That’s why we were surprised by some students’ vehement reactions to the demonstration held inside Usdan last Thursday in order to raise campus awareness of the Open Shuhada Street campaign. As the article about the event in this issue of The Argus explains, nine University students temporarily blocked off access to the main stairway leading to the main dining hall, requesting that students use the elevator or alternate staircase in order to eat lunch. It wasn’t really that disruptive (using one of the other two routes to the Usdan cafeteria for just one day is not a big deal), but it was an admirable attempt to raise awareness of an issue that the vast majority of students on campus were unaware of.

While many students were reasonably respectful of the students’ demonstration, a vocal minority believed that the blockade was unnecessary and disruptive. We heard a lot of people grumbling about their right to access the dining hall. The first post on an Anonymous Confession Board thread concerning the demonstration declared, “I want to walk in and out of Usdan the way I always do. No one cares what you have to say...Don’t inconvenience my lunch.” Other responses to the thread were in a similar vein, with one commenter claiming that the event was an example of “activism theater” and another asking the student activists to “climb down from [their] ivory towers.”

Most students seem to think of Usdan as nothing more than a place to eat food, and so some were outraged by the demonstration mostly because it interrupted their daily routine. That’s an unfortunate attitude. Usdan is supposedly a campus center, a place where students can stage demonstrations and protests, gather to share opinions on important issues, and respect other students’ right to express their views. But if no one thinks of Usdan in this manner, then can this kind of activity occur?

Davenport (they call it Albritton these days) used to be one of the most frequented buildings on campus, and events would be held outside it; at MoCon, people would walk up to the balcony to make announcements to whoever was eating downstairs. But as of right now, Usdan has not inherited the functions of these past communal spaces, spaces that are clearly important to the vitality of campus life. So instead of immediately condemning protestors for temporarily blocking easy access to food, or complaining about architecture, let’s work harder to foster a lively community in the spaces we have.

In January, Freshmen Fauver residents received an e-mail from their Residential Advisors about how “some individuals have been urinating in an excessive number of bottles and moving them to the trash room to be disposed of by the Fauver custodial staff.” Besides the fact that such a practice is exceeding­ly unpleasant for other Fauver residents, who surely do not wish to encounter the smell of urine while throwing away their trash, it also indicates an appalling lack of respect for the University staff who have to clean up the campus after countless weekends of drunken revelry.

Yes, of course, it is the job of University staff to clean up after us; but the least students could do is make their lives easier and actually use the multiple restrooms on every floor of every dorm instead of deciding that the entire world is their urinal.

In this issue of The Argus, we in­terviewed Steve Hunter who “scours the campus every weekday morning for trash.” He claimed that Fauver trash rooms are not the only places he discov­ers bottles filled with urine: he said he finds “Gatorade bottles full of piss at the corner of Church Street and High all the time.” He also related a story about how someone who “didn’t even realize there were landscapers on the campus.”

It is this kind of ignorance that give college students a bad reputation, and it is unfortunate that students here continue to exhibit complete apathy towards other students, their surround­ings, and the staff that works tirelessly to clean up after them, quite literally soiling the image and values of the en­tire University. For those students, we pose the following variation on an an­cient adage: do not urinate on commu­nal and personal property if you do not wish to be urinated on yourself, even if such urine comes in the form of bottles, as Hunter put it, “packaged for some­body to pick up.”

While there have been rumors that the administration will eliminate senior houses in the future and build a new senior dorm, current evidence indicates otherwise. ResLife has added more senior houses, additional bedrooms in older senior woodframes, and more class appropriate housing for sophomores.

Despite these efforts to provide a variety of housing options for students, more students than ever are applying for off-campus housing. Some students have qualms with the fact that the University makes it difficult to apply for off-campus housing, while others claim that they have the right to pursue housing that is not as expensive as the University’s. According to the article about off-campus housing on the front page of today’s Argus, Paolo Speirn ’10 felt that the University is too invasive with room Fire Safety searches, and thus students should be able to find off-campus housing if they object to this policy.

While these are valid claims, all incoming Wesleyan students know that they will be required to live on-campus for their entire undergraduate careers, so it’s odd that they would choose to object to this school policy now. As for the issues of invasiveness, this is not really a complaint about housing options, but about school policy.

As ResLife Director Fran Koerting put it, there is not much “offered off-campus that you can’t get [on-campus],” especially since, on campus, maintenance is taken care of, there are no landlords to deal with, and, overall, “there’s so much more protection built into [on-campus housing] should something go wrong.”

Those students who have objections to on-campus housing and do not have special living concerns should work with ResLife instead of fighting to live off-campus, and remember that the administration’s dedication to providing a variety of housing options for the entire student community is a privilege.

Witness his tactics on health care. Rather than starting over and scrapping the universally panned packages of pork-barrel goodies that his party has embraced as a sign of good will towards the American people, President Obama has instead resorted to a trick so pathetically naïve it is insulting: trying to talk Republicans out of their opposition. There are an infinite number of problems with this approach, which the average Wesleyan student may not see. So at the risk of offering the President free advice, I think it only appropriate that I perform a public service by explaining the problems with trying to talk your way out of national disgrace, so that any of my peers who run for office will not be tempted to engage in it. I do not think this is an idle danger, most Wesleyan students either think that repeatedly stating how compassionate they are, or repeating talking points they memorized from last night’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann,” are perfectly acceptable communications strategies.

The first reason why the President’s tactic is a foolish one is quite simple: the opposing party has absolutely no incentive to listen. If Obama were dealing with a Congress controlled by Republicans, or even one with a sizable minority, he might plausibly be able to make the claim that failing to respond to White House entreaties constitutes a failure of governance on the part of the opposition. However, as any talk show host/Republican politician will tell you, their capacity to stop the President’s agenda is so limited, even with the election of Scott Brown, that even if they voted reliably against every single thing the President proposes, it would be insufficient in many cases to stop him. Moreover, because President Obama’s election was framed by so many media outlets (including a few juvenile writers at the Argus) as a fundamental realignment which would leave conservatism/the Republican party dead on arrival for the next twenty years, any move the Republicans make to aid the President necessarily looks like hammering the nails into their own coffin. This is especially true when you consider that President Obama enjoys below 50 percent approval ratings after one year, and that his Congressional peers fare far worse, which means that there is no advantage to be gained, popularity-wise, in appearing on the same screen.

The second reason why the President’s tactic is wrongheaded is a bit more complex, so I will use small words for the benefit of the American Studies majors. Even if the opposing party shows up to talk out their differences with President Obama, the President runs the risk of saying things which are either blatant gaffes or so confrontational that they make his opponents see the meetings as cover for partisan bashing. Both problems occurred when the President went to address the GOP summit a few weeks ago and, when he wasn’t lecturing the legislators present on how ignorant they were, proceeded to say some truly cringe-inducing, ignorant things. For instance, in response to a question from Congressman Mike Pence on whether the President would consider embracing further tax relief, President Obama said, “The problem is, I couldn’t find credible economists who would back up the claims that you just made.”

“What?!”

Anybody with even the slightest sense of economic philosophy should have blurted out that line.  As nearly every ECON 101 student knows, there are plenty of credible economists, both living and dead, who subscribe to the notion that tax relief is a means of creating employment/growing the economy. Greg Mankiw and James Buchanan are two obvious choices, as are every economic advisor John F. Kennedy ever had.

Moreover, Pence’s statement prior to the question explained that he had calculated the effects of Republican alternate economic plans using the models employed by the President’s budget experts. Are the President’s analysts themselves not “credible” economists?

And this wasn’t even the worst of it. One statement that was noted with incredulity by former Congressman Dick Armey at this weekend’s CPAC was the President’s remark that “I am not an ideologue.”

This, coming from a man who has surpassed FDR’s domestic spending, appointed self-described communists to White House positions, had the most liberal voting record in the US Senate before being elected, and delivered a Wesleyan commencement address!

Whether the President is an ideologue or not becomes moot at this point. What matters is whether he can say things which will convince the opposing party that they are dealing with a sane person, which he did not.

Of course, I do not expect any of this to register with the President’s blind supporters on this campus. They are probably of the same mind as liberal comedian Jon Stewart, who described President Obama’s attempts to debate the GOP into a corner as “f**king awesome.” I suppose I shouldn’t try to dissuade them—after all, arguing with people who even Rahm Emanuel described as “f**king retards” is probably a futile gesture—but one has to try.

We therefore share the frustration expressed by students in the article, who regret that the University has not utilized this investment more effectively.

One way in which the University could accomplish this is by establishing University-sponsored courses. Not only could students learn about farming through WesWell courses, but there is also clear potential for overlap between the curricula of environmental studies courses and student-run programs at Long Lane Farm. In addition, such classes at Long Lane could eventually be included in the Service Learning course cluster, seeing as the group is already involved in hunger and sustainability issues in Middletown.

Even if the administration is unwilling to bring Long Lane Farm into the academic fold officially, the least it could do is take advantage of its proximity to the University by offering official trips to the farm at events such as orientation week and WesFest, and by promoting the groups’ efforts on the University website and other official channels.

Not only would increased awareness of Long Lane Farm encourage more students to work with the club, but this publicity might also catch the attention of alumni and prospective students interested in hunger and sustainability issues, or simply curious about the food they eat.

If the University really strives to expand its sustainability efforts and bolster the recently unveiled College of the Environment, it should not only provide administrative support for the farm, but should also better incorporate Long Lane into academic and social life on campus.

The main part of the building—the old Christopher Hotel—had collapsed, sending dust and debris down the hallway and blocking the only normal egress from the building. Together with a French officer, we cleared the floor, escorting people to a window with a landing, where others outside helped them to the ground.

An officer from Argentina and I then found an extension ladder, and together we managed to evacuate about another 30 people on the floor above us to safety.  They were, of course, very scared - hell, I was scared. We simply spoke to them to calm them, and guided them down the ladder.

After clearing these evacuees, I began walking around the building to attempt to understand what had actually happened. The answer was all too clear when I encountered about 200 people still trapped inside the building, covered in cement dust. Most were stunned, shocked. Many were badly injured, but luckily many of us survived.  I saw many Haitian nationals who work with us, and whom I had befriended. They were hurt; they had lost their homes and loved ones; and yet, they were so happy to see me. I was struck by such selfless behavior.  Imagine: they lost everything, but they were content just to see that I was ok.

Over the next two to three days, the bodies of the dead were brought out to the street and laid on the sidewalk. Some were covered, some not; survivors just didn’t know what to do, as many of these bodies were family and loved ones. The tennis court outside of the hotel served as our only refuge; we had little choice, as the damage incurred by the hotel itself left it uninhabitable. Each day, the other officers and I returned to sleep for a couple of hours before driving back through the destruction and sadness.

Since the earthquake I have been assigned as a liaison to the Joint Task Force sent by the United States to support humanitarian assistance and disaster relief activities. MINUSTAH provides security for the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and supplies direct aid to those impacted by the events of Jan.12.

Just over one month later, I finally have a place to sleep and take a shower. The massive infusion of aid has provided food and shelters for tens of thousands of survivors.  The WFP launched a remarkable effort to feed two million people in 14 days: at Day 6, we fed well over half a million people, averaging a little over than 100,000 survivors each day. The operation ended on Feb. 13, having reached more than 2.2 million people. An additional six-day phase was added on Feb. 14 with a focus on providing aid to children and pregnant or lactating women. There is still plenty of food to distribute to those in need.

The food provided is expected to feed a small family for one to two weeks. It is delivered at 16 strategic locations called Distribution Points. The WFP issues color-coded food coupons, through local elected leadership, almost exclusively to women and children. This provides a higher degree of assurance that the food will stay in the family. Sadly, some of the food that was initially distributed was turned around and sold by many of the men.

I met a young man here when I first jointed the MINUSTAH mission in July 2007, as part of a six-month assignment. Joseph was orphaned at birth, but now, at 25, had found two of his brothers and a sister. He had a small home, and cared for his family, specifically one brother who had tuberculosis.

I heard from Joseph three days after the earthquake. He was in Dominican Republic. He lost all of his known family when his house collapsed.

“I guess I’ll just have to start all over again,” he said. “I’ll be okay.”

This is almost typical of the people here who have suffered so much.

According to this Tuesday’s issue of The Argus, Macdonough’s classification as a racially imbalanced school springs from the fact that “the proportion of minorities at Macdonough is 28.67 percent greater than the average for Middletown area elementary schools,” thus marking the school as “racially imbalanced” under the racial imbalance sections of the General Statutes of Connecticut. The Argus explains that under these documents, “a school is racially imbalanced if the percentage of minority population falls outside the range from 25 percentage less to 25 percentage points more than the district average. Schools that are found to be racially imbalanced must submit a correction plan to the school board.”

Having looked at this language again and again, readers must permit me at least one more quotation to sum it up, for as Justice Potter Stewart once wrote, “this is an uncommonly silly law.” And it is especially silly when applied to Macdonough, a school whose “racial imbalance” has not had any visible effect on its performance. In fact, its performance has won awards for excellence, even as the State labors to have Macdonough closed. Yes, that’s right, the State is trying to close an award-winning elementary school because it happens to enroll a larger amount of minorities than non-minorities (read: whites). Who knew school busing had a twin?

More bewilderingly still, Macdonough is silently complying with the State’s edict, and trying to draft plans which would send some of their minority students elsewhere, effectively punishing those very same students for having the audacity to be born with a particular skin color. This is not only unfair to the students—it is arguably unconstitutional under present law, as I mean to demonstrate with the rest of this column.

The idea of racial quotas of the type mandated by CT State law was first taken up by the Supreme Court in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. In that decision, the Court concluded narrowly that “the difficulties entailed in varying the level of judicial review according to a perceived ‘preferred’ status of a particular racial or ethnic minority are intractable. The concepts of ‘majority’ and ‘minority’ necessarily reflect temporary arrangements and political judgments,” thus negating the possibility of crafting objective legal standards for quotas. This decision was further strengthened in Gratz v. Bollinger, in which the Supreme Court struck down an admissions program which gave students of particular races automatic advantages in admissions pools, regardless of their individual strengths. Though Macdonough does not admit students in the strictest sense, the overall tenor of these cases surely raises the point that interference with educational institutions for the sake of achieving vaguely defined notions of “racial balance” is impermissible.

Fortunately, this is not the only, nor the most important, legal precedent with bearing on the Macdonough decision. That title belongs to the aforementioned Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District case, which dealt with a program implemented by the Seattle school district in which oversubscribed public schools would have their seats assigned disproportionately to minority students. Writing for the Court, Chief Justice Roberts rejected the program in the strongest possible terms, writing that race “is not simply one factor weighed with others in reaching a decision, as in Grutter; it is the factor. Like the University of Michigan undergraduate plan struck down in Gratz, the plans here ‘do not provide for a meaningful individualized review of applicants’ but instead rely on racial classifications in a ‘nonindividualized, mechanical’ way.” Given that Macdonough is currently oversubscribed by minority students, and a similar nonindividualized, mechanical calculus is used to mandate the rejection of prospective enrollees, the facts are eerily similar. The only distinction is the race of the victimized students—a distinction which, properly speaking, should have no bearing in a court of law.

In short, we are bearing witness to a bona fide instance of unconstitutional, racialist thinking in our back yard. Commentators have raised the prospect of making Macdonough a magnet affiliated with Wesleyan—a plan that would, at least, remove Macdonough from the poisonous and irrational public school system. This plan, in the absence of a genuine Constitutional challenge, may be the best one, but what must not be accepted is the idea that Macdonough can be punished for its success as an educational institution simply because it caters to too many people with the same skin color. The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race, and that is true no matter the race that is supposedly “disadvantaged.”

It is impressive that ASHA continues to teach high school students despite the inflammatory comments that they frequently receive from parents. Their work is needed more than ever: the rate of teenage pregnancies increased in 26 states over the past year. Despite the controversy sparked by sex education encompassing topics beyond abstinence, many studies have shown that abstinence-only sex education is not effective.

We are therefore disappointed with The Middletown Press’ biased reporting on the sexual education workshops that ASHA taught in Middletown this past December. The article’s minimal evidence, gathered from a few outraged parents who insisted on anonymity, sentences from ASHA’s lesson plan taken out of context, and flat-out wrong assertions about the content of the workshops, misrepresented ASHA’s workshops as inappropriate.

For example, one of the articles from The Middletown Press, published on Dec. 10, 2009, claimed that students attending one of the workshops “were reportedly asked to discuss how they feel before, during, and after sex.” Staff members from The Argus reviewed ASHA’s lesson plan and could not find mention of such an activity. The only activity description that remotely resembled the quote involved “healthy communication,” which taught students “concrete ways to say ‘no’ to sexual activities.”

These two articles are not only prime examples of dishonest reporting due to their lack of neutrality and dearth of thorough research, but they also damaged ASHA’s reputation and jeopardized all of the hard work ASHA has done in the past few months. We find it distressing that The Middletown Press engaged in such sensationalist reporting without considering the consequences that their articles would have on a student group that is working tirelessly to benefit of the community.

This is not, however, a time to lose hope. Besides volunteering for ASHA, students should talk with our political representatives about pushing for state government funding of comprehensive sexual education.

Let’s make sure that ASHA’s efforts to educate Connecticut students have not been in vain, and let’s push Connecticut legislators to fund the sexual education that high school students crucially need.

As a kid, I would wonder what happens to people when they die. Do they live a beautiful life in a place called “heaven?” Or do they burn in a pool of fire? Those are the questions that were disturbing this slum boy from Kenya.

I grew up in the Kibera slums, the largest slum in Africa, and the second largest on earth. Imagine: 1.5 million people living in an area the size of Central Park. That’s my home. Kibera, the life I knew before Wesleyan. I still have my single mudroom there, now occupied by my sister Elizabeth. My whole family still lives in Kibera.

Kibera, a province of Nairobi, is made up of 12 villages. I lived in Katwikira village, in an area called Mama Okinda. If you follow the path that leads you from Kamukunji ground, it will lead you to my house. I had 200 neighbors, each of whom I know by name. Each family has no less than seven children. Seven children was the least a family could have, if I remember well.

In my neighborhood, men are respected according to what they have. If you have a black and white TV set in your house that runs off of a car battery, then you are what we call “the rich family.”

Another concern for men in my community was having a baby boy as their first-born child in order to gain cultural respect. I remember some of my neighbors beating their wives for not giving birth to a boy. Some men could remarry in the name of having a baby boy. Though these behaviors were considered acceptable, I didn’t like the way women were treated in my neighborhood. I grew up in this kind of life, and I saw my own mother victimized by this violence.

My environment was noisy, and so noise became part of my life. Even today, I study better in SciLi because there is always a buzz of students talking and working, and that reminds me of my home. I remember reading my novels and old, outdated newspapers in my single room in Kibera while just outside children were crying, neighbors were playing loud music, and vendors were selling food.

A fundamental need that we only dreamed of was sanitation. My 200 neighbors all have children—some families have more than 10. In my neighborhood alone, there are over 1,260 men, women, and children, all living in an area that can be compared to the size of Foss Hill. And keep in mind that there is no “second floor.” Everything is built on the ground using mud and rusty iron sheets.

We had only two old pit-latrines. When you squat, you could see another person in the other latrine because the walls had holes. The size of the toilet stall was so small that you couldn’t stand up or move around while using it. More than 1,260 people, including children, used those two latrines.

They were not enough to serve the whole population of my neighborhood. As a result, you could find feces scattered around the small compound. I got used to bad smells, but I was shy to bring my friends where I lived.

I never imagined a world like Wesleyan, where everything is abundant. As a sophomore, sometimes I think I’ve grown used to it, but then I remember how all of the things we consider “normal” are not normal for me at all. When I arrived at Wesleyan, I laughed when I was brought to my room in 200 Church, a large room just for my roommate and me! I had never before had space of my own – I didn’t know what to do with it, because in Kibera, I used to live with my parents and my seven siblings in a room that was even smaller.

When it came time to go to the dining hall, however, I was prepared. I knew from my life that there was no way there could be enough food. I used to sneak into weddings to avoid starvation, but the food always ended quickly. I rarely could afford one meal a day. After my first day of Freshman Orientation, I sprinted to the dining hall along with another friend, determined to be first in line. I ran there for almost three consecutive days and was always the one in front. One day, my girlfriend Jessica saw me running and asked why I was going so fast. I looked at her in wonder, explaining simply that I wanted to get food before it was finished. She laughed, and told me that the food doesn’t finish – the dining hall just closes.  I knew then that I had died and passed into a different universe.

One day, I was shocked to see a girl seated next to my table carry what looked like Mt. Everest on a plate. That’s how much she loaded it. She ate only a few spoonfuls, and I later saw her dumping the remaining food into the trash.

I didn’t believe my eyes. In that moment, I realized I was in yet another world: a world of unfairness, a world where they have too much and they waste too much. Tears rolled down my cheeks, and I thought of Hillary, my five year-old brother, who still cries for food, and drinking water to quell the hunger pains. I wish my whole family were here.

My roommate told me one night that he wanted to take a shower. I looked around, but did not see any basins or water carrying cans. Then I walked into the bathroom and saw water coming from heaven. I’d never taken a shower with running water.

I know I was confused, and confused about everything. I didn’t understand what it meant for America when I heard the phrase, “Wall Street crashed.” I thought the walls somewhere in a street crashed, and that it might be another terrorist attack. I ran to my new friend and adviser, Professor Rob Rosenthal, to ask him about it. He was and still is my close friend. I was impressed to have a professor as my personal friend; in Kenya, anyone with education could never associate with me, a slum boy.

I was confused by, and also frightened of, American life. I convinced myself that I was dead because that was often the only way I could rationalize the difference in my life. I had to pinch myself to see if I could feel the pain, but that did not satisfy me.

Then I called my mom in Kibera. As I heard her voice while I stood outside of Pi Café, I became even more confused. If I’m dead, I thought, how is it that I can still call my past life, still talk to that other world not so far away? I knew if I was dead I couldn’t talk to the living. I accepted that this was my reality. My suffering was in many ways over, but a new kind had begun: a new struggle to reconcile my new world with my old.

We commend the speed and resourcefulness with which members of campus have organized to better understand the situation, and how we can provide aid to those who need it. A meeting held last night in Usdan outlined ways in which we can do just that, including assisting the Middletown chapter of the Red Cross. We anticipate committed efforts on part of students, faculty, and others to find ways in which the University can assist the Middletown community during the aftermath.

However, beyond providing immediate aid, is it vital for the campus community to reflect on this tragedy and reevaluate our relationship with the city in which we live. Many students were unaware of where the Kleen power plant was located, or that it even existed; some incorrectly assumed the explosion took place at the Physical Plant station on campus. For students, parents, and alumni, “explosion in Middletown” seemed all too synonymous with “explosion at Wesleyan.” Middletown extends far beyond the stores and restaurants within a 10 minute drive of campus, yet this is all too often the extent of students’ conceptions of the city that is their home, in some form, for four years—a city that Wesleyan does not define, but is only one part of.

If we truly wish to stand in solidarity with Middletown, as we have begun to, let us also ensure that future interactions with our city are not centered merely around issues that affect campus directly, but also around those that affect both the University and Middletown at large. This is an invaluable time to prove that Wesleyan is an important member of the Middletown community; that we have a large stake in aiding Middletown’s full recovery; and above all, to walk away from this tragedy committed to turning our stilted interactions with our community into a mutually supportive relationship.