The opinions presented below are solely the views of the author and do not represent the views of The News-Letter. If you are a member of the Hopkins community looking to submit a piece or a letter to the editor, please email opinions@jhunewsletter.com.
Way back in the day, (~10,000 BC) the only sport on Earth was killing stuff. There really wasn't much to do besides killing people...and making people. Sometimes for better and most of the time for worst, violence is an integral part of what makes us human. I'm here to talk about "the better".
In his critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Karl Marx emphatically claims, “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless world.” Going further, Marx remarks religion is nothing but an opiate that provides an illusory sense of happiness, which impedes their ability to realize that real happiness lies not in an abstract illusion but rather in their concrete material relations. Almost 200 years after this insightful expose, religion today, more than any other factor, continues to play the most integral role in how a large majority of our country sees both itself and others’ position within the intricate global web.
With the Winter Olympics in full swing, all eyes are on Russia. The Games at Sochi are attracting a surplus of media attention, ranging from reports on the unfinished hotel rooms to the invasive surveillance program implemented to avoid terrorist attacks. Earlier this month, however, exposé writer Jeff Sharlet reported an even more somber Russian reality in an article in GQ Magazine, titled “Inside the Iron Closet: What it’s like to be gay in Putin’s Russia.” For those looking for a worthwhile read (or even just procrastinators bored of BuzzFeed), I highly recommend this short report on a world far away from our own.
On the first Monday night of intersession, I walked into “Healthcare, Housing, and Homelessness in Baltimore,” with literally no idea what to expect; I had not even enrolled in the class. The friend I had just eaten an early dinner with told me that she was taking this class from six in the evening until eight thirty. Immediately, my adolescent mind recoiled: who wants to be in class that late? But as it turned out, dragging myself there through the cold Baltimore air was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Little did I realize, with the wind whipping my face as we walked to class, just how many people in Baltimore that evening were going to be sleeping in these extreme temperatures.
The other day, as I headed towards some unimportant engagement, I noticed a classmate (let’s call her “Jane”) walking by and offered her my usual enthusiastic greeting. She looked up with puffy eyes and an utterly exhausted sigh, and I could tell that this was not the afternoon for joyful gusto.
We college students are often referred to as “Generation Y,” underwhelmingly defined as technology-frenzied, over-parented, high-spirited, and entitled. The last generation of young adults in our country were associated with technological advancements and praised for their innovation. But in Generation Y, these innovations have transformed into an invasion so pervasive that it distorts the expectations and understanding of social interactions in today’s society.
Last year two major American newspapers were sold — the Boston Globe and the Washington Post. Each sale was important for the news industry as a whole, but also carried a local significance for the Baltimore area: there are rumors that the Baltimore Sun may follow suit. Studying these two examples, I would like to propose that Johns Hopkins purchase the Baltimore Sun.
In the wake of a benign but humbling online quiz attempting to ascertain if stereotypical behaviors could pinpoint your political allegiances, in which I scored 76 percent conservative, I’ve been taking some time to reevaluate my belief system. I jest, but in all seriousness, living abroad this year while studying at Oxford and traveling around central and Eastern Europe during my holiday has given me time to test run ideologies. Each new place I awoke to resembled a parodied version of Odysseus’ arrival in a sequence of strange lands. “Odysseus woke, sat up, and thought: ‘Oh what mortal place have I reached this time? Are they cruel and merciless savages, or god-fearing people, generous to strangers? Am I near creatures with human speech? Let me look, and see.’” Again, I jest. Odysseus was nothing if not a walking hyperbole of man, but his trepidation at setting out without Google maps or his Zagat’s Guide rings true in the mind of every traveler: star struck with the locale but a bit shaky on the gory logistics. But novelty in the course of one’s travels does lie on a spectrum, and for the purposes of this article I speak primarily of the normalcy of legalized prostitution in many European countries.
For many young Americans like myself, the shocking reality that our country is still at war has sadly devolved into a second nature realization. With the United States entering its 13th year of active conflict in Afghanistan, war and all its associated horrors have become a defining aspect of life in a nation that has yet to fully recover from the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001. Like most, I believe the immediate military actions taken by President Bush after the attacks to invade Afghanistan and dismantle the terrorist safe havens were certainly, in retrospect, a correct decision. Welcomed by the people of Afghanistan and supported by much of the international community, the United States’ firm initiative to combat a global threat seemed only a step in the right direction. Yet, more than a decade on, the path that our national leaders continue to ardently follow in the attempt to protect our cherished liberties from both external and internal threats has, ironically, further deteriorated those same values.
Every day of my life, I am granted the privilege of choice. I choose who I speak with, how to engage with my classes, and where I go. Most importantly, I choose how I treat my body. This includes what I eat and how I exercise. I have the knowledge available to me to make informed and educated choices on these matters. But this past November, the FDA took it upon themselves to ban trans fats in American food products. If this ban succeeds, I will lose the ability to choose what I will and will not eat. Someone will have already chosen for me.
As many students in the Hopkins community might be aware of by now, President Daniels and the University administration have been busily engaged in an extensive fundraising campaign called Rising to the Challenge. Begun in early 2010, the initiative aims to raise over 4.5 billion dollars to help fund numerous educational and scholarship programs across the several schools and campuses in the university system. By far the largest fundraising operation in our school’s history, Rising to Challenge recently passed the half way mark to its ultimate goal; with over 160,000 donors contributing thus far, it seems very likely that school officials will reach the 4.5 billion figure by their stated date of Spring 2017.
The Johns Hopkins Student Government Association is committed to improving each student’s experience at Hopkins. This semester our Committees, Class Councils and Executive Board has created many new initiatives and events in an effort to increase transparency and continue to improve student life. We have been hard at work meeting with administrators, completing projects and executing events to make your lives at Hopkins students more enjoyable. Here is a recap of what we’ve been up to:
There seem to be two distinct groups of students at Hopkins: the BMEs, and the rest. From the moment we freshmen go around the room and introduce ourselves at orientation, everyone knows who the BMEs are. It only takes a few months on the Homewood campus for this unspoken, self-imposed undergraduate hierarchy to solidify. From superior to inferior, the ranking on campus goes as follows: BMEs, other engineers, pre-meds in the Krieger School, and then everyone else. We are judged based on our majors and what we choose to study. People make empty assumptions about workload and degree of difficulty of classes. Not everyone thinks this way, but enough do to create a strata that bounds the students in both the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and the Whiting School of Engineering.
I saw a beautiful thing Saturday night at 8pm. A crammed auditorium full of Hopkins students, all getting loud and proud for our very own acappella group, the JHU Mental Notes. The Mental Notes absolutely killed it Saturday, as they sang across a wide range of genres, mixing in everything from Jay-Z to Ed Sheeran. But without a doubt my favorite songs were the ones written by the Mental Notes themselves. These songs melded the key features of being a student at Hopkins into poetic lyrics, accompanied the entire time by the vocal talent of the Mental Notes. To see a packed audience wildly cheering and laughing to the soaring notes of “F*** this Final” practically brought tears to my eyes.
I had an interesting experience in the Brody Reading Room the other day. From the position of my seat, I was able to see the laptop screens of about seven other people (and I know I’m not the only one who spies). Out of the seven, four of them had their internet browser open to BuzzFeed.com. At first I didn’t think there was anything wrong with that; we all need a quick study break to just roam the internet for a bit. Then thirty minutes went by, and all four people were still on BuzzFeed. At this point I just assumed they were organic chemistry students, absolutely dreading going back to their textbook. But when an hour eventually passed, and the same four people had BuzzFeed ever present on their computers, it became clear that rummaging through old BuzzFeed articles was no longer just a study break for these people. It was a genuine source of entertainment.
Last week, the Editorial Board lamented a new fee that had been imposed on Intersession classes. The fee was discreetly created and poorly advertised, which made for a nasty surprise when many students first saw it on the Intersession website. Worse still, at $250 it would have priced some students out of taking courses they were otherwise excited and eager to explore. Even those who could afford it might have felt guilty paying for classes outside their major requirements, spoiling their curiosity and defeating the worry free, no-strings-attached learning atmosphere that makes Intersession such an enjoyable experience.
Earlier this week, Hopkins signed onto the Maryland Collaborative to Reduce College Drinking and Related Problems, an initiative of the state’s higher education institutions to curb university drinking and its residual effects. Though the Collaborative’s initiative to reduce unsafe undergraduate drinking practices is commendable, the Editorial Board believes that the university has a long way to go to truly curtail drinking on the Hopkins campus. While the Maryland Collaborative ambitiously seeks to change the drinking environment at college campuses, according to the NIH, four in five college students drink alcohol. The News-Letter feels that the creation of the Maryland Collaborative alone won’t change anything anytime soon.
The 10/31/2013 opinion piece in the JHU News-Letter by Brian Yuen is deeply flawed and contains several factual errors which are indisputable and easily verified. First, Yuen claims that, “...Edward Snowden leaked classified NSA proceedings via Wikileaks...”. Perhaps he is confusing Snowden with Pvt. Chelsea Manning who was involved with document leaks from the DoD and DoS to Wikileaks? Snowden leaked to Glen Greenwald formerly with The Guardian and filmmaker Laura Poitras, but never to Wikileaks. Secondly, Yuen claims that the NSA “cracked down” on the Silk Road website. Actually, it was primarily the FBI with no evidence of involvement by the NSA. Thirdly, Yuen claims that the NSA invented Onion routing and the Tor anonymity network. This was actually work done by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, not the NSA. Mr. Yuen’s opinion piece and its conclusions eviscerating the need for citizens’ privacy are simply not credible. As the saying goes, “three strikes, and you’re out”.
The Editorial Board has long lamented Hopkins’ lackluster school spirit. With the exception of lacrosse in the spring, it seems Hopkins’ sporting events are sparsely attended and are almost never discussed among the student body. Hampered by a persistent lack of enthusiasm, the administrators finally decided to do something about it this last week by running a vote to name the Hopkins mascot.
Facebook has become one of the largest sites on the web, and by far the largest online community. It has been praised for it’s usefulness, it’s networking capabilities, it’s relevance to the new age of technology. But to what extent is Facebook actually useful now? Does it really help us connect with our friends? Does it really help our productivity? Is it even fun to be on just to waste time anymore?
