President Gast recently expressed her intentions of hiring a Chief Diversity Officer; a position which would improve the standing of Lehigh University when compared to other racist institutions. Additionally, it would create another figurehead leadership position, a role that Lehigh as an institution has far too few of.
Skidmarks: The Best of the Brown and White – Volume 2
A lighter look at some of our favorite articles from our friends at the Brown and White.
Six Ways Obama Can Solve Unemployment
Corporate advocates and wall street watch dogs all have their own political machines armed and ready for anything in the 2010 “Obama agenda.” With the formation of a Consumer Protection Agency to reform the financial marketplace, the wall street dogs are ready for a heyday. Meanwhile, corporations are doubling their lobbying budgets and moving their operations and conferences to Washington D.C.
With all the employed enlarging their loudspeaker to the ears of lawmakers, there is no voice for the unemployed. While Obama might say his focus will be jobs for 2010, he has no idea how to start. The following list, far detached from the intentions of Obama, is a set of well rounded suggestions.
The Bay State Invasion
The recent senatorial election in Massachusetts resulted in what some have described as the most important political upset of the century. The revered seat of Ted Kennedy, the so-called Lion of the Senate, fell into Republican hands on January 19, 2010. Senator Kennedy held a prominent position in the Senate for decades before succumbing to brain cancer on August 25, 2009. Ironically, the law mandating a special election to fill a vacant Senate seat in Massachusetts was established to prevent then-governor Mitt Romney from replacing Senator John Kerry with a Republican in the event that Kerry won the 2004 presidential election. An extremely influential Senate seat that was in Democratic hands since 1953 fell to the Republicans with a resounding victory for Scott Brown.
A Diverse and Free Society
Each year, there comes a time to discuss the topics of diversity, equality, and justice. These topics are critical to our future as a nation and as a society.
The Gray Area
To conclude the Martin Luther King Week festivities on Tuesday evening, January 26th, the passionate Southern Baptist preacher, Dr. William H. Gray III, delivered his remarks on the life of Martin Luther King Jr. Gray addressed the history of the Civil Rights Movement and issues that continue to face America today.
Snow Day Slip-Ups
On Wednesday, February 10, Lehigh had its first snow day in 8 years. For those of us living in hovels, our campus was blanketed with nearly two feet of snow over the course of Tuesday night into Wednesday evening. I have no issue with trudging to class if my university and professors demand [...]
Jersey Girl Knows Her Stuff
(click for larger image)
Despite knowing much about the origins of Jersey Shore cast members, one Brown and White commenter has made the incorrect claim that the Mason-Dixon line crosses New Jersey.
Mason and Dixon used the stars to calculate this path through the wilderness and mark out the 233-mile-long boundary line between Pennsylvania and Maryland, and [...]
Marginalizing Americans
One of the founding tenants of liberty is man should bear the fruits of his labor; that is, a person should be entitled to keep all of the money that he or she earns. Current OBAMACare legislation runs in the face of liberty, as the marginal tax increases have lasting and ignored ramifications.
Skidmarks: The Best of the Brown and White
Here at the Lehigh Patriot, we have tremendous respect for our colleagues at the Brown and White. They provide the Lehigh community with a biweekly feast of the news and analysis that keeps our campus dialogue informed and vibrant…
Alumni Insights
Alumni often visit Lehigh to give lectures, speak on panels, or advise students. However, Lehigh students take many of these opportunities for granted…
The Lighter Side: Spending to Save
In response to the recession, Lehigh has decided to launch a $20 million study to find ways to reduce wasteful spending…
Bipartisan, my Ass
The debate over health care reform is ugly, and the victims are the American people. We have a 2000+ page bill which most legislators have not even read…
Tear Down This Argument
Token conservative columnist Ross Douthat has an interesting piece in today’s New York Times to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Taxes by the Tank
The Federal Government, under the guise of “energy freedom” has crafted a broad array of overbearing and Constitutionally invalid laws designed to increase fuel economy among cars on the road today and steer our country away from its fossil-fueled way of life…
Did You Start the Fire?
uthority must always be questioned. It is simply inherent to a modern democratic society. As college students, we can certainly appreciate this sentiment and should act on it…
Nuclear Disarmament
It would be great if we could have a world without nuclear weapons. This is a dream for many idealists, but a farfetched reality for most pragmatists…
The Lighter Side: Artistically Endowed
Many believe that the role of art in society is to define the culture of a certain time and place. At Lehigh, such art is all around, whether you have noticed it or not…
The Lighter Side: A Strategic Plan
On September 17th, President Gast held a townhall meeting discussing the short and long-term goals for the Lehigh community. Were you there? Probably not…
Know Your Rights
The vast majority of you reading this column will never need this information. My aim is to provide comprehensive information for students involved in the Lehigh University judicial process, as well as my opinions about how the system works…
Keep It Simple
The other day, three students in my Economics class told me they were robbed in their fraternity the previous evening. They all missed class because they had to file police reports and get their lives back together…
Tuition Increases Unfair
The cost of a college education is the bane of us all, and it isn’t about to get any easier to manage. This summer, tuition at Lehigh increased about 3%…
Skinheads and Diversity
On the night of September 17, 2009, in front of a packed audience at Baker Hall, TJ Leyden, a former Neo-Nazi white supremacist recruiter, gave Lehigh University students some StrHATE Talk on how to turn away from hate…
Cities and The Wealth of Nations
But government bureaucrats love grand plans and sweeping claims because they are useful in taking authority and satisfying their natural desire for power and control. Forget economic schools, she concludes. We are on our own.
Finding Truth at Lehigh
During my time at Lehigh, I have never shied away from an argument; I have never been afraid to give my opinion. More importantly, though, I have never been afraid to listen to someone else’s opinion. While most of my opinions have not changed completely, many of them have been shifted, shaped, and molded and many others lost some of the dogmatic edge that they had when I arrived at Lehigh.
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite
I am not an operator inside the administration. Frank Roth, Lehigh’s general counsel, probably wakes up to copies of my emails, under some privacy-invasion clause of which the school failed to inform me, thanks in part to some of the efforts that I’ve stood behind in my time here. They [the administration] don’t care for [...]
Generation Cry Baby
The art of complaining is developed in humans from a very young age. Over the years, it seems that our generation has attained markedly improved skills in this area compared to our predecessors. While most of our parents’ generation couldn’t whine and talk back without getting smacked, our generation was mostly able to avoid such a tragic fate.
Socialist Students
The long-term repercussions of Obama’s economic policies are leading us down the road of socialism, which is especially bad news for those of us preparing to enter the workforce.
Rejection Season
If your spring semester has given you problems in all of these areas, it’s important to keep things in perspective. Yes, your life may not be going well right now. But everyone else’s life is probably just as bad. Whether you turn to Schadenfraude or self-motivation is a personal choice, but it’s a choice that always makes spring semester interesting for everyone.
Why You Should Reject Your Next Job Offer
Where is the golden egg, you ask? The secret to success is to be innovative, be original, and be entrepreneurial. Looking back to Forbes 400 List, one can easily see that if you didn’t get a check from a dead man, your probably started a company.
Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Politicians?
While we can’t necessarily draw any conclusions from this particular finding, we can ponder its potential significance when coupled with the fact that the second most common response was something to the effect of “I’m not particularly good with politics.”
Two other examples of this are the Movement and the Council for Equity and Community (CEC). The former had over 70 attendees at its meeting in the middle of November following the elections and the bias-related incidents during that time, yet its consistent membership is back to the comparatively small numbers of the months previous.
The latter experienced a similar peak in attendance for the town hall meeting (which was less of a town hall meeting than a several-hundred-person round table discussion) following the same incidents, but once again finds its attendance at about the same levels as before the incidents.
Are College Campuses Religious Safe-Zones?
Despite this dearth of coverage, religious intimidation is a real problem on college campuses. Many Christians, in particular, do not always feel “safe” or “welcomed” on college campuses. Their views are misunderstood, belittled, and ridiculed, and oftentimes they are exposed to more rigorous official university scrutiny because of their beliefs.
Cry Wolf: A Political Fable
As Cry Wolf progresses, it touches upon many other topics that are present in modern society. The issues of illegal immigration, migrant workers and cheap labor, the naturalization processes, amnesty, racism, oppression, discrimination, reverse discrimination, secularism, libertarianism, terrorism, political correctness, and anarchy are all examined within the fable’s 214 pages. You will not only see the professors, the students, the politicians, the idealists, the judges, and the activists in this story – you will see yourself. And that sight may be more clear and harsh than you have been used to seeing in a very long time.
The Google Zone
Fortunately, very smart people are working on a solution to this problem. Experts suggest that Google is about 15 to 20 years away from conquering the world. For anyone familiar with Google’s success, this shouldn’t come as a shock. Unless you purposely Google-proof yourself, Google owns your emails, your chats, your search history, your documents, and much more.
Diverse Lehigh: A Preview
The removal of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ answers from Calculus has provided a more level playing-field that has allowed people of every ethnicity to succeed. In understanding how variables work and how they make people feel, Asians, Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics have found a qualitative understanding of Calculus that is valuable beyond the classroom. This integrated and more human approach has already shown countless students the power of numbers and variables. Let it do the same for you!
The US-Czech Alliance: Built to Last
The US and the Czech Republic have had a rocky alliance history, but since the defeat of Communism the two states have grown closer together. Despite the radical asymmetry in size and power, since 1989 the Czech Republic has been a valuable ally to the United States.
Remaining Awake
Perhaps the most interesting perspective on the concept of Remaining Awake came from Ziad Munson, adjunct professor of Sociology and Anthropology: “For me, being awake is making sure that we – this generation and the next generation – are well educated. We have to look at K-12 and that needs to be revised, because, at that level, if we continue to do a terrible job, then we might not see our position improve.”
This is a Fundamental Difference Between Us…
Everyone who listened to the Presidential debates probably recognizes this phrase. Several times, both Obama and McCain used it in reference to issues on which they disagreed. Once or twice when McCain spoke, I saw a little glimmer of clarity on the real fundamental difference between the parties.
The Mindless Contingent
It’s entirely possible that you’re reading this before November 4, 2008, but the likelihood is that you’re reading this after. Regardless, you will vote in an election sometime in the future, so the message is the same. The electoral system — nay, the whole political system — in the United States is broken.
An Engineer’s Dream
As a general rule, planning your class load for next semester is stressful. There are requirements to fill, time conflicts to worry about, and logging in at 10:00 pm with 1,000 other people (full disclosure: the author logs in at 9:30). With all of that said, you still have to avoid any class that starts at 8:00 AM and any class with a professor who says “uh” way too many times.
Anticipating an Obamanation
A colleague of mine wrote last month about why he, as a Christian, feels obligated to vote for Barack Obama. To me, this notion is not only delusional but downright scary. I feel that I need to respond to this notion as well as list the almost countless other reasons Barack Obama would do great damage to this country. He is not even qualified to be President of this great nation.
Electing What: Where has the Ideology Gone?
“Here comes the orator! With his flood of words, and his drop of reason.” —Benjamin Franklin
G.K. Chesterton is perhaps the greatest forgotten intellectual from the early twentieth century. This is odd since the Brit was both friends and sparring partners with some of the giants of the era—men like George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells.
Democratic Intolerance
Traditionally, Democrats claim to support tolerance, but, from the looks of the mainstream media, can’t seem to stand the conservative viewpoint. Excluding Fox News, there are two conservative anchors on television: John Stossel of ABC and Glenn Beck of CNN Headline News.
Sexism and Sarah Palin
With the election season now in full swing and Sarah Palin still being assaulted in the media and even by the Women’s Center on Lehigh’s campus, I thought it would be time to set the record straight on just who Sarah Palin is and what she stands for. Hopefully, I will also put to rest some myths along the way…
Sanity Lost
Sometimes, convincing someone to cast their vote for you is quite challenging. I learned this in those intense middle school elections of simpler days now long past. If it weren’t for Sarah and her seemingly endless supply of Jolly Rancher lollipops things might be different…
BeTrayed
To impose or not to impose, that is the question. Whether it is more beneficial to let people decide to be responsible for their environment and surroundings or to force it upon them by taking drastic measures that affect the entire population directly…
Whites, Blacks, and Voting Preferences
I was looking through the Wall Street Journal the other day when I saw the headline “Black Voters Fret Over Obama.” I wondered, when I saw the title, what black voters were ‘fretting over’, so I read on…
Volunteering For Victory
As the 2008 election season is under way, with the Democrat and Republican conventions just behind us and the elections just around the corner, it’s time for the last two frenzied months of campaigning…
Why I am Voting Obama
This was a tough call for me. I do like McCain — really. He’s a nice guy, I’m sure, but I can’t help but wonder if he is too confident he has the Christian vote simply because of his Republican status…
Manufacturing Equality
Does the man who is handed a fish reap the same satisfaction of the man who caught his fish? In the general sense, do people who receive the end result appreciate it as much as those that work for it? Equality is not an issue simply between races and ethnicities; equality involves ensuring all people, regardless of origin or creed have the same opportunity to succeed in their own way.