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(05/06/13 6:47pm)
Thirty-three California high school students have been suspended for five days for producing a video in which students twerked. They may be excluded from prom and, for the seniors, graduation ceremonies, all because the school defines the video as sexual harassment.Earlier this spring, my colleague Kelly Fritz wrote "Twerk for the right reasons," a terrific column about her lengthy experience with twerking as a movement of youth culture and its more recent slut-shaming and racist conceptions.This issue in California is exactly what she warned us about. The school's sexual harassment policy defines the act as "unwelcome sexual advances; requests for sexual favors; or verbal, visual, or physical conduct of a sexual nature made by someone from or in the educational setting." Because these students were enrolled in a media class and made the video using school equipment, the school decided this act fit the “visual” proviso of its sexual harassment definition. There are three huge issues with the school's policy and decision. 1. Calling any "verbal, visual or physical conduct of a sexual nature" that occurs in school sexual harassment is absurdly broad. This kind of conduct could conceivably be entirely victimless, as is the case with this video. How can harassment be victimless? Who is being harassed?2. Automatically defining twerking as "conduct of a sexual nature" reveals exactly the mindset Kelly Fritz warned us about. Not only does the decision reveal the school's slut-shaming biases, but also its racist assumptions about twerking itself.The school argues the dance is inherently suggestive, and in many cases the school is right. But so is the tango. And the salsa. Suspending the students involved in the ballroom dance club hardly seems just around the corner, so I don't think we can call this a comprehensive crackdown on sexual dance moves. Could it possibly be that, in the eyes of the school, this particular suggestive dance is derived from a culture they find unsavory? This conflation of twerking with "ghetto" is something Fritz strongly - and correctly - urges us to avoid. 3.) No-tolerance policies, and their offspring, suspension and expulsion, are hilariously wrongheaded. One of the suspended students tweeted, " Suspended for twerking. What do I do? Twerk. At the beach. I twerk at the beach." Students who get suspended often don't see themselves as being punished, but rewarded. These students shouldn't have been disciplined in the first place. But disciplinary actions are already bound to set angsty teens against the authority figures who enforce them. Even if these students had been engaging in behavior that merited correction, removing them from the one institution with the ability to make that happen is clearly not a solution. No-tolerance policies are the educational system's version of the death penalty. We create a list of offenses for which we say, "If you do this, you're no longer worth our trouble. Goodbye." That's no way to treat our students. Before we start renouncing acts as sexual or inappropriate and writing those who engage in them out of the educational picture, we should identify the biases leading us to that conclusion and the message we send to young men and women as a result. Making this video and posting it on YouTube was probably not a very smart choice. I imagine at least one of these 33 students will eventually regret that his or her face appears in a video of twerking buttcheeks, but that doesn't mean the video amounts to sexual harassment.The school and so many others disagree and think suspension under a no-tolerance policy is a correct or proportional response. That's not a smart choice, either.
(04/26/13 4:00am)
While most IU students were nursing a hefty hangover Sunday morning, I was struggling to conquer an 80-foot rock wall called Eureka in the Red River Gorge.As part of a three-day class excursion through IU Outdoor Adventures, I spent my Little 500 weekend climbing actual rocks — something I had never done before.For the fiscal years 2011-12 and 2012-13, IUOA received $0.64 per student from the Student Mandatory Fee — less than one percent of the total fee, or about $50,000 a year — to provide experiences like these to students at a reduced cost. For the next two fiscal years, the Committee for Fee Review has recommended IUOA receive nothing. As a result, students will lose their discount for IUOA retail and rental gear. Trips like mine will lose their significant subsidy. IUOA, a student leadership program of the Indiana Memorial Union, began in 1972 as a committee of the Union Board. For more than 40 years, IUOA grew to provide more than 120 trips and academic courses each year, IU’s only indoor climbing facility and a store offering outdoor equipment for sale or rent. But IUOA is about more than just renting tents and taking students rock climbing. The mission of the organization is to foster leadership skills in students. In 2012, more than half of IUOA’s student fee allocation was devoted to providing free leadership programs to those students. Since 2009, IUOA has increased participation by almost 400 percent. In 2012, almost 9,800 people used some aspect of IUOA. In the last year, it has more than doubled its annual retail sales. In October 2012, the Today Show listed IU as one of the nation’s best schools for students who love the outdoors, and specifically complimented IUOA’s adventure programs like ice climbing and wilderness survival. But IUOA’s student costs are already one of the highest in the Big Ten. To go rock climbing last weekend, I paid almost $200. Students at Penn State pay $50, a $300 student discount. In its proposal to the Committee for Fee Review, IUOA was seeking a funding increase to begin reducing the prices of its trips. Without any student funding at all, IUOA will be forced to eliminate the trip subsidies altogether. Next year, budding rock climbers like me will have to pay even more.According to a letter from CFR dated Jan. 18, 2013, the committee was disappointed with IUOA’s “lack of responsiveness” to committee recommendations “for more careful financial management, increased financial transparency and more effective budgeting to ensure sustainable operations in the future,” and felt the organization did not represent a “good steward of student money.”Of course, Kyle Straub, who, as president of the IU Student Association, served as CFR’s chair, knows all about good stewardship of student money. His own salary and his administration’s choice to invest $17,000 of student money in Hoosier Info Kiosks are perfect examples. The committee’s main concern with IUOA seemed to be the funding it receives from the Indiana Memorial Union. As a Union program, IUOA receives a subsidy from Union revenues that often covers its annual operating loss. “It may be possible for the reserves of the Indiana Memorial Union to cover both the annual ‘net losses’ and the amount of funding previously provided by these student fees,” said the Committee’s Jan. 18 letter. But according to Dustin Smucker, IUOA program coordinator, the subsidy represents a significant misunderstanding between the committee and his program.“This subsidy is necessarily unspecified in order to leave room for revenue and expenses shifts within the IMU’s total budget,” Smucker said. “Furthermore, the committee members did not respond to the IMU fiscal officer’s request to meet to discuss their financial questions.” Eliminating that $0.64 student fee doesn’t create a funding gap that can be filled by the Union; it just eliminates the discounts students receive.Students who don’t take advantage of that discount may argue funding organizations they don’t participate in or benefit from with their money is unfair, and they make a good point. But it’s not hard to get $0.64 of value out of something. If you’ve ever had a class with someone who has been through a leadership development program at IUOA or listened to someone tell an interesting story about their IUOA trip, you’ve probably gotten your $0.64 in value multiple times over from their contributions. When we have strong leaders and interesting people on this campus, we all benefit, even if we’ve never rented an IUOA tent.And if we’re trying to reduce college costs and improve the fairness of funding, a $0.64 fee is the wrong place to start.Back on Eureka, I was ready to admit defeat. Then I looked up. Twenty feet above my head a length of rope connected four carabiners. Through two of them ran the rope that connected me to the ground.I wanted to give up. I wanted that rope to take me back to Earth. I wanted to admit it was easier to remain ignorant of my own potential than to actually put it to the test. I wanted to get out of a harness that was slowly squeezing what remained of my crotch to bits.But I wanted to touch those carabiners more.The word eureka comes from an Ancient Greek phrase meaning “I have found it.”College tends to be characterized as a journey of finding ourselves. Sometimes, clichés are true.Hanging from the top of Eureka, I found peace and rejuvenation beyond the bustle of campus life and one of the most beautiful treetop vistas I’ve ever seen. I found a new respect for people and their accomplishments. I found friends I never would have met in Bloomington. I found a whole new level of potential within myself beyond my perceived mental and physical limitations.For all that, I think we can find a measly $0.64.— drlreed@indiana.edu
(04/23/13 4:00am)
The University’s top-ranked programs are getting new facilities. Or are they?In the shadow of behemoths like the Kelley School of Business and Jacobs School of Music, it’s easy to forget that many programs at IU perform just as well nationally but receive little attention when it comes time to apportion new facilities.The School of Public and Environmental Affairs is ranked as one of the best public policy schools in the nation. Our School of Journalism is consistently in the nation’s top 10.Before its merger, IU’s School of Library and Information Sciences’ graduate program was ranked seventh nationally.Multiple programs in the College of Arts and Sciences have received top-10 rankings in recent years. Clearly the answer is money. Schools that produce alumni with extremely high earnings — world-class musicians and high-powered business graduates — draw massive donations that can fund new buildings with world-class amenities and cutting-edge technology.Schools that produce the world’s best librarians, journalists or sociologists simply don’t have that luxury.According to a March report available from IU’s Office of the Vice President for Facilities and Capital Planning, IU had about $200 million worth of construction in progress that month and $44 million of that sum was tied up in the new Jacobs building, and another $37 million belonged to the Kelley addition, for a total of more than 40 percent. Another $60 million went to new Residential Programs and Services facilities, including a new residence hall in the Southeast neighborhood and Forest Quad’s new dining hall.What’s left is $20 million for new baseball and softball fields and $43 million for renovation and refurbishment projects.Meanwhile, Ballantine Hall is more than 50 years old. The rest of the University’s buildings have to make do with refurbishment and renovation — for which the trustees force fees for “necessary maintenance” onto students — while the University’s poster children get pampered and spoiled by their own affluence.It may seem like success is being rewarded, but as college students we know money is only one measure of success.— drlreed@indiana.edu
(04/12/13 4:00am)
Faced with the strict new gun laws about to go in effect in his state, Dudley Brown of Colorado told NPR, “We tell gun owners there’s a time to hunt deer. And the next election is the time to hunt Democrats.” Aside from encouraging violence against state legislators and being all-around ridiculous, Brown’s comments also represent the state of mass political discourse in this country.Whoever says the most outrageous thing gets the press, and whoever can get the press can define the issue. Want to avoid talking about tax policy? Just call anyone who disagrees with you a socialist. No one wants to be one of those. Skeptical about health care? Get someone to start screaming about death committees and the whole thing will die like a patient with a “pre-existing” heart condition.There’s never been a shortage of people willing to forgo rational arguments and shout buzzwords at a camera in exchange for their 15 minutes of fame. Sometimes they break through and actually get elected to Congress (I’m looking at you Michelle Bachmann), but usually they fulfill their purpose and recede back into oblivion.They’re entertaining, but that’s about it. And we expect our news to be entertaining. The problem is we can no longer tell the difference between our entertainment and information.Few things are more enjoyable than Sarah Palin screaming about Joe the Plumber or Bill Maher squeezing every last chuckle out of John Boehner’s miserable tan, but few things are less newsworthy.Media, like any business, exists to satisfy. It’s the “If I don’t do it someone else will, and if someone else does it, I’ll lose viewers” mentality.I call it the “least common denominator incentive” because, through iteration after iteration, we end up with a discourse that is, at its core, hedonistic.It’s great if someone has really insightful things to say, but unless it can be made flashy or upbeat it will never see the light of primetime.Have you ever wondered why correspondence from the front and accounts of political gridlock here at home are interspersed with stories of rescued puppies and how to make the perfect frittata? Without little breathers of lightheartedness, viewers just flip over to “Modern Family.”As a result no one sees a disconnect between describing the horrors of a mass shooting one second and taking a commercial break so we can hear all about Papa John’s better ingredients and better pizza the next. We commodify the funerals of kindergartners and declare guilty those who have yet to see the inside of a courtroom, let alone a jury, all under the guise of some duty to inform the public.We do it all on the basis not of who has the best argument, but who can turn the best phrase or set up with the most ludicrous strawman.In a way, we are Pavlov’s dogs grown human. We hear the chimes of NBC or the smooth tones of Diane Sawyer and we salivate for our meal of information made palatable by the pragmatics of the medium.We are trapped in a feedback loop of screaming voices we assume belong there, but we have stopped asking ourselves why.We can no longer tell the difference between information we need and information we only want. — drlreed@indiana.edu
(04/03/13 4:00am)
Economics professors say the darndest things.In a post on his blog, University of Rochester professor of economics and recent “Professor of the Year” Steven Landsburg wonders aloud about the implications of the Steubenville rape case and why he thinks the world should “be allowed to reap the benefits” of an unconscious individual. He means you should be able to rape them. If they’re lights out and you don’t get them pregnant or give them a disease, Landsburg says go for it.In my three years of study, I’ve found this sort of application to be one of the most disturbing complications of the ideas set forth in economics.Ask most economics professors and they’ll tell you that people who study economics just think differently.It’s true. We have a tendency to see things a lot of people don’t, to identify trends or patterns or applications of theory in the real world that some might miss.Of course, there’s an opportunity cost associated with any method of thinking, and this includes the economics way.For most of our lives, we are taught to think of individuals as an end rather than a means. In preschool, we were taught we couldn’t hit Billy just because we wanted his toy, because hitting hurt and we would just have to wait. He was playing with the Tonka truck right now, but maybe we could ask Billy for a turn when he was done.For the next decade and a half, that notion of our relationship with individuals is the dominant one. And then the fledgling economics major sits down in a microeconomics class.Immediately he or she is asked to alter this method of thinking. Sure, Billy doesn’t like it when we hit him, but what really matters is that we maximize our own happiness and let everyone else do the same.If we can convince Billy to give us the Tonka truck, that just means Billy didn’t deserve it to begin with. It makes Billy stronger, or at the very least eliminates his weakness from the economic herd.Carry this idea all the way out to the extreme and suddenly you’re “reaping the benefits” of unconscious people.We can sleep at night because we are convinced that making ourselves happy will make everyone else happy — or else no worse off — coincidentally.Even the basic notion of property rights fundamental to the proper function of microeconomic theory is rooted not in the idea that people deserve what they have, but that if I can take from someone else, someone else could take from me.Deregulatory capitalist economics writ large likes to see itself as the coordinated prosperous uplifting of all people in tandem. I’ve come to see it more and more as the selfish dominance of the many by the most powerful, the egotistical delusion that megalomania is altruism.By lauding the use of power and strength — subtly referred to as capital — by those who possess it as necessary to the prosperity of all, economics tacitly endorses the use of people not as an end, but as a means. Of course, in many applications, this is a useful consideration that allows us to describe many aspects of human behavior accurately.But that doesn’t mean we should confuse it for a comprehensive set of guidelines for how to live a worthy life.Landsburg’s argument that rape wouldn’t cause harm to an unconscious individual but provides benefits to the perpetrator and therefore is economically — or even logically — valid in certain situations is the perfect example.Even posing the question is morally reprehensible. It applies the idea that another person may be used as a means to furthering one’s own ends rather than an end itself with an absurdly broad brush.People are not things or tools to be used and discarded for momentary pleasure because they were unconscious and therefore unharmed. People are people themselves and should be treated that way.— drlreed@indiana.edu
(03/26/13 4:00am)
When I was a kid, I used to mow lawns for money. I was the tousle-haired manifestation in 2004 of that television trope circa 1960. I was the little boy with a farmer’s tan who reeked of gasoline wrestling a lawnmower across a postage stamp of grass.I made my first independent dollars as an entrepreneur cutting lawns by undercutting my competition. He was charging $25, so I charged $20.I learned a valuable lesson that day. Eight years later it was formalized in an economics class. In a homogeneous labor market — like prepubescent lawn mowers — with a fixed amount of labor demanded, the wage is the least amount necessary to entice the marginal worker demanded to do the job.On April 2-3, the student body of IU will hire a new slate of executive representatives. Three teams want the job. We only have room for one.Hoosiers 4 Solutions and SPARC for IU are willing to do the job for free. YOUniversity wants a stipend. Currently, that stipend stands at $18,000 total. You don’t have to be an economics student to figure this one out.Some say there is significant opportunity cost associated with being involved with student government at such a high level, and therefore these students deserve compensation.They’re absolutely right, but that doesn’t mean compensation has to be in the form of dollar bills.It’s pretty clear the résumé entry “student body president” and the many networking opportunities it offers have significant value of their own.If someone is willing to do the job for only this non-pecuniary type of compensation, why pay someone who isn’t?“Well,” you say, “because you might get a better product from the people you pay than from those you don’t.”This is exactly what YOUniversity claims. It’s been involved in previous administrations, it’ll be more effective in office than any of its competitors, it’s worth $18,000.YOUniversity claims this salary keeps the executives honest and makes them work harder for students because if they don’t perform, if they don’t follow through, this salary can be taken away by the organization’s supervisors.YOUniversity claims it’s worth your money because it knows how the system works. But that’s exactly the problem. The system — the one that five of the ticket’s six candidates are directly involved in — doesn’t work.Movement for IUSA has moved next to nothing in return for their collective $18,000 salary. Instead it was blindsided by a merger of one of IU’s most prestigious schools and a bill to disenfranchise out-of-state students. It has practically ignored movements representing significant student activity. It has invested thousands in touch screens few care about while budgeting a meager $500 to Lifeline Law awareness, a lifesaving law that, according to the administration’s own Vision of the Ideal College Environment report, only 60 percent of students are aware of. Meanwhile, for every sexual assault you see covered in this paper, there is one more no one will ever report. Movement for IUSA was dead on arrival.One of the most effective IUSA administrations, the Big Six ticket of 2010-11, accomplished everything it did without finding it necessary to draw a salary. YOUniversity claims its proposed salaries are the lowest in the Big Ten and, through some clever budgetary sleight of hand, that they make up only 0.6 percent of IUSA’s total budget per executive, for a total of 3.6 percent. But $0 is still the least in the Big Ten. And as a percentage of the executive budget, out of which comes spending for initiatives such as the Hoosier Info Kiosks and Lifeline, these salaries make up almost 20 percent. Your money, a whole lot of it in fact, could be freed up in this upcoming election. $18,000 can do a lot of good.Don’t pay for an inferior product when you can get a superior one for free.— drlreed@indiana.edu
(03/18/13 4:00am)
I’m really good at airport security. My uncle, who practically travels for a living, took me under his wing once. His lessons have become a Ten Commandments of sorts, Travel Edition.Thou shalt use the Expert Traveler lane at the Indianapolis airport and smile deviously as you cut in front of all the casual travelers.Thou shalt have thy boarding pass and ID in hand.Thou shalt wear slip-on shoes and a light jacket — no belt or watch.Thou shalt not put anything in thy pants pockets, but shall place all items in those of thy jacket, which thou shalt remove and place in a bin.Thou shalt skip that quart-size baggy, 3.5-ounce liquid toiletry balderdash and pack only the Big Four — toothbrush, razor, deodorant and contact case. Everything else thou shalt beg from the front desk of thy hotel or thy gracious host.Thou shalt remove thy laptop for screening, but thy iPad may remain in thy bag.It’s that last one that got me over spring break.As good as I am at airport security, I’m bound to make a mistake once in a while. But this one was a big, gargantuan, gut-drops-through-the-floor-when-you-realize-it mistake.Six hours and 350 miles after I went through the North Terminal security checkpoint at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport I realized something was missing from my carry-on backpack.I had left my laptop computer, my lovely MacBook Pro, sitting in a security bin at the busiest airport in the world.Few things make you feel quite so powerless as being 350 miles and multiple levels of security clearance away from solving a major problem.Immediately, I filed a lost and found claim with the terminal corporation, changed every password I could think of and convinced a family member to head back to the airport — a trip we both assumed would be entirely fruitless.My laptop was gone — sucked into the void of air travel bureaucracy, doomed to decompose on a dusty lost-and-found shelf for eternity.I was going to have to send one of those pathetic OnCourse messages begging my classmates for their notes. Except my excuse was actually going to be true.And then, suddenly, I wasn’t.Someone, some amazingly honest, awesome person, turned my laptop in. Two hours after I realized it was missing, it was safe and sound at home.Yes, I’ll probably have to spend the rest of the semester awkwardly computer-less, but the alternative was much worse.Cynic that I am, I have a hard time believing there are still people out there who will go out of their way to look out for others, especially in the notoriously self-centered and harried world of airport security.Clearly, I’m wrong.Clearly, I need to add one more Travelling Commandment: Thou shalt return thy laptop to thy bag after it has been screened.And clearly I owe one upstanding Atlanta airport patron a drink or 200.— drlreed@indiana.edu
(03/08/13 5:00am)
There is an idea in classical microeconomics that says if we want to maximize the welfare of individuals, the way to do that is to maximize the choices available to those individuals and their freedom to choose among them.Aside from the idea that freedom is fundamentally something that makes people happy, the assumption is that no one knows what will make you happy better than you. If I give you a bunch of choices, you’ll choose whichever one makes you happiest. The more choices available to you, the more likely it is that you’ll be able to pick one that makes you even happier.In practice, this idea may be too good to be true.Barry Schwartz, a psychologist, professor at Swarthmore College and frequent contributor to the editorial page of The New York Times, studies the intersection of psychology and economics.One of his findings says in many cases a finite amount of choice is welfare maximizing, but maximum choice is not.He found individuals often don’t choose efficiently when faced with a large number of choices — they either fail to do what makes them happiest, or else what would have made them happiest doesn’t make them as happy anymore.Bottom line — in a developed nation rife with consumption choices, people end up less happy than they should be.The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania came to a similar conclusion. In 2003, the school studied 401(k) enrollment rates across more than 800,000 employees. They found the more plan choices employees were offered, the less likely they were to enroll.Other studies have had similar results, even when failing to enroll means losing as much as $5,000 a year in matching contributions from the employer.It’s probably fair to say foregoing $5,000 in matching funds for your retirement and not having a plan to fund it is not good for your welfare. Now imagine you’re shopping for jeans. You walk into the store and you’re confronted with a wall of denim. The decisions you have to make to purchase even one pair of jeans start piling up.Boot, straight, slim, ultra slim or relaxed fit? Should they sit at the waist or below it? How many pockets?Zipper fly or button?Do you want jeans named Alice or Kate or Jake or Brad?What about color? Jeans aren’t just blue anymore.If you’ll be wearing these jeans in 2005, you’ll have to think about holes. Holes at all? Holes at the knee? Holes at the thigh? More hole than jean?All this and we haven’t even started on sizes.The process is exhausting. Even if you managed to find a great pair of jeans, you probably aren’t terribly happy about the hour you just spent being harassed through the dressing room door.Modernization leaves us mired in an abundance of choice. When email gets pushed to your phone in an instant, every moment becomes a work/leisure choice.Yet, paradoxically, it would seem consciously foregoing these choices — removing ourselves from the culture that requires these constant consumption decisions of us — wouldn’t be optimal either, considering we know those choices are still available and are choosing to ignore them.Perhaps modern production is impossible without this expansion of choice.And if this production increases our well-being more than the accompanying expansion of choice decreases it, it would follow that we are still maximizing well-being by maximizing choice — we just got the net number wrong.It’s like agreeing jean shopping is frustrating, but at the end of it all you’re still net happier with the choice you were able to make than you would have been if there had only been two pairs to choose from.So does a solution exist? I’ll leave that choice to you.— drlreed@indiana.edu
(03/01/13 5:00am)
I’ve always been a ravenous reader, so it came as no surprise to me when, earlier this month, the UK began a program called Books on Prescription.Under the new program, doctors would be able to literally prescribe self-help books to patients with mild mental health problems like moderate depression and anxiety. Unfortunately, the program doesn’t leave any room for doctors to prescribe fiction for their patients.I know books aren’t medicine, and I’m not suggesting cancer patients read Solzhenitsyn or clammy, feverish individuals pick up Camus and expect all their groans to disappear.But anyone who has ever seen me break down into tear-soaked, snot-streaked heaving mental shambles at the end of “Tess of the D’Urbervilles” or fling “American Psycho” across the room because Patrick Bateman is a despicable human being knows a book has significant power. In many ways, the books that pepper every surface of my apartment are the most constant aspects of my life. As I change, so does what they mean to me. But a pill is only ever a pill. It doesn’t change its chemistry simply because I need something different today than yesterday.The idea that capitalism incentivizes doctors and pharmaceutical companies to medicate their patients above and beyond what they need is not a new one.Somewhere in that film of the written word that coats my home is Charles Barber’s book “Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry is Medicating a Nation.” In it, Barber explains the endless cycle by which pharmaceutical companies magically identify a disease and then create a drug for it.Somewhere else is “The Last Normal Child” in which Lawrence Diller explores why Americans medicate their children with psychiotropics more often than any other country in the world.I don’t mean to set forth fiction as a mental health panacea, nor am I suggesting there aren’t individuals for whom medication is necessary — or helpful — in managing their mental health issues. But I do think literature is undervalued and underutilized as a therapeutic device.All this program has done is acknowledge self-help information is out there and endorse books as a means of legitimizing and conveying it.But a book is not just a means of communicating an idea, nor is a novel just a story or a diversion. A book is also an expansive, endless, self-renewing expedition of internal and external discovery.That’s the most effective form of therapy I can imagine. Summer or winter; good day or bad; depressed, anxious, panicked, tired or giddy, a good story constantly evolves to meet the needs of the reader because those needs are indelibly linked to the way he or she experiences the story.Let’s see Xanax do that.— drlreed@indiana.edu
(02/22/13 5:00am)
I’m an insatiable critic of the IU Student Association, but last weekend I heard news that finally gave me a reason to be optimistic.At least two tickets have applied to run for next year’s executive slate, and applications remain open until 5 p.m. March 8.Now we know at least two teams want the job, it’s time to start proposing things for them to do for us. Here’s my first list of demands.Stop paying yourselvesWe all know by now that college is damn expensive. It should be controversial for student representatives to start handing themselves student money in any semester.We should be even more outraged that the executives who approved it were elected unopposed.The amount they pay themselves is small — only $18,000 total for the entire executive staff — but it represents almost 20 percent of the organization’s budget.Look at IUSA’s total administrative costs — $24,500 with $18,000 in salaries and $6,500 for conferences, retreats and special events — and you’ll find they make up about 26 percent of IUSA’s budget.This would earn them 2.5 out of 10 points on Charity Navigator’s Administrative Expenses scorecard. That’s not acceptable.Re-evaluate initiativesAccording to many people, IUSA is the steward of student money. Sometimes the result of that stewardship is a bit puzzling, like $17,000 for touchscreens at the bus stops.This semester, don’t settle for budgetary apathy from your IUSA candidates. Force them to come up with ways to spend your money that will actually benefit you.My suggestion: school supply vending machines.Why is it I can buy an iPad in vending machines around the world, but I can’t buy a pencil or a pack of paper from one on a college campus?I can’t count the number of times I’ve accidentally shown up for a test missing a pen or some paper or a folder.It’s absurd to force students to walk across a massive campus to the bookstore in the Indiana Memorial Union for a basic school supply when we’re practically throwing $17,000 away on touchscreen Hoosier Info Kiosks.But don’t take my suggestion at face value. Come up with your own, force your candidates to work for you.Advocate for studentsIUSA desperately needs to initiate a thorough evaluation of its reasons for existing and then refocus on them.It is in an ideal position to help student organizations navigate the intricacies of IU administration, but in the past the executive branch has failed to do that.Coal-Free IU was apparently considered a “can of worms” throughout multiple administrations. Last semester, current IUSA president Kyle Straub said, “Either we are closed off, or people don’t know who to go to.”In the past IUSA has claimed they’re open to student concerns, and in the next breath claimed they could only represent those concerns shared by the majority. Just because a student group doesn’t represent a majority of students doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have equal access to the kind of insider knowledge and experience IUSA can provide.It shouldn’t be for any IUSA administration to make a value judgment on a student organization’s legitimacy like the one made with respect to Coal-Free IU, nor should they decide whether a student organization merits IUSA’s time. It’s not the IU Students-Like-Us Association.— drlreed@indiana.edu
(02/15/13 5:00am)
In its ongoing bumble of style recommendations, the Associated Press regards the terms “husband” and “wife” as applying to opposite-sex marriages by default and only to same-sex marriages or civil unions when explicitly used by the individuals to whom the words refer.In a memo released on Monday, AP detailed its philosophy. This memo included the rather harsh sentence, “Generally AP uses couples or partners to describe people in civil unions or same-sex marriages.”Following a rather intense backlash from LGBT advocacy groups, the AP clarified its meaning, but still included that sentence in the revised memo.Honestly, I’m appalled that we’re still having this conversation. On Thursday morning, my extended family extended by two more when my cousin had twins. I’m ashamed that these babies will spend any part of their lives in a world where we still haven’t gotten this together.It’s not enough that same-sex couples have had to fight for years to gain the equal right to marry the person they love. Now they have to fight to have that marriage equally recognized by media outlets that use AP style.These same couples — and all LGBT-identifying individuals — have had to contend with homophobic attitudes for decades.But last fall, when AP released a statement on usage of terms like “Islamophobia” and “ethic cleansing,” it also pulled “homophobia” from the stylebook.At the time, AP defended its decision by arguing that -phobia implies an “irrational, uncontrollable fear.”Some news organizations have argued that these recommendations don’t imply any moral stance and remain neutral on the issue.But the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation called AP’s memo in reference to same-sex couples a “value judgement on the part of AP” that endorses a type of separate-but-equal set of nomenclature. I’m inclined to agree.In case you’re confused, let me be absolutely clear.If you carry signs with slogans that read “God hates fags” and “Thank God for dead soldiers” because you think God is meting out punishment for tolerance of homosexuality, you have an irrational, absurd fear. You are a homophobe, and you should be called one.If you’ve gone to the trouble of getting married — whether to someone of the same or opposite sex — then you are married. You’ve taken a step that requires deliberate thought and decision. You’re not same-sex married or opposite-sex married, you’re just married. The person you married is your spouse, not your same-sex spouse or your opposite-sex spouse or your partner or your “friend.” They are your wife, your husband. That’s exactly what they should be called.Anything less — including an implication by any news organization that this marriage might be anything but valid, anything but true, anything but real — is absolutely a value judgment.— drlreed@indiana.edu
(02/08/13 5:00am)
Dr. Mehmet Oz may have impeccable medical credentials, but in his capacity as talk show host, he’s more entertainer than healthcare provider. Viewers should remember that.Oz earned an undergraduate degree from Harvard University and a joint MBA/MD degree from the University of Pennsylvania before launching into a prestigious career as a cardiothoracic surgeon.These days the doctor only performs surgeries one day a week. His show, on the other hand, is consistently the fourth most popular daytime talk show in the United States.But episodes of “The Dr. Oz Show” are frequently criticized for citing poorly conducted research and presenting facts and data in misleading ways. In a discussion of a “miracle pill to burn fat fast,” Dr. Oz cites a study that was condemned by a staggering proportion of the scientific community.His own study on the safety of apple juice was called “irresponsible and misleading” by the Food and Drug Administration. Dr. Richard Besser, another television doctor, accused him of fear mongering. In his episode on genetically modified organisms, Dr. Oz included Jeffrey Smith, an author and the executive director of the Institute for Responsible Technology, on a panel of experts. At one point he even called Smith a “scientist.” What he forgot to mention was that Smith, who studied business at the Maharishi International University, has no scientific education whatsoever. Members of the scientific community were outraged, and rightly so. Maybe Smith’s inclusion was due to the fact that his institute was actively lobbying for the passage of proposition 37 in California, which would have required the mandatory labeling of all GMOs. Dr. Oz’s wife and executive producer Lisa Oz was involved in similar lobbying campaigns and had contributed to Smith’s work. Then again, maybe it wasn’t.Real science is cautious. Scientific breakthroughs don’t break out fully-formed and verified from the moment of conception. They emerge slowly, piece by piece, gradually convincing enough people they aren’t fantasies. But that process doesn’t make for very good television.As ludicrous as it may at times be, we should separate the usefulness of a show like Dr. Oz’s from its philistinism. Dr. Oz does a great service to the community when he forces his audiences to face up to the realities of their health.This kind of shock and awe tactic, whereby, for instance, you show a morbidly obese woman a gnarled, barely recognizable heart taken from another woman of a similar size, will make people think and change. Oz obviously has a talent for explaining complex medicine in clear terms.More importantly, this type of work is based on actual scientific evidence by actual scientists who know actual science. Not businessmen appointed to direct a lobbying group. But this habit of dropping the word “miracle” into every other sentence and convincing your viewers that you’ve solved their most serious health problem — at least until 2 p.m. the next weekday — is entertainment on par with wine-throwing housewives, not medicine.If you need any more convincing, The New Yorker asked Dr. Eric Rose, the man who performed the very first open heart transplant in 1984 and gave Oz one of his first jobs as a member of his transplant team, if he would recommend a patient seek treatment from Dr. Oz. “No, I wouldn’t,” he eventually replied.— drlreed@indiana.edu
(02/01/13 5:00am)
Most adults today came to sexual fruition at a time when HIV had exactly one inevitable and relatively prompt result — death. It would have been impossible to keep that kind of message from causing stigmatization, undeserved though it may have been, of individuals with the virus.But the time has come for us to reject the black dot of HIV and stop treating HIV-positive individuals as tainted or irresponsible.At the height of the AIDS crisis, popular culture was riddled with representations of the horrendous havoc the disease would eventually wreak on its victims. Theatrical works like “Rent” and “Angels in America” were venerated for their touching treatment of the issue.But in 1989, the Centers for Disease Control began a public-service campaign with a picture of a young man’s driver’s license and the message, “If you get the AIDS virus now, you and your license could expire at the same time.”Only a few years earlier, the AIDS Action Committee had produced a Rockwellian poster of a father figure having a serious conversation with a clearly-terrified young boy. The poster urged parents not to “forget the chapter on AIDS” when discussing sex with their children.Today, when the virus is caught early, patients with HIV live long, productive and almost completely normal lives.Where before confrontational scare tactics with unfortunate stigmatizing side-effects were perhaps justified, we now have the ability and the responsibility to confront the issue with considerable sensitivity.Analyzing history, we must be wary of assigning blame to the individuals responsible for these original campaigns and the stigma they engendered. Confronted with a ravaging and incurable disease and possessing only the information they had at the time, you and I would probably have made the same decisions.But now Logo TV and “Avenue Q” have teamed up to produce television commercials designed to break the cycle of shame. In a “puppet service announcement,” cast members of the award-winning Broadway musical urge us to communicate and “rethink HIV: spread the word, not the virus.”We must treat the effort against HIV/AIDS with due gravity in a continuing fight against a still-dangerous and largely-preventable disease. But we must also remember the larger purpose of any drive to save human lives. Logo’s announcement shows us that we can do both at the same time.If, in order to save lives, we dehumanize and stigmatize the individuals we hope to save, we have lost sight of the real purpose of our initiative.We have a moral responsibility to ourselves and our community to inform and protect each other when possible, but we also have a responsibility to treat each other with the minimum respect our mutual humanity demands.This weekend is Bloomington’s annual PRIDE Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Film Festival. As you celebrate, take a moment to remember our duties to each other and question the assumptions we make about those affected by a disease which is inseparable from the history of an identity many of us share.— drlreed@indiana.edu
(01/25/13 5:00am)
In reviewing Gov. Mike Pence’s proposed state budget, it is easy to get caught up in the “firsts.” Under his plan, education, Medicaid and transportation spending will all increase. While this kind of movement is certainly in the right direction, Pence’s budget pats itself on the back for maintaining an increase in spending less than the rate of inflation — that is, an increase in name only.It’s fair to say a budget increase less than the anticipated rate of inflation is actually a budget decrease in constant dollars.Gov. Pence’s budget has two main centerpieces. The first is a one-percent increase in funding for education. Many people have praised Pence for proposing any increase in funding for education, the first time in many years. However, it’s important to identify just what this increase is, a token.When compared to per capita education spending in neighboring states like Michigan and Illinois, Pence’s proposed increases barely keep us on par, and they don’t even come close to making up for the funding losses during the Daniels administration. Second, Pence proposes a 10-percent tax cut across the board for all Hoosiers. According to Pence’s State of the State address, this will make Indiana the “lowest taxed state in the Midwest.” I can only assume his speechwriters misspelled the phrase “most austere.”In his budget, Pence argues that his austerity efforts are “directly related to creating an environment amenable to job growth, new investment and new opportunity for Hoosier workers and families.” What he forgets to mention is for at least the last five years this simply hasn’t worked.GDP change indices measure the change in a state’s gross domestic product in real dollars. Relative to the base year 2000, Indiana ranks 42nd in growth among the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Before the financial collapse of 2008, Indiana ranked 28th. Relative to the rest of the country, Indiana’s recovery has been stagnant under the severe budgetary policies of former governor Mitch Daniels. You simply can’t blame the results of state-to-state comparisons on any federal politician (read “Barack Obama”). So far, Gov. Pence has made it clear he intends to more or less stay the path.We can attract businesses to this state. But to do so, we must stand out from the crowd.We must show the rest of the country that Indiana doesn’t just match the commitments of its neighbors to its children’s education, it exceeds them.We must stop disguising our budget reductions as budget increases and actually increase our funding of these programs.We must elect leaders who are not demagogues bent on tax cuts and deregulation, but rational men and women who prioritize the education of children and the future of this state over the immediate and fleeting popularity of a reduction in taxes and 200 more poverty-line jobs 20 miles east of nowhere.If we can do that, we can finally begin to thrive.Until then we’ll remain relegated to the stack of good-intentioned, but barely-growing, states at the bottom of the rankings.— drlreed@indiana.edu
(01/10/13 5:00am)
Farrah Abraham of “Teen Mom” infamy recently turned her daughter’s one eyebrow into two through the use of wax, tears and the explanation that she and her daughter were doing a science project.According to her blog, Abraham, who is 20 years old and had her daughter when she was 16, noticed Sophia’s unibrow months ago. She called that revelation a “standout historical moment in motherhood.”Once she was convinced the brow line wasn’t going to part on its own, her mind was made up.Abraham sat her daughter down, attempted to explain to her 3-year-old the finer points of facial cosmetology and dripped wax onto her eyebrow.Obviously it was a fiasco. Abraham ended up completing the job with a pair of tweezers while her daughter slept. Typically I would ignore the antics of D-list celebrities as a rule, but this concerns me. It’s not news that someone who had her daughter at age 16 isn’t a prize-winning mother.While the fact that children are being forced to perceive themselves, at least in part, as an aesthetic expression of their gender at younger and younger ages may not be breaking news, it’s something we need to consider.Remember the story of Nadia Ilse, the 14-year-old girl from Georgia who, after being bullied over her facial features, received plastic surgery to modify them.The Little Baby Face Foundation paid for Ilse to receive a nose job, chin implant and to have her ears pinned back, spending more than $40,000.In a video on the ABCNews page dedicated to Ilse’s story, the 14-year-old is seen applying makeup and telling her mother she hopes to pursue a career in modeling.Ilse was subjected to the symptoms of an epidemic in this country. A 2012 study conducted by the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia found that about 40 to 47 percent of students in third through fifth grade who were bullied were primarily teased about their looks.I have no doubt that Abraham hoped to avoid the same fate for her daughter. It’s obvious this was true for Ilse.In the visual culture that has developed during the last century, it is no longer sufficient to be a good person. We now expect fully enfranchised members of our race to be aesthetically admirable.Children exist in a world of absolutes. When a child adopts something as true, like aesthetic beauty as a measure of value, that truth permeates all aspects of life.So we may not approve, or even perceive it as such, but bullying has clearly become our most effective mechanism for enforcing our aesthetic standards. When we place images of beautiful people on pedestals in clear view of our children, we should not be surprised this is the result we get.But when we avoid conflict with these standards by resolving those things about ourselves that don’t conform to them, haven’t we just admitted that the standards are valid?When we allow our young ones to fix their noses or force them to wax their unibrows, we haven’t beaten the bullies. We’ve joined them. — drlreed@indiana.edu
(01/04/13 5:00am)
I had a less-than-typical winter break.Not that I didn’t put in my fair share of Netflix hours — I absolutely did — but I also read more books, both fiction and non-fiction, than I ever have during the Christmas season, and I put out a copious amount of new writing. Inspired by Neil Postman’s book “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” I embarked on a three-day electronic media hiatus.I spent 72 hours without using electricity for my entertainment. No Spotify; no Netflix; no Tumblr, Twitter or Facebook. I turned off my phone on a Sunday night and didn’t turn it on again until Thursday morning.I thought I was going to die. On Monday I slept more in 24 hours than I’ve ever done in my life, and then, bored out of my mind, cleaned like mad. By the end of my 72-hour experiment, I lived in a spotless and rearranged apartment. I had read four novels, baked seven dozen cookies and ran 24 miles.But I learned the lesson Postman was trying to teach me. In his book, Postman argues the way we receive information and express our culture fundamentally alters how we know what we know.According to Postman, in the print-centric culture that developed at the time of this country’s birth, thought was rational, literary and ordered. Some of the Lincoln-Douglass debates lasted more than seven hours, and that wasn’t unusual. In this century, the advent of television and technology has altered our culture and our epistemology. The line between entertainment and information has been blurred, which blurs the importance of rational thought in society.Postman’s book made me hyper-sensitive to the way I’m influenced by this technology. Today we know in a matter of hours the status of Lindsay Lohan’s incarceration, Kelly Clarkson’s engagement and whether or not Taylor Swift and Harry Styles kissed in Times Square on New Year’s Eve. They did, by the way.Why do we care? The next time you see a piece of “news,” think about what impact it has on your life. Did you alter your plans for the day when you found out Kim Kardashian was having a baby? Of course not.Spending 72 hours without that kind of contact with the world made me realize what is actually important to begin with. It convinced me to be present in my daily life every moment rather than living in an imaginary world of electronic interconnectedness.In the end, 24 miles, a handful of books and seven dozen cookies shouldn’t change anyone’s life, except perhaps for a case of type II diabetes. But they changed mine. I don’t need my email sent to my phone the moment I receive it, I’ve never had a Snapchat that required an urgent reply and I don’t need Facebook and Twitter at my fingertips 24/7.And neither do you.— drlreed@indiana.edu
(12/04/12 5:00am)
Last Saturday was World AIDS Day. This gives me the chance to write about a cause that is very important to me.Recently, I discovered some shocking statistics about HIV/AIDS in this state.According to 2010 data, the most recent year available, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Indiana ranks above the national average in male-to-male sexual contact as a source of HIV transmission and below the national average in people age 18-64 who report ever having been tested for HIV/AIDS.The most troubling statistic is the change in age distribution of new HIV diagnoses in Indiana. Diagnoses of HIV in this state tend to be in younger individuals compared to national averages, and they are getting younger.According to the CDC, 21 percent of HIV diagnoses in Indiana and linked to male-to-male sexual contact in 2007 were individuals younger than 24. By 2010, that number had practically leaped to 31 percent, while the total number of cases linked to male-to-male sexual contact in the state increased 14 percent.For perspective, between 2007 and 2010, new diagnoses of HIV in Indiana across all transmission categories increased only 4 percent, and no other transmission category showed any significant change.So what does this all mean? It means that HIV/AIDS prevention programs in the state of Indiana need to be reevaluated. Carriers are getting younger and more concentrated in male-to-male sexual conduct, which means younger men are either having more or more risky sexual relations. It means they’re probably having more unprotected sex. And without some sort of change, these numbers aren’t going to go anywhere but up.Indiana is experiencing an HIV/AIDS crisis. Thirty years after the name AIDS was first used by the CDC, the numbers are moving in the wrong direction, and no one is talking about it.Well I am, and I’m not going to stop.Honestly, although I find the statistics striking, I don’t find the facts themselves terribly surprising.A fellow IDS columnist recently wrote that he had only been handed a condom once on this campus. Men who are young, closeted and engaging in sexual contact with other men in secret are probably not swaggering into CVS the next morning to replenish their dwindling supply of Trojans. But even openly gay men perceive HIV as less of a death sentence than in past generations.Condoms are a fabulous solution to this problem, and they are simple to use, inexpensive and most importantly, sex-positive.It’s enough to make a columnist want to start passing them out himself between classes.— drlreed@indiana.edu
(11/27/12 5:00am)
While you and I were busy being thankful this last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was busy being awesome.She accompanied President Barack Obama on the first trip by a U.S. president to Cambodia and Myanmar. When violence between Israel and the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip erupted, it was clear that an American voice would be helpful the brokerage for peace.Obama, president of looking presidential, sent Clinton, secretary of actually getting things done. The woman isn’t human.Clinton is an alien superhero.Indeed, a Superman-style alien backstory certainly would go a long way toward explaining that hair. On planet Klynton, they don’t have our sense of fashion. I love you, Clinton, but stop wearing your hair down. It makes you look like a gremlin caught in a rainstorm.When she’s not flying around the world creating peace with her invisible jet and lasso of truth, she’s obsessed with an Earth show called “Love It or List It.” Apparently, on her home world, they don’t get HGTV.In truth, she is the Batman to Obama’s Robin, the Superman to his Lois Lane.If American politics were the movie “The Avengers,” Clinton would be Ironman. Obama would be that annoying guy with the bow and arrows who all the other superheroes put up with. All this is to say that I think we’re not utilizing our only superhero in politics. It’s time we had one in the Oval Office. By superhero, I don’t mean some tool in leather with gratuitous muscles and a quiver. I mean a bona fide alien specimen and gamma radiation superhero with a relevant back story. For decades we’ve voted people into office based about some subliminal elitist criteria. Counting forward to 2016, we will have spent 35 years with at least one Yale University degree between the president and vice president. I don’t have to tell you that the probability of that happening spontaneously is practically nonexistent.We clearly have high standards about who is fit to rule. These are standards the average citizen doesn’t meet. Who could be more qualified than someone with not only a Yale degree but superpowers to boot?Not only is Clinton a highly qualified lawyer and diplomat, she can also see through walls, block bullets with her hand and circle the globe in seconds flat. Just think of the savings from security and jet fuel for Air Force One.Plus, electing an alien would really piss off the birther movement. Bonus.— drlreed@indiana.edu
(11/13/12 5:00am)
Clark Kerr, a University of California-Berkeley economist with a particular knack for turning a pithy phrase, said it was the purpose of the modern university to provide “sex for the students, sports for the alumni and parking for the faculty.”To remain competitive, the modern university has become more of a hospitality industry than an educational one.No longer is it the top priority of the university to provide students with a top-notch education. What is most important now is keeping alumni fat and happy, providing faculty with ample parking and keeping sports teams successful.Currently, IU is debating whether to privatize its parking operations. Many faculty members are concerned this will cause an increase in price and a decrease in the quality of service.As those of you who read this column know, I’m a big government liberal. I firmly believe there are some things the government is better at providing equitably than the private sector. What the public sector can provide more effectively are industries with complex revenue structures and difficult problems in equitable provision of service, like health care, that are best administrated by an institution that serves the public interest.Parking is not among them. A private company is perfectly capable of sitting someone in a booth and taking your money at the end of the day.Besides, this argument belies the real point here.The University shouldn’t be in the hospitality business. It never should have gotten its fingers mucked up in the parking pie to begin with.So much of the time and effort of this University’s staff is spent maintaining things that do nothing to improve my education or college experience.For instance, I use the Student Recreational Sports Center on a very regular basis, but I know many students who don’t. Why should they have to pay dues for a gym they’ll never use? Let the students who want it pay for it. Let the students who don’t save their money.I rarely park on campus and don’t plan to. As I understand it, it’s a privilege usually reserved for graduate students and faculty. A bike, the bus and my own two feet serve me well enough most days. I suggest those who are so upset about losing their parking privileges do the same.I applaud the efforts of the Board of Trustees to privatize the University’s parking operations. I hope this is an attempt to refocus the University’s goal of providing services to the students as opposed to hospitality to the faculty and alumni.Then, maybe they can get around to providing us with that sex Kerr mentioned. — drlreed@indiana.edu
(11/06/12 5:00am)
The assumption that President Barack Obama and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney have the same position about gay marriage is nothing but a gross oversimplification.Yet recently, many claims have been made saying there is little to no difference between their stances.While he supports same-sex marriage, it is true Obama believes the issue is best resolved on the state level. Claiming Romney is of the same mind is simply false.The former Massachusetts governor supports a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman. I’m not sure how anyone could mistake that stance for one of states’ rights.While it might be true neither candidate will have the political desire to push for gay marriage in the upcoming term, there is still a marked difference between their attitudes toward the gay community.The change in treatment of LGBT individuals by the federal government during the last four years cannot be overstated. Obama has signed acts designed to prevent hate crimes and extend hospital visitation and decision-making rights to same-sex couples.He was an essential force for the successful repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.I don’t think it’s much of a gamble to say none of these things would have happened in a Romney administration.Let’s not forget the sheer force of a presidential statement in support of same-sex marriage.Even if Obama thinks the crux of the issue sits with the states, I cannot overemphasize the symbolic validation having a sitting president on your side provides.The words he gave the world on that historic day still burn as a flame of courage in my heart, as I’m sure they do within the hearts of countless others.Since today is Election Day, let me be abundantly clear.The idea that Romney and Obama are of the same or similar mind about the issue of gay rights that same-sex marriage is only a single facet of is just plain wrong.It may be a bit sensationalist to say a vote for Romney is fundamentally an endorsement of anti-gay legislation and cultural homophobia. I’m sure there are many people who support Romney but don’t support these things.But please, don’t insult the electorate by boiling down these candidates’ relations with the LGBT community into an identical mush and trying to shove it down their throats . — drlreed@indiana.edu