model of excellence and perfection — Webster's Third. Well, maybe you are not total excellence and perfection—yet. More like potential excellence. You are, let us say, buds of pure potentiality, hard on the heels of excellence and perfection, as good as gold yet to be burnished. You certainly have the look of it to me, the look of a great capacity, a great destiny and the look of pursuing it intently, not about to let it escape you.

And why not, after all? You landed here triumphant from your schools, flags flying, admitted to this prestigious college (and probably many others for that matter) and acknowledged for strengths that you have earnestly cultivated, strengths for which your families and friends and teachers and supporters have cheered you.

Now, for a change, you have some real scope and you can finally accelerate without impediments or deterrents of any kind. You find yourselves exhilarating in the full flush of all the great things that the human mind and body are capable of doing and feeling.

So far, I have only reported what I see of you in the daytime, which is the only time I see you — or you me. But there is also another world to be explored and discovered, namely, the Night, where an entirely other education is to be had. Yes, thank goodness for the Night! It provides respite from the exactions of the sunlit world, respite from the intellectual sun's exposure of our weaknesses. Fortunately, the moon rules the Night, when the normal rules don't apply and our daydreams of love have sway.

Except for a big problem: Day inhibits Night's call. It seems to take some kind of kick to rid ourselves of the Day's over-regimentation, especially, I think, for students because you live where you work (who else in society has to cope with that?). Your rationale is that, because you work hard in the daytime, the antidote is to play hard at night. Nothing new about that. It's been that way since the neighbors of medieval Heidelberg University complained about mobs of drunken students careening down the village streets.

But how did we wind up with 11 students hospitalized on the night of the Moorebid Ball? It's one thing for people to try to annihilate Reason's glare, but to annihilate one's whole self (and one's living environment in the bargain)? Maybe Dionysus, the god of the grape harvest and wine and festivity, was paying some of you back for two-timing him with Four Loko!

Or was Moorebid a collective reenactment of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? I certainly accept that youth is wholly experimental, but, clearly, love is to be found only within and not outside of our mortal bounds. Jekyll didn't survive his experiments, you remember. Was his such a desirable fate?

The way I see it, you are paragons, and I hope you know it. What you don't know yet is just what you are paragons of! Maybe that makes you nervous. But the answer is coming. In the meantime, you are in flight, aloft, flung toward the excellences and perfections of truth and love.

Rick Chrisman is director of Religious and Spiritual Life, teaches occasionally in the Religion and Philosophy departments and suspects art is the one true religion.

The way we do things around here: Campus Banter

Posted by Taylor Dafoe

We talk about it all the time - the enigmatic, esoteric and all-encompassing "Skidmore culture." It's everywhere: it's the hipsters, the bros, the smokers, the artists. It's you.

The Skidmore culture is an abstract thing that you can't quite articulate when describing your school to someone else. It's a culture that you can't understand unless you're a part of it. It's what makes us who we are. Discussion of the college culture has, however, in the light of recent events, flared up into a heated debate that's calling on everyone to question whether or not it's a good thing.

Some pride themselves on the uniqueness of our reputation, on the novelty that is the Skidmore student. And, of course, there isn't anything wrong with this; school pride only enhances the college experience that we work so hard to protect. But school pride isn't the issue here; the real issue, going further than our style and our students, is the questionability of the world in which that pride is grounded.

This world, so ubiquitous and self-perpetuating that we hardly notice it anymore, is becoming a problem. And frankly, it's about time we talked about it.

Recently, the Skidmore culture discussion has surfaced in the arguments surrounding the excessive drinking and partying dominating headlines on campus. This is undoubtedly part of the problem of our incomparable culture, yes, but that's not where it begins, and it's certainly not where it ends either.

The scope of our college culture extends to almost every facet of our campus lives. Our notorious concentration on what we wear and what we look like, the select music we listen to and pretend to be so passionate about, what we eat, what we do on weekends, the way we talk and act and even think – it's all a product of the culture.

However, the idea here is not our parties or our North Face jackets. The fact that we're so easily influenced by both those around us, and the larger group itself, and that we're viewed not as a collection of distinct and diverse individuals united by the college experience, but as a group formed by the culture as a whole - this is what we should be talking about. It says a lot about the lifeblood of our school.

It's the reason we're drinking too much on weekends, pre-gaming in dorm rooms and ending up in hospitals; it's why we have bias incidents so often, and have issues of vandalism week after week. Of course the college doesn't support such things, but we as the Skidmore collective are nurturing a culture that spawns these kinds of effects.

Most would agree that the Skidmore culture is a wonderful thing – that's why we're here. But sometimes our school acts like Skidmore for the sake of acting like Skidmore. We're playing with the risk of going overboard, drowning not in alcohol, weed and stifling homogeneity, but in our self-involved idealism that promotes those things.

For all the talk about the newfound independence that college provides students, it's funny how people are so readily willing to overlook it, to use and abuse it carelessly - to exploit it rather than use it to forge a personal path. For once, think about what really you makes you a Skidmore student. You're just as much a part of the culture as any other person here; you have just as much say about what goes on.

So it's fine if you consider yourself a hipster, bro, smoker, artist or anything else under the ever-expanding Skidmore umbrella, just do it for the right reasons.

Taylor Dafoe is an undecided sophomore from Cheyenne, Wyo.

The Electric Fence Solution: Talking Points

Posted by Tyler Reny

Rep. Steve King (R-IA), the new chair of the House Subcommittee on immigration, has grand plans for the future. In 2006 he showed off a model of an electrified U.S-Mexico border fence on the House floor. It would be electrified, he pointed out "with the kind of current that would not kill somebody…We do this with livestock all the time." King's disgusting and shameful rhetoric, and the enforcement-only legislation that he has proposed, is just the beginning of what to expect from the immigration debate for the next two years. As long as Rep. King mans the crucial veto point in the House, liberals can kiss comprehensive immigration reform goodbye.

Immigration reform used to be an issue that cut across traditional partisan divides. The Republican Party was split between pro-business conservatives that lauded the cheap labor that immigrants provided and the socially conservative border hawks, or nativists, who warned that immigrants were a threat to our national identity. On the Democratic side were pro-labor Democrats who believed that new immigrants competed with native workers and lowered wages and cosmopolitans who believed that increased diversity only strengthened the country. But these historic partisan divisions are quickly lining up along strict partisan lines with Republicans opposed to anything but enforcement legislation and Democrats fully behind comprehensive reform.

When President George W. Bush, a friend of Hispanics and selftitled compassionate conservative, made a speech in 2006 in favor of "amnesty" for undocumented immigrants, his popularity was already in the toilet and his party had been running against his presidency in re-election campaigns. Needless to say, the Republican Party didn't jump immediately on board. The 2006 amnesty bill that Bush was advocating passed the Senate but died in the House when Republican leaders refused to bring it up for a vote.

In 2007, with a new Democratic majority in the House, Senator Kennedy (D-MA) teamed up with Senator McCain (R-AZ) to push a comprehensive and bipartisan bill through the Senate. During debate, the bill was weighed down with multiple conservative amendments that shifted the bill so far to the right that many on the left threatened to walk away. But, with hesitant support from many civil rights and pro-immigration advocacy groups, most Democrats stayed on, fearing that total failure would be more devastating than a bad bill. When the conservative bill came up for a cloture vote (which would allow debate to end), most Republicans (with the exception of 12) bailed and withdrew their support. The bill died. Pro-immigrant Republicans have all but disappeared.

With Federal immigration reform officially dead, at least for a while, states like Arizona are taking matters into their own hands. This summer, Arizona's state legislature passed the toughest immigration bill in the country (which was actually written, funded and lobbied by the private prison industry, but that is the topic of another column). The bill, which is now being battled in court, allows local police officers to arrest anybody that looks "suspiciously illegal." All legal immigrants need to carry papers proving their legality. Kind of like how free blacks had to carry papers around proving their "freedom" in the mid 19th century.

The Arizona bill polled well with voters around the country. Some 59 percent of voters approve of law as written and many Republican candidates have built their campaigns around anti-immigrant sentiment. Sharron Angle, the Republican who ran against Majority Leader Harry Reid for Senate in Nevada, ran some of the most negative, xenophobic and blatantly racist ads ever aired against Hispanics. Tom Tancredo, Republican running for governor of Colorado, based his campaign on anti-Hispanic rhetoric and fear mongering. While both Angle and Tancredo lost, they both amassed a solid base of Republican supporters who shared their nativist sentiment and rewarded them in the voting booth.

Many of those Republicans, now in charge of the House, will advocate an enforcement only approach to immigration reform, never mind that President Barack Obama already signed a massive $600 million enforcement-only bill in August. Any attempt at serious reform from Democrats will likely get hung up in Rep. King's committee. But not all hope for reform is lost. The Republican presidential candidate in 2012 will have to appeal to Hispanics to win key battleground states during the general election. Maybe the electric fence idea will get ditched for something less contentious, like border guards with cattle prods.

Tyler Reny is a senior government major who enjoys good food, politics and jazz.

Editorial: The best Case solution

Posted by the Editorial Board

The student center should act as the flagship structure at the center of the college. Students should be able to come inside and see the embodiment of what they love about their campus: the creativity, the liveliness and true intellectual spirit. These qualities appear in Case Center, but only as posters pasted on brick walls and conversations occurring under fluorescent lights. The spirit of the college exists in our student center, but only in spite of the building itself.

So many aspects of Case Center have no place in a building intended to act as a social space for students. Classrooms just a few feet away from Burgess Café are ostensibly a part of Ladd Hall, but as anyone who has navigated between Palamountain and Bolton Halls can tell you, those kinds of distinctions are really just technicalities. All administrative offices in Case work closely with students, but their presence can muddle the purpose of a building that should chiefly represent genuine student direction and creativity.

In an ideal Case Center, these spaces would be replaced with facilities specifically geared toward student life. Administrators encourage students to express themselves creatively and to devote themselves to a passionate calling, but the campus's facilities limit students' ability to effectively plan and advertise what they accomplish. A student center should do that.

There should be private rooms to accommodate an overcrowded library and provide consistent meeting space for clubs. A box office separate from the SGA office should act as a one-stop location to find out more about the myriad artistic endeavors that students undertake every semester. Events will be far less likely to be overlooked if students interested in seeing a play or hearing a concert know they can find tickets all in one place, rather than hunting through three different buildings to find information about performances.

Case's Dining Services should be distinct from the offerings throughout the rest of campus. The Skidmore Shop's success in bringing selections of local businesses' menus to campus shows students' eagerness to enjoy their favorite Saratoga Springs restaurants in Case Center. While Dining Services considers having national chains come to campus, bringing in a Subway or a Dunkin Donuts would clash with the college's local and sustainable spirit. Students would be thrilled instead to find kiosks offering Uncommon Grounds, Legend's Café and Pope's Pizza right in their student center.

The Spa especially should be more than just linoleum and tile, and could truly become a performing space with a set stage and comfortable seating that invites students to come together. Rather than just serving alcohol at heavy-drinking events through the semester, the college should offer local beers and pub food at the Spa, allowing students of legal age to come to their student center to relax with classmates in the evenings. In so doing, the college would follow the example of many of its peer and aspirant schools – including nearby Vassar, Middlebury and Trinity colleges – who have on-campus pubs where students can enjoy a beer with friends after a hard day of classes.

These are the kinds of changes that would make Case Center a building that would truly accommodate and nurture the college's student life. A well-run Post Office, a wonderful Skidmore Shop and an accessible SGA Office already serve students' needs well. But what the college should do is think beyond the practical needs of the student body and think of what would make students proud of the building that should be emblematic of the college they attend.

Curb over-energetic environmentalism: Jack Sounds Off

Posted by Jack Ferguson

Have you ever wondered why it costs you money to use your dorm's washing machines? If you haven't and think that's a silly question, consider: housing costs at Skidmore already include your utilities. Why are you made to pay for water and electricity at the washers, and not showers and lights?

One would suppose that the initial costs of those machines have been covered by now. (Ditto the library's charge-only photocopiers, even though you could print out the whole Encyclopedia Britannica at the regular printers, like four feet away, for free.) Is this Skidmore trying to eke us wherever we're eke-able, or is it just the remnants of a peculiar societal habit, some presumption that "they're washers, so pay up"? The yearly start of our "dorm v. dorm challenge" adds a whole new warped convolution to these questions.

To the best of my knowledge this challenge has been running for three years now and every year at least half the members of the winning dorm altered their living habits very-little to not-at-all. The prize for such conservatory zeal includes a pizza party, a raffle for sundry objects and the dorm's name inscribed on a trophy. To be fair, the trophy is probably the coolest piece of sculpture on campus (which I say in all sincerity though I recognize such as quite faint praise indeed).

Every year I am reminded of a class I took on the USSR, in which we learned how especially dedicated workers didn't get wage raises, but rather received badges, certificates and suchlike. I leave it to you to imagine a hungry though industrious worker receiving a trinket, and being expected to smile. The U.S., on the other hand, has prospered under a system of tax incentives by the federal government to the statesand citizens.

Did anyone else have that annoying, cynical voice in the back of his or her head notice how the uproar about global warming receded as the gas prices went back down about three years ago? It seems rather a fact, and not a fault, that we look after our immediate needs and means, and provide and project rather poorly for the distant future. Why can't we initiate a system that caters to our immediate needs as well as our long-term goals?

Skidmore wishes always to further its image as a mutually supportive and nurturing community. Yet once-a-year competitions, appealing to a peculiar, nonexistent patriotism (or I guess dorm-triotism), do not promote this image, but rather fortify our feeling that any beneficial initiative undertaken by the establishment will be short, at worst selfishly motivated and ultimately abortive. In stirs in us no continuous activism, relieves us of no immediate financial burden and seems only to fatten the purses of those we already paid.

And yet, the "dorm v. dorm challenge" is no doubt undertaken in good faith, by a school which has tasked itself to instigate in us a greener, more conservationist mentality; a school that hopes we carry our now energy-conscious minds into the larger world and spur positive change. But such hope seems rooted rather in a misguided, anachronistic communalism. We will not win over the Walmarts of the world by offering them pizza parties for cutting down on emissions. We will win them over on the very terms under which they – and we, us all – were brought into being. ("But I hate the system and its terms!" you say. Nevertheless, your flowers will wilt or go extinct by the time you get anywhere close to depositing their stems down the leveled guns of capitalism.)

I realize this idea grates rather a lot against the environmentalist hard line that people are a scourge and must be checked immediately. But it is up to us to rectify our wrongs in what looks like a rapidly shrinking window, and to do so without extinguishing human life altogether; instead of flying in the face of humanity, we must work alongside the fact of it. Or else environmentalism, along with the rest of us, will fail. You cannot win a war through revolution.

If we have technology capable of tracking our energy output, and we have students bludgeoned by tuition and we also have a global capitalist system in need of revision, why not combine them into a mutually contributive – and reformative – system? Why not reduce (or, heaven forbid, eliminate altogether) the price of washing machines according to our energy consumption? Wouldn't this give us yearlong incentive to be more energy conscious? Maybe this could become campus-wide. Maybe if we're really good then the policy might even extend to those true luxuries such as Xerox machines.

And then maybe we would actually feel like we were all on the same team.

If we are going to effectively combat global warming; if we as a generation are to initiate true change; if we ever hope to wrest some individuality from the faceless consumers we are perceived to be, then it strikes me that we ought to work through the system in order to reform it, in those terms to which our means cohere, and not those that our ideals enjoy. Time is not on our side.

Jack Ferguson is senior history and English double major from Philadelphia, Penn.

Check ourselves before we wreck ourselves: Campus banter

Posted by Taylor Dafoe

Moorebid Ball, the biggest campus event of the year, was anything but a success. It was a disgusting display of decadence, an eye-opening example of student excess and a taste of the darker side of college life that we pretended not to endorse. The only thing the college succeeded in this weekend was humiliating itself.

There's been a lot of talk this week about how the college will react to the Moorebid horrors, and about how students will act in the wake of such a publicized event. It's not that those considerations are fruitless; they're not. They're just the wrong discussions.

It's not something we like to admit (in fact it's a common joke, really), but the truth is that our campus has something of a problem. It's not a new issue, and we're certainly not alone in this boat, but it's nonetheless a real problem, and an embarrassing one at that. Ironically, now that we're finally starting to talk about it, the rest of the country is doing the same.

Moorebid is just the latest (and most pronounced) in a long string of related issues. There have been so many, in fact, that the concern is now much bigger than hangovers and Health Services visits - we're harming the school's image; we're destroying our campus; and, most importantly, we're hurting students.

Whether we like to talk about it or not, our campus fosters an all-consuming culture of drink first, think later. It's a dangerous weekend scene that's starting to ruin our reputation, limit campus events and, frankly, produce hospital bills.

Skidmore students are far too willing to binge-drink themselves into blackout, to kill the weekend wasted and dumb, than to, God forbid, do something productive and sober.

And don't think this is a small problem that can be pinpointed or pushed off on a few students who take one-too-many shots every weekend. I don't even think any individual can be held responsible for the Moorebid debacle. The campus nightlife just generally involves getting hammered and throwing up on the Case walkway. What did we expect to happen on the most notorious night of the year?

There's talk about discontinuing Moorebid in the future, and it's appalling to hear just how many people (students included) think it's a good idea. However, that's not really getting to the heart of the problem. Really this goes beyond campus officials and the makers of Four Loko – it starts with the students. And, surprise surprise, that's where the solution begins, too.

The student body, both past and present, is solely responsible for its thriving party life and weekend scene. And before we have another repeat of Moorebid, before we really start to shorten the leash on campus events, we need to change. We're headed down a hazardous path, and doing so stupidly and drunk as hell. It's not that we need to give up partying altogether; we just need to curb our habits. So trade in your beer for a brain once in a while.

Taylor Dafoe is an undecided sophomore from Cheyenne, Wyo.

An exercise in transcendence: Daydreams

Posted by Rick Chrisman

"I'm late! I'm late! I'm late for a very important date!" These words were the White Rabbit's complaint before disappearing down the rabbit hole. Mostly, that is our own complaint every day, all day.

However, it wouldn't be so bad if we were headed for Wonderland just like the White Rabbit (and Alice behind him). Ah, to fall into the land of imagination, absurdity and free play of the mind! But we are not. Here we are in the land of measured time, insufficient time, and time the tyrant, where there re just not enough days in the minute.

Suppose we find a rabbit hole of our own. And just how would we go about finding that? All kinds of rabbit holes are abound - look around.

Fortunately, we live in an age of fitness and exercise, athletics and intramurals, that give us unlimited access to endorphins. With their aid we can effect, at practically no cost and with no side-effects, a legal and safe departure from planetary limits — and return unharmed. For me, it's basketball, or was until recently.

When I could still play full-court pick-up games, I had instant entry into the fifth dimension where bodies are fluid, motion is balletic and time stands still. Others say so, too — marathon and treadmill runners, swimmers, squash players, cyclists, skiers, to mention a few of the high energy options. But it does take intentionality, or you never find the rabbit hole.

And, fortunately, we have the arts. Whether we participate on the creating end or on the consuming end, the arts give us access to another timeless realm, the realm of beauty. When we give ourselves to the process of creation, to the exploration of a medium and its craft, we are admitted to that same fifth dimension where time stands still.

Or, at the other end, when we concentrate on the performance, the lines, the orchestration, the dancers' movements, we likewise gain entry into a timeless world. But it does take intentionality, or you never find the rabbit hole.

Yes, and fortunately, we have religion, too. Say what? Now, haven't we dismissed religion from all courts of serious consideration in this modern age, certainly at least here at Skidmore, the seventh most "secular" campus in the U.S., according to the Princeton Review?

If we have dismissed it, there are plenty of good reasons we can appeal to: the irrationalities of religion, its lethal competitiveness, its rigidity, the sexual abuse and corruption and more lethal competitiveness. All true. However, that's only part of the story, the "outside" that appears in headlines and history books.

Yet there's much more to religion than meets the unaccustomed eye, there's an "inside" to religion, which opens the way to a timeless world, a way not so much imposed by religion as something actually sought by believers as the entrance to that rabbit hole I've been talking about.

People do voluntarily observe the rituals and practices of their religion because of the efficacy in bringing peace, sanity and wholeness to their lives. And for some people, that inner peace prompts them also to fight for peace at large through work for social justice.

Sure, many so-called "believers" practice their religion because it's an obligation, or because it is a means to an end, they think, a way of getting into "heaven." Hopefully, it dawns on religious people that eternity isn't later at all, it's now.

And they know they have discovered the Eternal One when they feel free, when they feel for others, when they act creatively, when they can laugh at the absurdity of the world and when their minds play imaginatively amidst life's demands and they hardly ever hear the ticking of the clock.

But it does take intentionality, or you never will find that rabbit hole. It takes the same application of a runner or of an artist for the result to happen. The original (religious) word for this was "Sabbath," a dedicated place and time apart (could be anywhere, anytime), when Wonderland is within reach.

Rick Chrisman is director of Religious and Spiritual Life, teaches occasionally in the Religion and Philosophy departments and suspects art is the one true religion.

Editorial: Know our limits

Posted by the Editorial Board

In the wake of this year's chaotic Moorebid Ball, members of the campus and local community have spent some time trying to assign blame for a situation that spun out of control. The campus and the press condemn causes as varied as a binge drinking culture to an overenrolled freshman class, and as ridiculous as Four Loko or as unfair as the overburdened Campus Safety officers.

But the unalterable and uncomfortable truth is that responsibility should fall to us, the college's student body, for failing to do what our roles as community-members and adults demand.

When we do not regulate ourselves, the college must do it for us. Through the coming weeks, event organizers and staff will evaluate how they police these events. They might come up with new initiatives to address how best to help dangerously inebriated students, and will probably change the procedure for searching bags and controlling student re-entry to events.

The college's resources and the nature of the campus's traditionally rowdy events guarantee these changes will be applied inconsistently and with only limited effectiveness. They encourage students to change locations, but not to change their behavior.

In a more effective move, administrators might embark on strategies intended to prevent, rather than control, dangerous student behavior. By participating in workshops and panels leading up to events associated with a heavy-drinking culture, students can recognize the signs of alcohol poisoning and know the resources available to help.

Implementing a mandatory drinking-related lecture for all entering first-years will encourage more widespread consciousness of how best to respond in situations like that at this fall's Moorebid. After four years, every member of the campus community could have a foundational understanding that can only help prevent a situation from escalating to a critical point.

Students trained in dealing with dangerous alcohol-related situations can alleviate the pressure placed on Campus Safety at these events. Interested Peer Health educators and residential advisors could attend events as paid staff, able to recognize and approach students in circumstances where Campus Safety officers might be ineffective. With uncertain punitive consequences involved in seeking assistance from Campus Safety, students might more comfortably seek help from trained peers with the specific goal of ensuring students' wellbeing.

These changes might prevent a recurrence of what happened at Moorebid Ball: the frightening number of ambulances called, the many more students who drank to dangerous excess and a general tumult that reached a point beyond what the college's staff could control.

But when students face these new policies and harsher controls, we need to remember that we do not have the right to complain. We lost that right on Oct. 30, when the event was cut short because staff realized that members of the college's student body were not going to be able to exercise the kind of basic self-control that students, as adults, should.

We have a responsibility to ourselves as individuals to see when we cross that line between what is acceptable and what is not. In moments where we see real physical risk, we have a responsibility to the college to help each other like the community we claim to be.

In the coming weeks, as the committees and task forces meet to discuss new policies to curb student drinking at events, we should feel embarrassed that the college needs to enact policies because of our failure to act in a responsible manner.

Assay the state of critical writing

Posted by Jack Ferguson

Now that I am a senior I feel there is one statement about my college career I can fully stand behind: I hate, hate writing academic essays. And with the much-touted rise in plagiarism, it seems that you do too. But why else do we attend college if not to grow in knowledge and learn how to better express it? I will proceed with the assumption that if you pay roughly $50,000 a year, you hope to leave with a functional education and adept expression.

The college academic essay is not difficult to write – rather, it is absurd. Almost nowhere does one find so narrow a concept desired in so little space from such a paucity of information. If you're like me, you approach a paper either in begrudging acceptance of the high school topic-sentence-and-four-supporting- points format, or in willful rebellion against it. How did this come about?

I know that I came here not feeling skilled at writing essays in the least. But even supposing that the student body had perfected the clunky unreadable high school essay format: should colleges ask for and support the perpetuation of this rigid template of expression? At a school with a motto such as ours, at least, one would expect not. Further, is this any way for a liberal arts school to help its students engage the world – through tired, desiccated regurgitation?

It seems that the college system is a place where teachers and methods of pedagogy are allowed a wide range of expression. Perhaps for the first time in their academic careers students are exposed to information in accordance with their teacher's – and not the school's – methods. Given that each of us learns differently (the most cited example being that of group-learners v. isolates) the variety here allows for greater individualization, the student choosing his or her professors and classes as best suits his or her mind's proclivities. Why then do we stick to a method of composition designed for ubiquitous utility instead of individual expression?

One could hardly argue that de Montaigne, Didion, Orwell, Sontag, Eliot or any of the great essayists caught even a whiff of the format we hammer away at here. And many of us have never come upon an essay of their ilk nor been taught it in class.

I am of the opinion that before any paper may be assigned the professor should hand out a published essay and hold a discussion on it, pore over its contents, dissect its twists and buttressing evidence. And not just in low-level intro courses, but every time. Why pretend that a student who is unread in the best forms of writing will be able to fashion anything like a readable piece of work?

There is an old saying about how all undergraduate writing is, as a whole, almost hilariously unreadable. This is the central injustice at stake here. To spend time and money and walk out with nothing to show, never reaching a point when I feel my skills have been honed feels to me like being the victim of some cruel (and expensive) deception, in which I myself am complicit.

Once we accept dreadful composition as one of college's necessary evils, we master the art of bluffing it. I have heard my peers talk at epic lengths of BSing one's way through a paper. You're familiar with it, I'm sure. It involves taking one thing and pretending it's another – a somehow distinctly different and better thing. The worst part is that feeling that the teacher is rolling his or her eyes but accepting it. BSingdoesn't feel like lying so much as lumping together rude thoughts in a hasty and careless manner. It's expressing the words and not the point. It's learning how to ignore the point altogether.

Before I proceed, chest-pounding and hollering, a caveat: students very often choose to go home and watch videos or have a beer or chat online or kiss their boyfriends when they could (and probably should) be staying in the library for another hour or two. If you want to have some fun, bring a tuba to the third floor of the library late next Saturday night. Pause, and listen for the reproach that will never arrive. Do we really lack so much work ethic? Do we really desire to squander this unique opportunity?

I would argue that the rise in plagiarism results not from student laziness or lack of knowledge, but from not knowing how to fashion one's knowledge into a coherent, manageable form. I believe that no student wants to potentially mar his or her name or take the unnecessary risk of getting caught. But the task of forming out of nothing a piece of coherent knowledge presents a daunting, nearly insurmountable task. Why else do we always resort to the first form of writing we were taught, though it be a repulsive process?

This is not in any way a defense of plagiarism, often the product of duplicity, haste or rank inattention; this is sympathy for the struggle of those without recourse to a nonbrain-deadening format. The professor might argue: suck it up, bang the thing out. But try it for four years. In fact, try it for two with the immediate prospect of two more years of this drudge, and pretend that the feeling welling up inside isn't that of fear and revulsion.

Try attempting, as we do, to marry the money and debts we face at every new matriculation with the growing knowledge that we will leave here with nothing for which to feel proud.

Try having only this format to use, and then you tell me why the library is deserted on a Saturday night.

Jack Ferguson is senior History and English double major from Philadelphia, Penn.

Editorial: Hail to the chief

Posted by the Editorial Board

We attend President Philip A. Glotzbach's Skidmore and cannot envision any other. As he departs the college for the next six months, we take a moment to reflect on the changes he effected as our president in the last seven years.

In a shift as similarly dramatic as when students saw a new campus in 1962, the Skidmore of today is different from the one graduates attended just a few years before. Members of the college community live and learn in buildings constructed and renovated through President Glotzbach's efforts, made possible by his record $216 million fundraising efforts. From the First Year Experience to Creative Thought Matters, students and professors work in a college structured by his initiatives that we cannot imagine living without.

Through his tireless dedication, the college's standing among higher education institutions has improved. For many students, the choice to attend Skidmore sprang from changes that occurred in the seven years since Glotzbach first became the president of the college. In the constant evolution of the college's image across the country, his time as our president has showed an increased perception of Skidmore as a serious academic environment.

Students will have new options available to them after graduation because of Glotzbach's work these last seven years. In a hiring environment fraught with challenges and uncertainties, his efforts to shape the college's reputation became more valuable than ever. We know that post-graduate life will be made easier because we attend a school that prepares us for and recommends us to a broader range of career opportunities.

But his work is not done. Just as today's students cannot imagine a Skidmore without the programs and initiatives they benefit from every day, we hope that the classes of 2015 and beyond will enjoy more expansive facilities for the sciences, a solid foundation of programming for sophomore year and a more diverse student body. These future students should be able to devote themselves to a broader range of academic disciplines and to explore these departments with greater ease.

But even as he forges ahead with new and exciting changes to the college, Glotzbach should revisit some of his previous misguided policies. As students have said again and again, by making residence halls universally "substance-free," Glotzbach and his fellow administrators assured that no residence halls on campus would be truly substance-free. With his creation of a new task force to study this problem, we hope that the president and his fellow administrators might come to new conclusions about how best to change flawed policies regulating student drinking.

As he has engaged with students through speeches and conversations through the last few years, Glotzbach has treated us as respectful equals. He reminds us of the lives we will be embarking on after graduation even as he shows genuine interest in the day-to-day concerns of our time at the college. We hope that when he returns from his sabbatical next May, he will continue to move forward with the rapid and widespread improvements characteristic of his years as our college's president.

Carbon victory, Senate failure

Posted by Tyler Reny

Common logic would dictate that the Deep Water Horizon oil spill, the worst in U.S. history, would have offered politicians, environmentalists and the public the impetus to pass climate change legislation. In reality, the spill, in addition to poor political decisions by Barack Obama and Harry Reid, nailed the coffin shut on the most serious Senate effort to control U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

The New Yorker recently published an article with an amazingly detailed description of the political maneuvering and missteps that led to the tragic death of the "Cap and Trade" bill drafted by liberal, centrist and conservative senators: Kerry, Lieberman and Graham. The "Cap and Trade" proposal would have placed overall caps on emissions while offering flexible options for polluters to comply. The author of the article, Ryan Lizza, investigated exactly why the bill failed.

Before the tragic oil spill, a perfect storm of factors had steadily chipped away at the legislation. Republicans were already jumping ship. McCain, who had offered Lieberman his vote, had pulled out. He was facing a rare primary challenge from the ultra-conservative J.D. Hayworth in Arizona and he would have to moderate his views to appease the party's base. Throughout the spring, the conservative talking heads had won the framing war by branding the Cap and Trade bill as a "Cap-and-Tax." Trying to justify a new tax to reduce levels of carbon dioxide is a tough sell to voters.

The triumvirate's key political strategy to win back some republican and moderate democratic support for the Cap and Trade legislation was to offer expanded offshore oil drilling in return for a vote. After the "drill, baby drill" demonstrations at GOP conventions, it was clear that the republican base supported the expansion.

But that is where Obama screwed up. On March 31, without conversing with the senators, he announced that the administration was opening up large tracts of U.S. waters to oil drilling. The bargaining chip was off the table. The senators now had nothing to offer to conservatives and moderate democrats for their support. Graham's other possible strategy, offering new large loans to build new nuclear plants in return for votes, had already been destroyed when Obama's budget proposal was released with $54.5 billion for that exact purpose. Obama handed the opposition exactly what they wanted without asking for anything in return.

Then on April 15, the White House drove Graham away from the bargaining table. Somebody in the Obama administration had told a Fox News reporter that the White House was not going to support Graham's proposal in the bill to raise gas taxes to pay for the Cap and Trade bill. This was a blatant lie. Graham had never proposed such a raise. The news quickly spread around the airwaves and Graham's phones rang off the hook with angry calls. The tea-party conservatives were livid that one of their own would propose an increase in taxes. Graham felt the pressure from his home state, lost his temper and walked out on the talks for good.

To make things worst, the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid stunned his colleagues when he announced that the Senate would tackle immigration reform before climate change. Immigration was rising to the forefront of the debate in his home state of Nevada and, facing a tough reelection campaign, Reid felt he needed to mollify his home state voters. But it was all a political ploy. The Cap and Trade bill was almost ready for public release and Reid should have thrown all of his support behind it. The Senate Majority leader revealed that he wasn't at all serious about the legislation.

The fate of Cap and Trade was sealed on Earth Day, ironically, when the Deep Water Horizon rig sank to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico and 62,000 barrels of oil a day began mixing with the warm ocean waters. The bill, which would have drastically expanded such drilling, was drowning under media coverage of dead sea birds and oil slicks the size of Rhode Island. With such a disaster on their hands, no senators would ever have supported it. Seven months of negotiations were destroyed. The bill was tossed.

Republicans are poised to take back the House in November and greatly diminish the democratic majority in the Senate. The GOP's "Pledge to America" specifically mentions its opposition to any future Cap-and-Trade bill and the future Speaker of the House John Boehner is unlikely to support any type of climate change legislation.

So, we sit back and watch as dysfunctional Washington continues its partisan sniping and carbon continues to spew into the atmosphere. Perhaps when we reach the peak in global oil production (by conservative estimates in the next 20 or 30 years) and prices begin to spike will our government finally get its act together. In the meantime, however, I suggest looking into purchasing land in Greenland. By the time we retire and the ice recedes, its coasts might offer prime beachfront real estate.

Tyler Reny is a senior government major who enjoys good food, politics and jazz.

Compost: Turning our waste into a resource

Posted by Maranda Duval

Skidmore's commitment to environmental initiatives is evident all over campus. There are low-flow toilets, sinks and showers in the dorms. There is geothermal energy to meet the heating and cooling needs of the three newest buildings. There are even local options in the dining hall, including fresh produce from the organic student garden. Yet one very basic component of a sustainable campus is distinctly lacking: compost.

What exactly is compost? It's the end-result of decomposed organic materials such as plant matter and animal waste. Think apple cores, cucumber peelings, egg shells, coffee grinds, animal manure and grass clippings that have all been converted into a nutrient-rich, soil-like substance. Compost can be used as soil conditioner, fertilizer and even as a natural pesticide.

The environmental benefits of composting are widespread. By returning vital nutrients to the soil, it reduces the need for chemical pesticides and fertilizers (which can disrupt natural nutrient cycles). By diverting plant and animal wastes from landfills, it reduces the habitat destruction associated with building new landfills. And finally, by providing an aerobic environment for decomposition, it reduces greenhouse gas emissions, specifically methane, which is produced when organic waste decomposes in anaerobic conditions.

It sounds good, but is composting a feasible task for Skidmore? Last year, two environmental studies majors, William Coffey and Nadine Dodge, wrote their senior capstone project on that exact question. Their final report, entitled "Composting at Skidmore College: Turning our Waste into a Resource," found that composting at Skidmore is not only feasible, but would reap numerous benefits for the college.

The report found that Skidmore currently produces approximately 4,521 cubic yards of organic waste every year in the form of food waste from the dining hall, lawn-maintenance byproducts and horse manure from Skidmore's stables. Dealing with this high volume of organic waste is not only a financial burden on the college, but it also presents an environmental challenge at an institution where "responsible citizenship" is written into the mission statement.

According to the study, if Skidmore captured and converted its organic wastes into compost rather than disposing of them, the institution could produce 2,260 cubic yards of finished compost per year. The finished compost could be used in the organic student garden and in campus flowerbeds and landscaping. In fact, it is likely that the college could replace all mulch and compost currently used on campus, which would save the college thousands of dollars per year.

It is estimated that only 500 of the 2,260 cubic yards of compost generated each year would be used on campus. The surplus compost (1,760 cubic yards) could be sold in the community at a profit estimated at more than $25,000 per year.

There is an abundance of support for composting at Skidmore, including students, faculty and staff members. Dan Rodecker, the director of Facilities Services, thinks that with the right management, the composting system could be "as successful as the student garden" (which produced over 1,000 pounds of food in its first year of production). Karen Kellogg, associate professor in the Environmental Studies program, believes that "composting at Skidmore is a low hanging piece of fruit financially [and] environmentally."

The paybacks of composting are clear, from reducing greenhouse gas emissions, to generating potential profits, to attracting prospective students and serving as a living laboratory for classes. Composting just makes sense. So what's stopping us? Adequate land? Capital investment? Widespread awareness and support? Kellogg said, "A compost system at Skidmore is going to involve lots of different entities on campus… Everyone needs to be on board."

To represent the student interest in composting at Skidmore, the student Environmental Action Club has developed a subcommittee specifically devoted to composting on campus. If you want to get involved, come to the EAC meetings on Mondays at 9 p.m. in Ladd Hall. If you don't have time for the meetings, send an email to tarnow@skidmore.edu expressing your support. As Kellogg puts it, "This is going to take commitment on everyone's part."

Rally against political inactivism

Posted by Talor Dafoe

With election season well underway and November 2nd looming, I can't help but notice the inexplicable lack of political activity on campus. Everywhere you look, you see campaign literature being passed out, signs being put up, ads being published – that is, everywhere but Skidmore. We as a campus are disgracefully unenthusiastic about all things government.

Colleges are traditionally political hotspots, acting as vehicles for sophisticated discourse and breeding the most devoted of supporters. We find ourselves a gross exception to this rule, a rather disappointing break in this standard of activism and passion, despite the fact that we are in the middle of one of the most important midterm elections of many of our adult lives.

I'm not trying to rant about the lack of voter turnout; that argument is stale and there are people much more qualified to discuss it than me. No, I'm talking about our campus and our general shortage of meaningful political interest. Enthusiasm couldn't be more sparse.

Even in school elections, contests that couldn't be closer to our personal agendas, interest is pathetic. Few even know when Election Day on campus is, let alone who's running. It's as if political spirit is some sort of obligatory campus job rather than an opportunity.

Here in our state, as the gubernatorial race rages, and district elections are being fought out right under our careless, ignorant noses, we find ourselves struggling to keep up with the rest of the country. We are all too ready to embrace the shelter of the school, purposely putting ourselves in the bubble we so often refer to, ignoring the outside world and the political activism thriving in it.

And don't try to tell me that this race isn't as important as contests of the past, that the campus spent all its energy two years ago on the polemic presidential election. That argument simply has no merit. There is always something at stake, even if it's merely a small battle for governor between candidates that half the country hasn't even heard of. It's important to maintain, through voting – through voice – the same ideals we practice daily. It's crucial that we exercise our ability to think and act politically, if only to ensure its sustenance and livelihood.

We need to contextualize the things we're taught in our government classes; we need to form educated opinions about things other than our philosophy teachers' lectures and the food of the dining hall and, most importantly, we need to care.

I'm not saying we should turn our school into Kent State, circa 1970. And I'm certainly not advocating that we push it to be something it's not. I'm simply suggesting that we start to care: care about that horrible thing we so rarely talk about – the "real world"; care about the people who are leading our school, our district, our state and even our country; and care, frankly about our ability to care, our ability to form opinions and make them heard. That's probably the reason why you're in college anyway.

Taylor Dafoe is an undecided sophomore from Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Editorial: Make Midterms consistent

Posted by the Editorial Board

We attend a young college, one that has reached an impasse in determining what kind of institution it will become. This indecision is evident in various contradictions embedded in so many pieces of campus life. One of the symptoms of these academic growing pains is the mid-semester study day, intended to correspond to a midterm schedule that, as the college calendar stands now, does not exist.

While scheduled as a "study day," the cancellation of classes on Oct. 22 provides academic relief for only a few students. Without a set week for midterms adhered to by the majority of professors, students face papers and exams set on an individual class basis, rather than an institution-wide structure. Ask three students when midterm week might be and you will receive three different answers.

This lack of structure reflects administrators' frequent discussions of education as a fluid and lifelong endeavor, with students following individual interests for passion's sake, rather than for the purposes of evaluation. But as the college's academics stand now, testing exists, and it plays a critical role in students' post-graduate success. The college's ideologies come into conflict with its pragmatic academic schedule, for a result that ends up satisfying neither goal.

Fixtures intended to support the more traditional midterm and final structures, like Friday's study day, become arbitrary, serving only those students whose academic demands happen to align accordingly. For the rest of the student body, the cancelled classes act only as a frustrating reminder of the time that could have provided a significant benefit in their completion of papers and exams.

These midterm assignments play a role comparable to those at the end of the semester, which are served by a much more structured finals week. Look around the campus in mid-December, and you will see a different Skidmore. By noon, students fill the library; parties turn low-key or nonexistent; the college tells student workers to take a few days off.

This contrasts greatly with the more unfocused atmosphere in mid-October. Burgess Café might see a few more students anxious for their morning coffee, but the campus does not see the same intense academic focus as during finals. The difference does not lie in the academic demands placed on students in these two points in the semester: it lies in how the college imposes these demands.

Soliciting professors' suggestions on how to best schedule a midterm week would allow the college to reserve study days accordingly. By strongly recommending that professors plan their syllabi with that set midterm week in mind, the college can create a study day that fulfills its titular purpose. The college should also consider which day of the week would be used most productively, as Friday is not the most conducive day for studying.

To determine what kind of institution Skidmore will become, administrators should look to the small frustrations faced by students as indicators of where they can begin to make those formative decisions. The resolution to these seemingly insignificant contradictions will play a guiding role in how the college goes forward in finding its identity in higher education.

Face the music ... and dance

Posted by Rick Chrisman

A student leaving a lecture last week was heard to say, "Well, that was sure depressing." Another student who came to my office said about the same lecture, "Well, that was sure depressing." A staff member down the hall from me said, "That talk was sure depressing."

They were reacting to a speaker who basically told us that Americans consume so much cotton candy from our culture and cram our heads every day with so much of it that we are not exactly in the best position to cope with today's monster challenges. As a result, ecological destruction, rampant poverty and corporate plunder prevail.

Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize winning war correspondent and now senior fellow at the Nation Institute, did not molly-coddle the audience last Thursday evening in Gannett: we've been snookered, he argued, and, what's worse, we let ourselves in for it — financial interests define our politics and that's that.

I agree, you could sure say that was depressing. Now, Hedges never presents himself as a cheerleader for political activism. Rather, he is a message-bearer and he does not, will not, varnish his message. But he never said there was nothing we could do about it.

For instance, he offered his list of recent presidents, both Republican and Democratic, who have led us down corporate America's garden path — Reagan, Clinton (big-time), Bush II (of course), and, yes, Barack Obama (way big-time). At the very same time, Americans have indulged in so many distractions that "We, the People" have not been tending to our civic business. Now we are really up against it. Hedges did what he came to do — puncture our illusions. Ouch!

Without our illusions, we feel vulnerable, even overwhelmed. It is the main price of admission to adulthood: being deprived of our illusions necessarily costs some temporary distress. Seeing things for what they really are sets us back a little at first. We may feel low, until we finally reach way inside ourselves and make the necessary adjustment to circumstances beyond our control. Learning this is a spiritual adjustment — but then just see what happens.

Thomas Hardy, the 19th century English poet and novelist (my senior project in college, which I have never forgotten) wrote: "If a way to the better there be, it requires a full look at the worst." I often think of other people who have been confronted by circumstances beyond their control.

For example, think about prisoners wrongfully convicted who, like you, face conditions not of their own creation. Do you know about Ruben "Hurricane" Carter, the boxer who was convicted of a triple murder in Patterson, NJ, in 1967? He was given three consecutive life sentences. He maintained his innocence throughout his incarceration in the New Jersey State Prison until he was acquitted on appeals nearly 20 years later. But during this time, he insisted on behaving like an innocent man while in prison — he wouldn't wear the prison uniform (despite periods in solitary confinement to make him conform), he slept when others were awake, he stayed up all night when others were asleep, he didn't partake in pornography, he refused contraband comforts.

Carter radically re-arranged his immediate environment so that he could take the necessary action for the acquittal he deserved and possibly might never get. He had no illusions about what he was up against. He committed himself to an uniquely courageous way of coping with, and finally triumphing over, the evil circumstances put uninvited on his back. This is what I mean by a spiritual adjustment.

What a remarkable model for us who are facing up to some pretty sobering facts but which are not nearly as confining or hopeless as Carter's who was a black man facing white justice. Knowing from this story what we can do spiritually, we can more than afford to give up our illusions and fashion new dreams of our future.

While you are in college, you are not expected to lay hands directly on any of the problems Chris Hedges described. But neither will anyone want you to insulate yourselves from the knowledge of them. Your role for now is a good one: as students you are acquiring indispensible knowledge. Just be advised that all this knowledge is for action one day, and all action is for the sake of people.

Once you see yourself as "We the People," you will be of service and of good use, believe me.

Rick Christman is director of Religious and Spiritual Life, teaches occasionally in the Religion and Philosophy departments and suspects art is the one true religion.

EDITORIAL: A sophomore house divided

Posted by the Editorial Board

In 2013, sophomores might find themselves with new options for housing come room selection day. Amidst the many improvements juniors and seniors would find in the prospective new Scribner Village, administrators tentatively plan on turning part of the new apartment community into housing exclusively for the sophomore class. But while this idea might excite rising sophomores already tired of dorm living, such a plan would splinter an already-fragile common sophomore experience.

The buildings that could become home to 114 sophomores would stand on the hill overlooking the current Scribner Village. Closer to campus but still offering all the amenities of housing ordinarily reserved for upperclassmen, these apartments seem to perfectly suit the transitional stage of sophomore year. But by serving only a small fraction of the sophomore class, the new apartments would create divisions that would fracture any sense of a common sophomore year experience.

The school has long struggled with creating definitive programming for sophomores. Without the structure of the freshman year experience, the excitement of junior study abroad, and seniors' anticipation of post-graduate life, sophomores can sometimes feel lost as they try to navigate potential majors and changing social groups. The close-knit community of an exclusively sophomore apartment complex could provide a much-needed support network if it extended to the class in its entirety. But in this model, it would only estrange a lucky 114 students from their 600 classmates.

Standardized student living situations promote class unity. The freshman class bonds over common roommate trials and successes, most upperclassmen share the challenges and luxuries of apartment living, and sophomores experience a communal fellowship of returning to life in the dorms. They provide a helping hand to fledgling freshmen, navigate dining hall options with an experienced eye and plan for the more independent living of junior and senior year.

New hillside apartments can still house some sophomores, but they should operate more as an emergency overflow measure to de-triple freshmen rooms, rather than a partial reconfiguration of the sophomore year experience. Just as the college offers some underclassmen the occasional Scribner house in cases of congested dorms, these buildings can act as a secondary living alternative to combat the growing issue of forced triples for overcrowded freshman classes. But they should be just that: a temporary remedy, rather than a new half-hearted model.

The college may be correct in building a more cohesive and focused sophomore class from the ground up, changing students' residential lives to reshape their academic lives. We admire our Residential Life's creativity and engagement in seeking to create a positive experience for all students. But creating arbitrary divisions within the class can only further cripple the college's efforts to forge a distinct and cohesive sophomore year experience.

Like, you know what I mean?

Posted by Sergio Hernandez

We've all heard it before. We all secretly dislike people using it. We even want to smack them, shake them up a bit and say, "Get it together, girl, you're in college and a hot mess — not the good kind." Why is it that we are so persistent on using "like" after every word? Is it a Skidmore fad? An effect of the location you come from? Why do people keep using like over and over again? I don't dislike "like"; I can't hate a word for being a word.

A word is what we give it to mean, what we ourselves define; in a sense, we are the label makers. I don't hate the people who use "like" but it does lessen my respect for them. Maybe hate is strong but it irritates me to hear someone blasting "like" 20 times as it were his or her only job in life.

In one of my classes, I won't mention what class but I will say it was an English class, some girl, whether she is mildly intelligent or not I don't know, kept saying "like" after every word she said.

For example, and pay careful attention, when the professor asked, "What does everyone think the word in relation to the themes in the story signify?," she answered, "Well…I don't know, but like I like think it was like presenting that like it wasn't like very cordial to like say like that like things weren't like, you know? fantastic." She kept blabbering on and on.

I just kept thinking, "When will this end?....should I ask Skidmore for my money back? Is that dirt under my nails?" Not only was her comment annoying and time consuming, her entire sentence did not make any sense.

"Like" compares two different subjects, objects, ideas and so on, to help people understand an unknown concept or meaning. Perfect example, "Love is like a rose." Immediately, we get a sense, an understanding, of love's texture and, possibly, smell and we come close to a mutual understanding of the emotion love means.

Maybe I should just ignore everyone who uses "like" after every sentence, and then I'd ignore three-quarters of Skidmore's population.

What can we do? First, check yourself as if you were checking yourself for an STD: Make sure you don't say "like" unless it is to compare two things. If you say, "I like think like that like Skidmore isn't like so like bad," you are saying you're not sure what you are talking about because you are not making a definite statement about your opinions — it's an incomplete thought. Check that your thoughts are consistent with your mouth.

Like is like a disease — I used it correctly! Yay! — you just never know how exactly to cure it because it slowly conflagrates, creeping inside your mind until it gobbles it.

Next time, think about what you say because it does impact how someone thinks about you: if you're someone who says "like" as it were your only goal in life, people most likely look down upon you. Remember, everyone is judging you.

Sergio Hernandez is a math and English double-major and occassional observer.

Grand Old White Party

Posted by Tyler Reny

I was rather excited when the Republican Pledge to America was released. Finally, I would glean some insight into the modern Republican Party. The Party of No was about to become the party of ideas. Their great orange leader, Rep. Boehner, was going to pull us out of this economic mess. And how will he do it? Well, I still don't know.

The pledge doesn't propose any solutions. All I can glean from the text is that the GOP is going to magically reduce the deficit through modest reductions in discretionary spending and tax cuts. The document neglects the elephant in the room, defense or entitlement spending, which together eat up the majority of the budget. Only Rep. Paul Ryan has the political cojones to suggest reductions in these political third rails. Even Boehner refused to offer specifics. He instead clarified that the document is not meant to "get to the potential solutions" but to "make sure Americans understand how big the problem is."

Even scarier than Boehner's ridiculous comments are the photographs. The Pledge is 45 pages long and interspersed with lovely color snapshots of hard working Americans: old white people voicing their opinions in a town hall, old white people in cowboy hats, older white people at business meetings, old white people selling red meat and old white people, well, just being old.

It's official; the Republican Party has managed to, through legislation and poisonous rhetoric, repel most minorities from their party. The Grand Old Party can now safely change its name to the Grand Old White Party.

In the past, the GOP has actually tried to project an image of diversity. Remember when Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steel offered "fried chicken and potato salad" as incentives to draw more diversity into the GOP? His gaffes make Joe Biden look like the Dalai Lama.

But the country is changing rapidly. Hispanics now constitute about 15 percent of the population and are on track to be about 30 percent by 2050. Their electoral turnout has increased from 8 percent of the total population in 2006 to 10 percent in 2008. The African-American vote has grown as well, thanks to President Barack Obama's candidacy, and always trends heavily democratic.

Our last Amigo in Chief, George Bush, actually fought to capture the growing Hispanic vote and managed to increase the Republican share of Hispanic voters from 21 percent in 2004 to 40 percent by 2006.

Bush's stance was illustrative of past trends. The Republican Party used to be split internally over immigration. Pro-market conservatives, like Bush, supported expansive reform and border hawks, like Tom Tancredo, rallied for harsher restrictions. This may be changing as moderates shift toward the border hawk category.

The few remaining pro-immigration Republicans are embracing Hispanics as their new political punching bag. John McCain cosponsored an immigration bill in 2007 and now says he wouldn't vote for it if it were to be introduced again.

The GOP is in trouble if it continues to turn against minority voters. Hispanics ensured victory for Obama in a few South Western states and offer a key electoral advantage in some closely divided regions. Also, old white people are going to die soon and dead people have historically had very low voter turnout.

The GOP might be smart in the short run. There is evidence from numerous studies published in leading political science journals to suggest that as the Hispanic community grows and spreads throughout the U.S., white resentment, anxiety and fear will grow along with it.

The Republicans have been very successful in the past at harvesting and promoting racial fear in return for electoral gains. Nixon and Bush Sr. did it successfully. Newt Gingrich and Tom Tancredo are trying it now. But Gov. Pete Wilson also tried it in California in 1994 and he and his party got pummeled.

The potential for a backlash exists. Then again, California has a massive minority population and the nation still doesn't. But when it does, the Hispanics will not forget the old white men who demonized them. Neither will the African-Americans, gays nor Muslims.

Tyler Reny is a senior government major who enjoys good food, politics and jazz.

EDITORIAL: Don't tolerate hate

Posted by the Editorial Board

A recent tragedy has reverberated around our campus and others across the world. On Sept. 22, Tyler Clementi, an 18-year-old Rutgers freshman, jumped off the George Washington Bridge after his roommate secretly streamed a video of his sexual encounter with another man. This horrifying incident exposes the urgent need to reevaluate and strengthen our community's commitment to abolishing intolerance.

We know Tyler's story, because it's everywhere. Celebrities released video tributes, legislators pushed for new criminal penalties and newspapers across the globe covered the incident. But discussion of Tyler's death on campus took a turn when Jen Burden, Skidmore's director of Health Promotion, sent out a campus-wide email about the tragedy.

"I would very much like to believe that the sort of cruelty that Tyler experienced would not take place on our campus," Burden said in an email that expressed the anger and frustration that we all felt at hearing his story. "Unfortunately, my desire to believe these things does not make them so."

With her thoughtful and impassioned letter to the student body, the conversation changed. It was no longer, "How could something this terrible happen?" but now, "Could something this terrible happen here, at Skidmore?" And the answer, unfortunately, is a frightening and undeniable ‘yes.'

We are living in the beginning of a new millennium where technology has overshot morality. The growing pains inherent in this transition have left us communicating in a thousand different ways without yet understanding the responsibilities involved in their use. We live in a time of instantaneous communication and, simultaneously, continuing prejudice and hatred: Tyler Clementi's death is an expression of how dangerous this can be.

This tragedy further resonates with the hopes and disappointments we all felt upon coming to college for the first time. As freshmen, we arrived at Skidmore expecting college to be a safe space of progressive understanding and open-armed acceptance. Unburdened by the expectations and disappointments we might have suffered at home, we looked forward to the freedom of discovering ourselves in a community that, everyone assures us, will embrace us for who we are.  

We love our campus, but no school can live up to the expectations of a wide-eyed first-year. That's why the college spends weeks training RAs and peer advocates, holds lectures on diversity and combating prejudice and equips a Counseling Center that allows students to make appointments free of charge. A student in Tyler's situation would have many avenues to seek help, we assure ourselves.

But Rutgers offered a Counseling Center, campus diversity initiatives and RAs who spoke with Tyler days before he jumped off the George Washington Bridge. Policies and training can only go so far: it falls to us, as members of the college community, to make up the difference by refusing to tolerate cruelty and prejudice in our fellow students.

As she ended her email, Jen Burden said, "I would like to believe that we are not a community of silent bystanders." If we want to prevent Skidmore becoming a home to the same kind of tragedy suffered by Tyler Clementi, we can't be.