The Vanderbilt Torch

Live With It

In the past month, student media has been littered with news and opinions regarding Vanderbilt’s housing system. While it is inevitable that someone will complain every year about the “unfairness” of a blind lottery, this year’s deluge of complaints has been uncharacteristic. The cause of these new complaints is the impactthe Commons, the first stage of Vanderbilt’s residential college system slated for completion in fall 2008, had on the housing process. With the completion of new dorms and the renovation of others on Peabody, the university is, for once, experiencing a surplus of housing. As a consequence of this surplus, off-campus housing is sounding its death knell, something long predicted by the administration.

Drinking Gee's Global Kool-Aid

On a non-descript Thursday afternoon in early April, Chancellor Gordon Gee told a more-empty-than-full Student Life Center-audience that Vanderbilt was going global, whether they liked it or not.

The Chancellor’s semesterly address to faculy and staff began with an awards ceremony, but soon escalated into an international Magna Carta for the University. The charge was not surprising in light of Gee’s track record with trans-departmental initiatives and “big idea” thinking. Through the Academic Venture Capital Fund (which has recently been recapitalized) and other such initiatives, Gee has forced departments into one sandbox and withheld funding unless they played nicely together. His love-affair with working together did not begin in Nashville; faculty and board members at Brown University scoffed at Gee’s proposed “Brain Sciences” initiative during his short tenure in Providence.   

Stuck in the Middle

A current trend in higher education is a push away from merit aid towards strictly need-based awards. Harvard recently declared that it was waiving all fees for students with combined family incomes under $60,000 a year and drastically cutting amounts to students in the $60,000-$80,000 bracket have to pay. Hamilton College in New York has offered a more radical option. This year it stopped offering merit based awards, instead choosing to spend this funding on lower and middle-income students. George Washington and Dickinson College were also cited by CNN.com as leading the trend of reducing funding spent on merit aid. Most Ivy Leagues have never seen the need for merit-based aid, as the prestige alone draws many more qualified applicants than they could ever admit.

HODumb

Unlike its peer institutions, Vanderbilt’s most popular major isn’t English, Economics or History. It is Human and Organizational Development—known around campus as HOD.

Though many students come to Vanderbilt not even knowing what HOD stands for, it doesn’t take long for rumors about the use of art supplies to circulate. Soon, even engineers who have never set foot on Peabody’s magnolia-covered lawn have formed an opinion about the unique major. As a freshman, I soon realized that saying, “She’s HOD,” is often meant to convey more than just someone’s major classification.

Turn It In: Copyright Sin?

Vanderbilt recently launched a pilot of Turnitin.com, an anti-plagiarism program. Certain classes, like sections of HOD 1000, require students to submit their papers to Turnitin before the grading process begins. Student papers are then compared to a database of thousands of other student papers and scholarly journals. After a couple of hours, an originality report is generated and any plagiarism detected is reported to the professor before the grading begins. In the meantime, the papers that students submitted for testing are added to the database for future use. Turnitin’s policy of archiving student papers brings up some very important questions about student privacy under FERPA (Family Education Rights and Privacy Act) and copyright laws. Vanderbilt should reconsider its plan to expand the use of Turnitin.

Sharpton Killed the Radio Star

Two weeks ago, you could probably count on two hands the number of Vanderbilt students who could tell you who Don Imus is or what he does. Today, however, anybody who pays any attention to the daily news will most likely tell you he is a racist.

Imus, for those who have not heard of him, was until recently the host of Imus in the Morning, a radio comedy show on New York’s WFAN that was simulcast on television on MSNBC. As one of the very first “shock jocks” who began his career in the 1960s and ‘70s, Imus has long been ridiculing everyone in the public sphere, including himself. While his daily guests included presidential candidates, senators, journalists, military officials, and musicians, his show was comedic, and Imus never pretended to be a journalist.

Censoring Science

From just listening to the media, it seems as if questioning global warming is equivalent to believing that the world is flat. Even the Vanderbilt Community can’t escape alarmist propaganda, such as Gore’s presentation last year of “An Inconvenient Truth,” and this year’s “Stop Global Warming Tour,” where Sheryl Crow will be giving her expert opinion on the deadly effects of the melting glaciers.

Rite in Our Own Backyard

The two-day festival of binge drinking, mediocre bands, and general chaos that is Rites of Spring is scheduled for April 20-21 this year. While some schools prepare for finals with multiple reading days, Vanderbilt celebrates with a stress fest complete with iPod drawings, mocktails you couldn’t give away, and, of course, a music festival that directly contrasts the very notion of higher education.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Rites of Spring and the 48 hours of lost studying that come with it. I like my concerts like I like my food, sleep, coffee, and alcohol. While one can live on Quizno’s, 5 hours of sleep a night, Rand coffee, and Natty Light (a debatable subject), these are not the finer things in life. I myself would rather eat at Morton’s, sleep till noon, drink two dollar cups of Starbucks coffee and two hundred dollar bottles of Johnnie Walker.

ERA: Isn't That Cute?

Insanity has been defined as doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. If this definition is correct, then one should certainly begin to question the reasoning powers of Sens. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass. and Barbara Boxer, D-Calif, and Reps. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y. and Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., who recently announced their plans to introduce the Women’s Equality Amendment, which is merely a new name for the failed Equal Rights Amendment, in the United States Congress.

Frontloading Backfires

The nominating process has always been one of the most turbulent and exciting parts of the presidential election. Unusual as the system may be, the use of state primaries and caucuses to select nominees has proven effective over the years. There is, however, little regulation over the timing of these primaries. Historically, they have been spaced so as to give smaller states like Iowa and New Hampshire the most important voice in the process. Recent developments, however, are significantly disrupting the status quo.