"White Privlege" -More Like White Patronizing

Instead of hiring a writer with a differing perspective to balance out the pages of the Forum section, Daily Barometer Forum Editor Ashley Slocki has decided to hire someone who thinks like everyone else in her department. Sara Gwin recently made her debut, and her most recent column amounted to “I’m sorry I’m white”

In a nod to self-deprecating, hand wringing white guilt, Gwin takes a number of instances at McKay High School (a majority black high school with a principal who, according to a former student, recruited black students who had been expelled from other Salem area high schools for violence or weapons charges) and cobbles them together into “institutionalized racism.” Gwin also seems to feel guilty that she managed to succeed and that she wasn’t able to “deny those rights.”

Gwin speaks of “eradicating racism.” As a pragmatist, I can tell you, straight-faced, that this idea is impossible. And while we by no means live in a perfect society (as there is no such thing), the idea that a person achieved simply because they were of one race or another is entirely fallacious. Gwin makes modern American society sound like pre-WWII American society, and with the exception of a few old codgers, we have changed so much.

I think I grew up in a pretty color-blind society, and I’m glad I came to one here at Oregon State. Gwin looks for racism, even when it’s not racism, and is willing to typecast all of you as God-awful racist thugs in order to prove a point. I look around me and am sure that I did not succeed because of my race, or even my gender, but because of my merits. As I reread her article, I am convinced that one of those merits is that I am better at picking opinion writers than Ashley Slocki. The Forum Section continues to sink to new lows in one-sidedness and quality of content.

SHAB Pounces On Those Who Puff

The Student Health Advisory Board, which does not seem to be very good at publicizing it's meetings or seeking student input, has announced that it is prusuing an initiative to make the OSU campus Smoke-Free. That's right. If their goals come to fruition, nowhere on our large, scenic, open-air campus, would a person be able to have something as simple as a smoke break.

Here's a less restrictive suggestion. Take some of that huge wad of cash we, as students, give SHS every term, and commission a study to evaluate potential locations for "Designated Smoking Areas" on campus. Criteria could include areas with (curently) minimal pedestrian foot traffic, the ability for smoke to dissipate quickly, and an absence of opening first and second story windows.

Instead, SHAB has chosen to take the easy way out, as government tends to do. Government is good at two things: Banning things and taxing things. For a government, especially student government, to do anything else requires exceptional intelligence and character among the members of that government body. Let's see if the SHAB has got it.

Your Vote... or this fancy new iPod!!

Politico.com has apparently been able to show that 20% NYU students would trade their ability to vote in next year's election for an iPod. Are NYU students really so confident in the outcome of next year's election that they'd pass off their chance to participate in what will be the most contentious election in our nation's history? (Then again, isn't every election?)

Voting is your civic duty as an American. You don't have a right to vote; you have an obligation. And when I say vote, I mean make an informed decision in the political process. Learn, Discuss, Choose. I feel bad for those NYU kids who wanted to trade their vote for an iPod. Partially because it was the new iPod touch, and those things are basically just iPhones without the phone, and partially (mostly) because brave men and women fought and died and killed to give them something they would willingly throw away for a gadget. We say God bless America, but God bless them. They need it.