GUEST COLUMN Eating animals is indefensible … but try me
As the vice president of policy for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), I’ve spent much of the last year visiting college campuses across the country and being inspired, challenged, and motivated by top debate teams as we sparred over the ethical implications of eating meat. After dozens of such debates, one thing is clear: a vegan lifestyle is more mainstream than ever on college campuses.
Restructuring is too important to rush
While we agree that the UA Senate is a broken, inefficient system and we would certainly like to see it reformed, we do not believe that compiling and implementing a hastily constructed proposal in the last few weeks of term is the way to fix it.
Time to put government hands on Medicare
Two weeks ago, Representative Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the chairman of the House Budget Committee, issued a CBO-scored budget proposal that is being called the “Path to Prosperity.” The budget, a first of its kind — a unique, comprehensive fix to our debt problem — has caught many in the political establishment flat-footed. This includes President Obama (whose own budget plan looks prodigal in comparison) as well as many Republican leaders who have thought it politically wise to advocate for spending cuts without enumerating what, specifically, should be cut.
GUEST COLUMN MIT is good for doctors — not premeds
As a premed senior who will be headed to medical school this fall, I agree with many of the points in last Friday’s article by Rachel Bandler entitled “MIT — the premed’s choice?” However, I must caution that the article is overly optimistic on a few levels.
The Day of Silence is worth it, even at MIT
Today you may see a few students in Lobby 7 and in your classes with duct tape inscribed with the phrase “No H8” over their mouths in support of an event called the Day of Silence. I suspect their numbers will be few in light of the fact that MIT’s atmosphere of masochistic pursuit of work leaves little drive for campus activism, but I digress. The Day of Silence is a country-wide effort to spread awareness of the bullying and name-calling of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth as well as the effects of the casual use and tacit acceptance of using phrases like, “That’s so gay.”
Sometimes it’s hard to take back what you said
On April 1, Judge Richard Goldstone published an opinion in the Washington Post where he reconsidered his U.N. report on Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza in 2008-09. In the column, Goldstone renounces many of the report’s conclusions as factually inaccurate and based on insubstantial evidence. It is fortunate that the South African judge finally decided to publicly recognize a more balanced account of Operation Cast Lead, and as the saying goes, “better late than never.”
GUEST COLUMN Crises are not opportunities
The nuclear crisis in Japan is severe. A reactor core has partially melted, chemical explosions have breached the containment, and radiation has been released into the atmosphere and ocean. Of course, this is a direct consequence of a catastrophic natural disaster of historic, unprecedented proportions. The earthquake and tsunami have utterly devastated Japan, and the magnitude of the total ruin will unfortunately dwarf that of the nuclear component.
EDITORIAL Balance life commitments to maximize education
As attendees of CPW, you have all been admitted to MIT. Congratulations! You now have an important decision to make, and hopefully CPW will help you do so.
MIT is hard, and that’s why you should attend
CPW! As one person — famous for her truly insightful and thought-provoking lyrics — would say, “It’s Friday, Friday … fun, fun, fun, fun.” She’s got excellent grammar, too. But this article is not about Rebecca Black, it’s about you. More specifically, it’s about why you should choose MIT over any other school you may have been accepted to.
MIT — the premed’s choice?
I am not going to lie. If your goal is to go to college, take the easiest classes possible, and get into medical school with perfect grades, then MIT is not for you. However, if you want to excel in science and engineering and live among brilliant peers and professors, all in an environment that is unrivaled, then keep on reading. Not only is it possible to be a successful premed at MIT, but I would also argue that MIT is one of the best places for shaping future doctors.
CPW is not a time to slack off
CPW is a time for celebration, confetti, and cake. As a prefrosh, you will be welcomed with hundreds of MIT events that will entertain, pamper and feed you. I guarantee that you will overbook yourself. You will scratch your head deciding which event to attend. You will wish you could be at two places at once, maybe three, or even four. At night, you will party (dry) on Baker’s rooftop with newly-made friends drinking (unmixed) Monsters. Then you will sleep with your body fatigued but your mind restless. Your day will have gone by in a split second.
MIT is no rest, no mercy, no matter what
I know you, for I have seen you dozens of times before. You think you want to be a scientist or an engineer. But be realistic — what do you, a teenager, know of science and engineering? You have applied to this institution, not out of any sophisticated understanding of the choices you are making, but because society has sold you a lifestyle brand. You want to be able to call yourself a scientist for the same reasons trendy youths want to buy clothes with swooshes or cigarettes with cowboy mascots. You crave, as any human does, the respect and admiration of your peers. You see the status that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs have achieved, and hope that a career in technology will be your salvation. But you will find none here.
CORRECTIONS
A sports article published last Friday on NCAA championship predictions incorrectly referenced two team rosters. Jerome Dyson no longer plays for the University of Connecticut, and DeMarcus Cousins and Eric Bledsoe no longer play for the University of Kentucky. Dyson is now with the Tulsa 66ers, Cousins plays for the Sacramento Kings, and Bledsoe is with the Los Angeles Clippers.
The Good, the Bad, and the Strange Wars
Back in February 2009, I wrote a piece for this newspaper asking President Obama to take a moment and decide whether he was an idealist or a realist in the world of foreign policy. Failure to answer this question, I warned, would lead him into many of the situations his predecessor had found himself in.
The Guantanamo Bay camps must be closed
Let us begin with one obvious fact: the decision to establish detention camps at Guantanamo Bay has cost us much more than we have gained.
The Guantanamo Bay camps must be reformed
In his defense of Guantanamo Bay (and of our detention policy in general), Yost makes a fair point — our legal system, at its core, is a decision-making system with Type I and Type II errors, and the Guantanamo Bay detainees form a category of suspects that do not appropriately fit into either of our existing legal pathways.
GUEST COLUMN In the shadow of good will
Development agencies say they are concerned about corruption. A large part of the West’s donations of aid to poorer countries intended to do good ends up in the pockets of ruthless officials with no qualms about stealing from their underprivileged fellow citizens.
The Guantanamo Bay camps must remain open
Forget for a moment all of the legal exegesis of whether or not the detainees at Guantanamo Bay are prisoners of war (subject to indefinite detention and military tribunals), civilians (subject to the court system of the United States), or “unlawful combatants” (constituting a newly defined class of suspects). A legal system is, at its core, a decision-maker, determining whether alleged criminals are innocent or guilty. Like any other imperfect decision-maker, the system has two types of error: Type I error (deciding a person is guilty when they are innocent), and Type II error (deciding a person is innocent when they are guilty). For a legal system with a given degree of accuracy, we can trade-off between the two types of error, reducing Type I at the expense of increasing Type II, or vice-versa.