On Sunday, May 4th, 2003 a group of junior and senior girls gathered to participate in an unsanctioned school game of Powder Puff football. These girls from Glenbrook North High School, Illinois, met at a forest preserve wearing their jerseys. However, instead of playing football, the event changed course and resulted in a nationally publicized hazing incident. During the hazing, the junior class participants were covered in paint, urine, feces, animal innards, shot with paintball guns, kicked, slapped, and otherwise injured as the senior class continued with their ritual that had been going on for decades.

Kelly O’Keefe, ’10, a freshman during the incident said, “This was not a onetime thing, and it had been going on for years.” I was only thirteen when the Glenbrook North hazing occurred, however, being only twenty minutes away from that high school, it affected our community. The result was a lot of freaked out parents watching the Oprah special on “Glenbrook North Hazing.” Since then, hazing has caught the nation’s attention and has enforced a sense of obligation to crackdown and counter hazing rituals.

Glenbrook North, a case caught on tape, pushes the limits of cultural acceptability. It made society question the limits of group fanaticism. And, it showed the world what is really happening. This event begs the question, what is hazing? Can one event revise the nation’s perspective on young adult rituals?

Last month, Lehigh University participated in National Hazing Prevention Week with the goal of educating students about hazing. Their education session featured a definition so broad that anything could be reported as hazing. They said, “Hazing is any action taken or situation created, whether on or off campus, to produce mental or physical discomfort, embarrassment, harassment, or ridicule.” Although they give inclusive examples of “brutality of physical nature, such as paddling, whipping, beating, branding, forced calisthenics,” there is no clear threshold as to what constitutes hazing.

Is forcing a rookie to go buy you a sandwich hazing? According to Lehigh University, yes, it certainly is. It will be enforced through Lehigh’s anti-hazing compliance, as well as the state of Pennsylvania’s law against hazing, and the NCAA policies for sports related hazing. Therefore, it is crucial to educate students on the fine lines between hazing and initiation.

Using Lehigh’s mental or physical discomfort standard, the following situation can be tested as hazing. If I ask a freshman to go get a sandwich for me from the Goose, is that putting a person in physical discomfort and hazing them? If so, I am violating a Pennsylvania anti-hazing statue as well. This law states the punishment as a misdemeanor of the third degree, punishable by a fine of up to $5,000. The NCAA has adopted similar policies and rules for college athletes, stating in their handbook, “Any act committed against someone joining or becoming a member or maintaining membership in any organization that is humiliating, intimidating or demeaning, causes emotional anguish or physical discomfort or endangers the health and safety of the person.”

In an attempt to reach some clarity with regard to this zero-tolerance rule, I met with Julie Sterrett, director of student leadership development. Sterrett asked a roomful of student athletes, “Is initiating a freshman acceptable or unacceptable?” The students responded with confusion. According to Julie, the definition of hazing with respect to athletics specifically, “…is making someone feel uncomfortable,” which sums up Lehigh’s policy too. However, what pushes the limit when it comes to uncomfortable, or what exactly qualifies as uncomfortable? Julie explains, “It is a controversial subject; hazing has a negative connotation to it. [It is]…in a sense seen as an extreme, and often misinterpreted. It is not a one size fits all [dynamic], and [requires] educating athletes to develop relationships so that teammates understand what makes them comfortable and uncomfortable so that there are no assumptions. Assumptions are what can get people in trouble.”

However, the definition of hazing as making someone uncomfortable is just ridiculous. People can get uncomfortable in all sorts of situations, and with such a broad definition of hazing, it puts sports teams under the impression that they’ve essentially initiated teammates to unify the team, and it turns out they’ve actually hazed them by Lehigh’s broad description.

In order to seek out more truth, I interviewed a freshman on the women’s volleyball team, Margaret Acton. When asked what her view of hazing was, she replied, “Doing stuff to freshman…or picking something embarrassing or annoying for those people to do.” Every year the incoming freshman have to perform a skit for the sophomores, upperclassmen, coaches, even the trainer, which incorporates every single person on the team in Lehigh’s Fight Song. According to Lehigh’s definition of hazing, that skit could potentially harm the mental well-being of those freshmen, causing embarrassment and ridicule. However, as Margaret explains, “No it’s not embarrassing, it brings the freshman and the team closer because it makes the freshman think about every member of the team and incorporate them in the skit.” This is a perfect example of a potentially infringing hazing situation; an initiation for freshman, the skit is required, and one’s mental state after performing a skit in front of said team could lead to possible psychological damage or discomfort.

Last year, I was a freshman on the volleyball team, and there were established rules and duties that had to be preformed every day before practice. Freshman, as a rule, were required to pick up and drop of the team’s laundry before practice every day. Failure to do so, resulted in negative consequences: the team would not have clean practice clothes and gear. However, in the context of the current frenzy, making a freshman pick up your laundry could be interpreted as hazing, which is a bit dramatic. Making freshmen follow the rules and participate in their duties is not damaging to their mental or physical health. Sure, it might be annoying to pick up laundry, but overall it creates a sense of obligation and respect for your teammates. I’m not saying other classes such as sophomores do not have duties; everyone does, but to single out freshmen and point out that getting laundry could essentially be hazing is absolutely ludicrous.

Hazing has become too broadly defined to accurately pinpoint what hazing exactly is. The lack of clarity in Lehigh’s and the NCAA’s anti-hazing policy allows too much misinterpretation and could lead to anything being considered hazing. What needs to be established is a conscious understanding that hazing is indeed harmful and detrimental to people. However, forms of initiation could prove to be beneficial in uniting groups, especially in athletics. Using common sense to evaluate whether or not a certain activity is hazing obviously isn’t working with the policies that have been established. The definition of discomfort is just too vague.

My wife and I came to Lehigh University from Pakistan just a few months ago on a Rescue Fellowship, which was sponsored by the International Institute of Education (IIE). Pakistan has been in the international news frequently these days due to the war against terrorism. In the wake of terrorist attacks all over the country and growing lawlessness, President Asif Ali Zardari and his administration seem totally helpless. Let me share some of my experiences working at a Pakistani university so that you might be able to understand what is actually going on in post-fundamentalist Pakistan.

Amnesty International and The Human Rights Commission Of Pakistan publish documents every year detailing the human right abuses in Pakistan. They mention that the state of Pakistan still fails to provide adequate protection for women and the working class. Despite making up almost 51 % of the population, women continue to face a discriminatory status in Pakistani society. There is a great tide of violence against women since 9/11. Hundreds and thousands of innocent women are victims of honor killings, acid throwing, rape and murder. In post-colonial Pakistan, gang rape and other barbaric traditions are used as a form of criminal punishment. Hundreds of thousands of innocent Pakistani women have already suffered gang rape in the name of honor or tribal revenge. Last year, five women were buried alive in Baluchistan. Human rights groups and civil-rights activists organized protest demonstrations all over Pakistan. It is the most shameful and barbaric crime of the 21st century.

I was teaching as an adjunct lecturer in the English department at Bahauddin Zakria University Pakistan at that time. My wife, Shirin Haider was professor and chair of the English Department. She asked me to organize a peaceful protest demonstration against the barbaric killing of the five innocent women. We organized a rally in which hundreds of female students very actively and voluntarily participated. They shouted slogans against barbaric tribal laws and feudalism. My wife announced the declaration of war against barbaric and criminal traditions against women by founding the Revolutionary Women’s Action Committee (ReWAC), a platform for women’s liberation and revolutionary struggle. It was one of the biggest organized rallies in the history of Multan, which, with its feudalism and religious shrines, is one of the most backwards and traditional cities in Pakistan. In places like Multan, women are not allowed to participate in politics because of chauvinist pseudo-religious dominance.

The next day, our rally was covered in the news. All the local and national newspapers ran headlines with images of women demanding their legal rights. We started consciousness-raising groups and seminars on gender and social awareness, and the response was very positive. Within a few months, hundreds of female students joined our organization. We organized another protest rally, this time inside the campus, against gender harassment and violence against women. Despite threats from the Taliban and the conservative University administration, our female activists organized the rally. In that part of the country, this was deemed a progressive and revolutionary move. It heralded the feminist uprising within the campus. Our democratic and revolutionary initiative was a great success; it gave strength to oppressed and humiliated female students.

Critical revolutionary activism of female students was a breath of fresh air in the stifling environment of Southern Punjab. However, the reactionary and conservative University administration, sponsored and influenced by the feudal lords, local fanatic groups and traditionalists felt threatened by the revolutionary activism of female students. Our activism was a spark of life and hope for the oppressed women who are denied basic human freedoms and rights. Our activists tried to organize a musical evening on the campus to promote awareness of sexual harassment, which is rampant in all state-run universities. Recently, a female faculty member at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad was burned with acid at the hands of a fanatic professor. In another incident, two female students experienced harassment at an examination centre at Zakriya University in Multan.

The Vice Chancellor of our University demanded an immediate explanation from Professor Haider for launching ReWAC. Like a ruthless dictator, he banned all activities linked to ReWAC. Our activists were coerced through harassment to give up their membership in ReWAC, and were threatened with expulsion if they resisted. I was immediately terminated from my position. The Vice
Chancellor very ironically thought that I was plotting a political rebellion for social change against the government with female students. I was banned from even stepping foot on the campus. It was an assault on my freedom and an insult to my pedagogy, so I protested with my wife and students. The very next day Professor Haider was removed from her position as chair of the English Department. I was arrested at the main gate of the University as I was going to my residence inside the campus. My wife was manhandled, and I was sent to police station where I was brutally tortured by the police for three days. Then, I was sent to jail and was released on bail after 14 days.

During my detention, my wife, along with female students and activists were psychologically harassed and humiliated by the University administration. During my detention, I started a hunger strike which lasted for 54 days. On the eve of the 54th day, I pinned down nails in my feet and left hand as a symbolic protest. I was treated like a war criminal; they forcefully undressed me and struck my lower back with 17 lashes. They asked me to cry and beg for mercy, but I refused. They kept hitting me harder and harder until I fell unconscious. They later threw cold and filthy water on me. During torture, one of the police officers pressed my genitals and scornfully laughing, checked my circumcision. I have seen the naked brutality of Pakistani state. I have also experienced the hypocrisy of intellectuals and professors. I have witnessed malicious opportunism and the betrayal of middle class friends and colleagues.

After this experience, I realized that one of the main reasons Pakistan is fast becoming a breeding ground for religious extremism and terrorism is because of the oppressive and decadent education system based on class stratification inherited from British imperialism. Pakistan is a failed state, although paradoxically it has nuclear weapons for people’s destruction. It has a very powerful corporate army, which is mainly responsible for harboring and preserving socio-political decadence, lawlessness, violence and corruption. There is a very strong police force, which is used for political victimization, harassment and torture, and the judicial system is inhumane and corrupt.

Pakistan is a long-term strategic partner of the United States and the most faithful ally in its war against terror. Now, the US Congress has approved the Kerry-Lugar bill of $1.5 billion to facilitate non-proliferation, faithful implementation and commitment towards war against the religiously faithful terrorists. I think the grant will only add insult to injury. It will further aggravate political tension and will sabotage the political and democratic process of Pakistan. Pakistan needs immediate social surgery, because the tumor of religious extremism and terrorism is getting more and more dangerous for global peace and security.

As the Dow marked a psychological rebound at 10,000, few analysts were quick to verify this achievement. With an unemployment rate heading for 10% and no clear connection to revenue, the 10,000 mark might just be an artifact of a much bigger picture.

Internationally, the dollar is suffering, exchanging at only €0.67, almost a split from a 2001 high of €1.20.¹ Nationally, banks are still suffering, with Bank of America reporting a one billion dollar loss; real estate demand is dwindling with record lows in rent; and companies are only exceeding earnings by cutting costs.

In this climate of rising futility, weak markets, and unpredictable demand, companies are becoming increasingly cutthroat in their competitive strategies. Businesses are responding to decreasing market size with more aggressive strategies to demolish their competitors through hostile competition, mergers and acquisitions, and unethical behavior. A look into a few companies emphasizes this point.

Head-to-head, Amazon and Walmart are engaging in airline style price wars with books. Cutting bestsellers from the typical $25 to $10, Amazon thought they could out-price Walmart. Think again. Walmart, known as a cost leader, cut the price to $9, and when they were matched by Amazon, went down another penny to $8.99 a copy.^{2 In the same context, Microsoft sought to challenge Apple in the retail arena by opening two Microsoft retail stores. These stores will function as near replicas of Apple stores, selling high-tech gadgets and software packages licensed by Microsoft. They will even copy the Genius Bar, Apple’s signature customer service and repair center at the back of every store.3}

Top-to-bottom, Oracle offered to buy Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion in order to compete directly with IBM as a one-stop-shop for big business IT solutions.⁴ Bloomberg bought BusinessWeek to expand its information clutch on the magazine channel.⁵ These big buys were financed by the industry of continual mergers: banking. With JP Morgan connecting with Chase and TD enveloping Ameritrade and Commerce, it’s hard to get anyone’s name straight.

Unethically, Toys ‘R’ Us is under FTC review for using market forces to hike the price of strollers and breast pumps.⁶ Likewise the SEC has recently identified the largest insider trading ring in a century.

In this environment of ultra-competitive forces, companies and watchdogs need to step back and observe the long-term results of their actions. Will this competitive behavior end the recession? Is it best for us and our customers?

In most cases the answer is a clear ‘no.’ In the long run, consumers and producers will both lose. As companies increase cutthroat competitive tactics, they will decrease long-term profits. If you make the seas red, no one wins. Customers will lose choice and quality while companies will lose capital and positive PR.

In the case of book selling, Walmart and Amazon will have to sell below cost and will discourage publishers from selling through their channels. For Microsoft, they will create channel conflict with their nearby retailers and increase costs for the customers, since retailing is not their core competency. Oracle will minimize the functional number of customer combinations from nine (e.g. IBM + Oracle, Oracle + Other, or IBM + IBM) to two: either IBM or Oracle. This will decrease the market capacity for their software product while increasing the risk of gaining market-share since Sun + Oracle is not a well-established combination. Finally, the losers will lose – unethical business practices never get companies ahead. Toys ‘R’ Us will end up paying in the jugs for their breast pump price fixing.

In this zero-sum game, there is only one way to get ahead and win in the long run: ignore the rules. Instead of buying into the U.S. magazine market, Bloomberg could offer a hybrid terminal with a magazine feel. This would create a “blue ocean” of uncontested market space. Instead of trying to find more ways to sell products with bugs and overheating Xboxes, Microsoft should focus on developing an operating system that is not vulnerable to viruses. Banks might even be able to do more than clean their balance sheets by offering investment products to small companies.

Taking this theory out to the market, analysts see a bleak future because companies are hollowing out. They are trading cost-cutting strategies for revenue-building approaches. Instead of expanding their intellectual property they are selling it below its true value. When we can learn to step off the battlefield, our market will stabilize.

Sources:
1 – http://www.x-rates.com/d/EUR/USD/graph120.html
2 – http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704322004574477050954174722.html
3 – http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125582090441392365.html
4 – http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/10/15/ellison-oracle-wont-be-seventh-in-services/
5 – http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107204574473382444906054.html
6 – http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125573656435491057.html

With sweeping health care legislation making its way through Congress, our leaders are overlooking one of the most pressing issues in the US: public education. Since the 1960s, our expenditures have grown and our grades, domestically and internationally, have dropped. Education, which is so important for a free and industrial society, has been left by the wayside for decades.
The United States public school system instructs 55 million children in over 100,000 schools. We spend on average $10,770 per student, which is one of the highest expenditures per student in the world; financed almost entirely from property and school taxes. Of course, spending money is not a panacea. The average vocabulary of a 14 year old in 1945 was 25,000 words; today it hovers around 10,000 for the same age group. Our dropout rate is about 30%, and the kids that do graduate are already academically behind based on international test scores. American businesses are importing more and more foreign talent rather than hiring our own, and many people fear that what happened to our auto industry from 1970 till now will happen with our job market. What is wrong with America’s oldest “public option”?
1) We have one of the ‘slowest’ curriculums in the world, meaning we spend a great deal of time reviewing material such as arithmetic in middle school when comparable schools in other countries are onto geometry and algebra. Our textbooks are set up to skim several topics instead of delving deep into a couple topics over the year, which produces students that know very little practical information on several topics.
Instead of separating the gifted students from the slower learners, all students are taught together in the same classroom to avoid hurting anyone’s self esteem. This leaves the gifted students bored as the teacher must teach to the lowest level in the class. Suffocating a gifted student intellectually is a far worse crime than hurting someone’s self esteem. We will never know a gifted student’s true potential unless they are taught at an accelerated rate fairly early on.
2) We spend about 4 times as much money on education than we did in 1960 and our teacher to student ratio has plummeted, so we should be scoring significantly better on the SATs, right? Well actually the scores have taken a nosedive; the more money we pump into education, the worse our students score. We have more full-time nonteaching staff and other administrators than ever, which contribute very little to actual instructing.
3) Ever since 1960, our education system has been on a steady decline, which leads to the central problem of modern US public education, unionization. In 1962 teachers were allowed to unionize, and ever since, the main beneficiary of the education system has been its employees, not the students. The point of a union is to use collective bargaining to protect its own interests. I find it incredible that on any day of the school year, a group of teachers can go on strike and shut down the school until they feel like going back to work. Despite what any teacher on strike says, strikes send a pretty clear message that personal interests of teachers trump quality education for the children. The late Al Shanker, teaching union founder and president, said it best with “I will begin to care about the quality of children’s education in this country when they start paying union dues.”
Stemming from the union contracts is the idea of tenured teachers. Right now there are about 700 teachers in New York that are barred from teaching because of misconduct, but can’t be fired because they are tenured. Their union contracts force the school district to go through a maze of paperwork that can take up to several years to get through. While their paperwork is being processed, they sit in a room provided by the district and make $70,000 a year – to do nothing. That’s $5 million out of the budget for New York alone.
We need to fix these problems.
We need to drop this “social re-engineering” garbage and get back to basics. That means less sing-song time for ‘praise the president’ and more time for fundamentals. We need to end ‘social promotion,’ which means advancing a student through the grades based on age and not test scores. If a student doesn’t understand the material after summer school, then repeat the grade. A superintendent (which rakes in a national average $148,387 a year) in the Miami school district flat out said, “Half our job is education, and the other half is social work”. This is not improving our test scores.
Instead of the age old fix-all of raising taxes and dropping more money into the system, maybe we should do the unthinkable and switch from a “free” system to a free-market system in which students pay tuition to go to a school. Private school students consistently perform better on standardized tests, not because of the biggest budgets, but because every school knows they must instruct efficiently or face closure.
Finally, teaching unions have to dial it down to control the rising cost of education. The tenure system must be weakened or dissolved in order to ensure that schools do not get caught up in the mountain of paperwork involved with replacing a misbehaving or just plain bad educator. Award a limited tenure based on performance reviews by an outside group, not seniority.
Perhaps instead of writing massive and broad legislation enacting more “public option policies”, we should take a stronger look at the ones we already have.

Sources:
“Center for Education Reform – K-12 Facts.” Center for Education Reform – Home. Web. .
“Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) – Overview.” National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Home Page, a part of the U.S. Department of Education. Web. .

Think back to before your freshman year. You were a senior with a life changing decision to make. Were you going to attend Lehigh or another similar school? In that decision, many aspects of student life were balanced: academics, food service, campus life, and available student services. Little facts like library building hours, newspapers in Rauch, and flexible course choices entered your mind as a whirling matrix of decision variables.

Many of these variables may not have seemed too relevant to you until recently. That is when they were taken away. Recognizing the end of the college readership program, the reduction of buildings hours including library hours, and ten percent cuts in department funding, might have raised your temper. These recent changes along with a systemic shift of the registrar to restrict student overloads and the business school’s insistent need to control every minor expenditure, have created a pattern of abstinence. That is abstinence from student based priorities and abstinence from transparency.

However, Lehigh is not alone. Universities including Dickinson, Whitman College, and even Harvard are facing harsh realities of budget cuts.¹ These universities were forced to hold “virtual swim meets”, cap student printing, and lay off a variety of student service providers including janitors.² With all of these cuts, the New York Times has even started a blog on what colleges can cut ³.

In what seems like a hopeless loss to the quality of the American university, there is still hope, but only if universities can radically shift their business models. Instead of prioritizing administrators’ salaries, professors’ job security, and blue sky research, universities have to return to their core business model. They must develop an educated work force, produce industry relevant research, and provide a productive environment for intellectuals to flourish.

Just like any other service business in the world, Universities must understand that the customer always comes first. Whether that customer is the student paying tuition, government agencies providing grants for economically effective research, or companies paying for research and development, universities must meet their needs.

At the same time, universities must remain competitive. That means using agile business models to adapt to changes immediately instead of ten years later, incentivizing professors to win more competitive grants, and reducing faculty and staff in weak economic times. Instead of begging alumni for money, Lehigh should be proving its research has value for companies. Instead of focusing on only tenured professors, Lehigh should hire more adjuncts and professors of practice as it does for its MBA programs. Finally, instead of acting as three independent silo colleges, Lehigh should integrate cross-college resources.

If Lehigh cannot revise its stale, 1950s business model, it might not be able to sustain itself for the indefinite future. Students might not be able to have the available resources and services they once had, and alumni might not give to a university that did not fully satisfy their needs as students.

Sources:

1 – http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/19/education/19college.html?_r=2&hpw

2 – http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/slam/blog/263

3 – http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/19/what-colleges-can-cut/

There exists an ongoing debate between the Student Senate and the administration, specifically President Gast, as to the merits of adopting the Amethyst Initiative, a public statement signed by over 130 university presidents supporting, as their website states, “informed and unimpeded debate on the 21 year-old drinking age.” In an open letter published last year President Gast stated, “I believe that signing, in effect, would signal support for lowering the drinking age to 18, though the Initiative’s supporters insist it is merely intended to encourage debate on this topic.”

Nevertheless, Student Senate XXII has vowed to push the initiative for a second year, establishing an Ad-Hoc committee headed by Michael Caffrey. The need for President Gast’s signature and the controversy surrounding the initiative have eclipsed the broader goals of the Senate: discussions and events designed to educate the student body and promote safe and healthy drinking habits.

Ostensibly, the administration agrees with the Student Senate’s safety and health approach, as President Gast writes, “I am not naive about our students’ use of alcohol, nor are my colleagues at Lehigh. We share a goal and a commitment to help our students make safe, healthy choices and reduce the problems that so frequently occur with alcohol abuse.” Not to say that Lehigh doesn’t provide resources such as substance-free housing and a blooming AlcoholEdu program to encourage responsible behavior, but the Student Senate is looking for a different type of resource. Student Senate XXII Treasurer Binay Patel identifies discussion as one of these valuable resources, where “student-run focus groups and administration hosted town hall meetings would start to define the specific issues that are prevalent to Lehigh.” Binay insists the importance of the Amethyst Initiative rests in the possibility Lehigh could become part of a global network with a capability to “develop integrated, thoughtful, and well-rounded programs to solve this issue.”

The Senate, however, faces a formidable barrier in that President Gast has already stated her refusal to sign the initiative. Even so, the debate does not encompass whether to change the drinking age, due to the immensity of a national campaign. The Student Senate recognizes the denial that surrounds underage and dangerous alcohol abuse, as well as its tendency to be masked and hidden by parents, universities, and the nation. Students – possibly due to their proximity and experience in underage and dangerous drinking – see the need for change but administrators and the nation as whole remain hesitant.

John Smeaton, Vice Provost of Student Affairs, advocates an approach that “separates abuse from use”.  This position, as well as the Senate’s goal of open discussion, at least from a university administration standpoint, will be difficult to achieve. Events with truly open discussions about underage and unsafe drinking could be difficult to hold due to legal restrictions. Discussion about alcohol that maintains the necessity of strict abstinence for those under the legal drinking age prevents a candid discussion of alcohol’s prevalent underage use.

The Student Senate believes the “status quo isn’t working,” thus they are urging action.  The administration acknowledges the problem of dangerous drinking but is extremely hesitant to take new action to foster discussion and education. While President Gast says she “encourage[s] open debate and discussion about drinking and alcohol abuse,” students want tangible steps taken, and they view the signing of the Amethyst Initiative as a catalyst to important new programs and discussion groups.

Beginning a new year at Lehigh comes with a unique set of challenges, from buying books to organizing classes and from arranging housing, to getting involved in clubs. Amid all this complete chaos, we also need to find time for our classes, sports, homework, studying, and of course, socializing.  In this season of mayhem, political involvement is probably not a high priority for the average student, myself included.  So when I was asked to write a story on local Lehigh County candidate Scott Ott, I put aside these reservations and went to see him speak on campus.  I was immediately impressed by the message he was spreading.

Nobody would doubt that there are major political debates taking place, and that political lines are now changing in movements that have never before occurred in our generation’s lifetime. Of course, many of us feel that in the grand scheme of national politics, we each as an individual serve very little importance. Not a single one of us could stand up to Obama, Clinton, Pelosi, Bush, or any national candidate and tell them that we strongly disagree with their actions, nor could we express our approval to them directly. They are too distant from us.  It is simply impossible, or so we are made to think.

Scott Ott is amongst the newest breed of politicians to emerge, known as “common sense” candidates, who believe that government is too distant from the people and should be made more local. Their promise is simple: bring increased accountability and responsibility to the government, one step at a time.

Scott Ott is currently running for the position of Lehigh County Executive against long-time incumbent Don Cunningham. Scott’s plan is to increase the fiscal responsibility of the county government by taking control of the budget, and in doing so, help decrease our growing national debt.

Lehigh County is currently $20 million dollars in debt and the budget for the upcoming year, as currently posted, will have fully exhausted all its reserve funds. By cutting down on unnecessary and inefficient spending, Ott hopes to prevent a major 2011 tax hike.

This amount of money, according to Ott, is within the control of the local people, as compared to the futility of attacking a federal deficit currently on the order of trillions of dollars. Ott plans to accomplish these cuts by approaching department heads within the county to find methods of achieving across-the-board savings and increasing efficiency. This will include holding all departments more accountable for remaining true to their budget than in the past – an idea that is unheard of and unprecedented in many parts of the government.

Additionally, Ott plans to cut unnecessary programs, such as economic development offices and tree planting programs, at least until the economy improves and revenue can cover their expense. While these actions may initially seem reckless, only three years ago, Lehigh County spent $60 million less than the current budget and was no worse off for it.

These millions of dollars are not all from Lehigh County; in fact, only one quarter of Lehigh County’s revenue is directly collected through taxes, the rest is “pass-through money” which is collected by various counties, given to the state, and then distributed by the state back to the counties along with mandates on how it must be spent. In many instances, provided funds are not sufficient to cover the expenses of mandated programs. On this major issue, Ott says, “I am going to stand up to the governor in those situations and say ‘We are not going to spend this extra money.’”

I challenged Ott to explain the importance of these issues for Lehigh University students, who live in the county adjacent to Lehigh county.  He confidently responded that success in Lehigh County will spur the election of similar, “common sense candidates” in neighboring counties – eventually influencing state and federal politics as well.

If local governments started balancing their budgets and preventing tax increases, neighboring regions would be foolish not to adopt similar practices. And this responsibility would have no choice but spread to the state and beyond, because citizens of this great nation would not accept anything otherwise. Ott believes that we can take control of our federal government, we can stand up to major political forces, and we can do this by taking control of government on a local, tangible level.

Consider this: If the federal government is debating a major issue, this will not likely have an immediate daily impact on your life. Even if you feel very strongly on this issue or are directly affected by it, most likely you will never get the chance to stand, testify, and debate before Congress. If, on the other hand, your town decides to build a road through your backyard, you’re not going to miss that next town council meeting to voice your opinion.  Ott wants to see more opportunities for people to stand up and enforce accountability in government.

There can be a change in politics – a move away from a system of elected officials who act irresponsibly and against the will of the people, towards a new breed of politicians through the election of principled people in local races. And the role of young adults, college students especially, is vital in making this change. If we become involved, then the outcomes may be surprising. According to Ott, “It’s not that we’re apathetic, it’s just that we think we can’t win.

Even for those outside of Lehigh County, including most Lehigh Students, there are major issues lying in wait. One such issue is a sales tax increase. Currently, the Pennsylvania sales tax is set at 6%.  However, pending legislation in Harrisburg, each county could gain the option to increase that tax by one percentage point to a 7% sales tax. This amounts to a 16.66% tax increase; and is rumored to be a matter of particular interest for the mayor of Bethlehem.

For those of us who feel too busy to get involved, Ott has some advice.  “Twenty to thirty years from now, you will never remember what you got in that science course. You will never remember your grade in English Literature or what the paper was about that seems so important right now. You’ll never remember this stuff; it will all become literally meaningless to you. Once you get that diploma, all of that just kind of fades into insignificance. What you will remember is the real stuff that you did, the way you got involved in a cause that was bigger than yourself.”  We should all should take this advice and get involved in important causes, stand firm for what we believe in, and make a change for the better in our lives, our school, our local government, and our great federal republic.

It seems as though the big news on the local, national, and world scene for the past decade has been the constant threat of the next big pandemic. In 2003, the spotlight was on SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), which was contained by the World Health Organization (WHO). Next up was the “Bird Flu” (H5N1), which from 2006 to present day kills millions of birds in Asia and would have been a pandemic if it had mutated to infect humans quickly. And that leads us to novel H1N1, the “swine flu”, which is virus made of four different strains; one usually in humans, one in birds, and two found in pigs.

This latest pandemic has been thought to have been in Mexico since January 2009 but only recognized much later in March at which point Mexico City was basically shut down. In April 2009, two cases are found in California, the first time the disease was discovered in the US.  Today, an estimated 49,214 people are infected in the United States and 631 people have died. This is the disease that has been christened as our latest pandemic.

However, the general student consensus on campus is not fear or concern but much closer to apathy and honestly, can you blame us? Based on CDC statistics, the people who have died after catching the any kind of influenza, including H1N1, has dropped below the seasonal baseline and well below the epidemic line. This does not mean H1N1 does not spread easily, which is all that pandemic status implies. So essentially, the most likely scenario if you catch H1N1 is that you will have typically flu-like symptoms. While that is not pleasant, you also get a week off from school and meals delivered to your door.

But wait a minute; the swine flu can kill, right? True, but right now the fatality rate of H1N1, based on early numbers, is just below getting struck and killed by lightning. We will not know the precise rate until the pandemic is over, and even then, the numbers are simply estimates. The CDC warns us though that viruses change with time and could grow to become much deadlier. The last time H1N1 was a major pandemic was the Spanish Flu in 1918, which killed almost 100 million people at the end of WWI. That virus was relatively quiet, similar to our 2009 H1N1 outbreak, until it mutated and killed millions of people the next year.

Thankfully, scientists highly doubt the ability of the current strain to mutate into a more lethal form. Researchers at the University of Maryland concluded that the swine flu does not meet the typical criteria for recombination into a highly lethal form. In fact, most deaths from swine flu occur when the patient already has preexisting conditions, such as pneumonia. So the flu is not deadly to most in its current form, and the chances of it becoming deadly are relatively low. So what is the big deal?

As with most universities, Lehigh has taken a very serious approach to the Swine Flu. The administration has sent out numerous emails since last year informing students about the progress of Lehigh’s preparations for the flu from the “Pandemic Flu Committee”, formed several years ago to draft written plans to deal with such an outbreak. There is a special section of the website dedicated to the H1N1 virus, with prevention information and updates as well as the procedures the CDC “highly recommend” every major university employ. The Health and Wellness Center distributed anti-bacterial hand wash at check-in back in August and has masks available to cover the nose and mouth of infected students. The administration is taking no chances.

The difference in the level of seriousness between the administration and the student body is all a matter of perception. As a student, the most likely worst case scenario is a week of the flu and delivered meals. To the school, the worst case scenario is the same “as the worst case scenario for any college campus, and that is that there could be one or more deaths from this infection”, according to Dr. Kitei, director of the Health and Wellness Center in an email.  I believe the more likely worst-case scenario is for the infection to spread to a point where the school would have to close. Lehigh is always looking for national attention but I don’t think this is quite what they had in mind. The potential media nightmare and the damage to the school’s reputation are the things that keep school administrators up at night.

With news of a second student infection on campus on Tuesday 9/15, it will be interesting to see if the perceptions of the students change from the view that the infection does not affect them at Lehigh.  Dr. Kitei is skeptical, commenting that, “Obviously, students will be more aware of H1N1 novel (swine) flu now, but I’m not sure perceptions have changed.”

Sources:

CDC. “CDC 2009 H1N1 Flu.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Web. 15 Sept. 2009. <http://www.cdc.gov/H1N1FLU/>.

Dr. Kitei. Message to the author. E-mail.

ECDC Daily Update. Rep. European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, 15 Sept. 2009. Web. 15 Sept. 2009. <http://ecdc.europa.eu/en/healthtopics/Documents/090917_Influenza_AH1N1_Situation_Report_1700hrs.pdf>.

“Swine flu outcompetes seasonal flu, unlikely to get more lethal | Booster Shots | Los Angeles Times.” LA Times. Web. 15 Sept. 2009. <http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/2009/09/swine-flu-outcompetes-seasonal-flu-in-ferrets-unlikely-to-get-more-lethal.html>.

“WHO | World Health Organization.” Web. 15 Sept. 2009. <http://www.who.int/en/>.

For those who have visited The Lehigh Patriot website in the past, you’ll notice we have a new look. With the new website you should find it easier to access our articles, and join in the discussion. In addition to a more intuitive layout, the new website for The Patriot will allow us to publish news in a more timely fashion, and discuss issues that you care about when you care about them. As editor-in-chief, my hope is that you, the reader, choose to take advantage of this new site. I will be working to ensure that myself, and my fellow writers work to build a community that values open discussion. So with that, please take a look around our new website.

Over the next month or so, there will still be many changes made to this site, mainly superficial, to improve the quality of service we provide. There are, however, a few new features which I would like to mention.

First, on the right side of the screen you should see a box entitled “Word on the Web”. Expanding on the idea of Breaking the Bubble, which appeared in several issues last semester, this area will be reserved for your comments and thoughts on a wide array of issues. It’s easy enough to leave a comment – just enter your name, email, and your thoughts.

Second, the three editors for this year, myself, editor emeritus Trevor Drummond, and associate editor Brandon Sherman will be posting our editorials in the Editor’s Desk box at the top of the page. These editorials will be focused on current events, and respond to what we hear from readers like yourself, or from what we hear around campus. Again, we’re doing this with the goal of creating an open forum for the Lehigh community.

Third, and finally, our collection of articles has been organized. To explain:

• Features: here you will find articles that we deem to be headline material. If something big happens on campus or around the country, look for an article here.
• Articles: this is where you will find most of the Patriot articles that don’t deal with something pressing. If something hasn’t been in the news lately, but one of our authors finds it important enough to write about, look for the article here.
• Briefs: We know it, a lot of our articles are long, and you don’t have much time. Briefs are quick, to-the-point, and easy to read. We haven’t had many articles of this length in the past, but look for a few more of them now that they can be published while an issue is relevant.
• Updates: are a new addition to Patriot content. You probably won’t see these in the printed editions of the Patriot. Nonetheless, these posts will notify you of anything and anything – upcoming speakers or events at Lehigh, quick political news, stock market crashes, or even when the printed edition of the Lehigh Patriot will become available.

Beyond that, our content is broken down futher, as content has been in the past. We’ll have news articles, commentary (op-ed), arts and culture pieces, and humor articles. If you can’t find something, there’s an easy-to-use search bar at the top which will help you find any article you are looking for.

So again, welcome to the new Lehigh Patriot website, and it is my hope that you will join us in discussing issues that really matter. Through more discussion and dialogue, we can all become better versed on social and political topics, giving us a better chance to make our community a better place.

The Waxman-Markey Bill

The Waxman-Markey bill, touted as “transformational legislation,” would require the U.S. to reduce emissions of CO² and other gases by 17 percent within the next 10 years and by 80 percent before 2050. Should the bill pass through the Senate, the government will use a “cap and trade” system to regulate the emission of CO². Essentially, the government will issue permits to emit CO², which can then be traded from companies that pollute less to companies that pollute more. The end result should be a level of emissions equal to the “cap” that is set. The main issues in this bill are the effects on the monetary system, and the effects on the climate. So before a judgment is made about this bill, let’s look at who pays, who profits, and what happens to the climate as a result.

As with most government policies, U.S. citizens will foot the bill. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that this bill will cost the average household $175 per year, mainly from an increase in the price of carbon based fuels. Due to a series of provisions within the bill, the poorest 20 percent of Americans will actually benefit, making $40 per year due to this bill[1]. In addition to the direct cost to taxpayers, the “cap and trade” system will increase manufacturing costs, and provide incentive for companies to move manufacturing plants overseas to areas with lower energy costs, which would likely result in increased unemployment.

Where does this money go? That should be obvious – to the bureaucracy! According to the same CBO report, the bill would increase federal revenue by $845 billion over the coming decade, with estimated expenditures related to the bill weighing in at $821 billion[2]. There are several interpretations of what this means. One interpretation is the creative New York Times headline that the climate bill “would trim budget deficit.” Such an interpretation is accurate if the budgeting assumptions are valid, but also terribly misleading. This bill calls for an increase in spending of $82.1 billion per year. To put that into perspective, the AIG bailout of last August was $85 billion. This bill is essentially another one of those each and every year so that our government can regulate the emission of invisible gases.

Now despite the large costs involved, proponents of the bill claim that the cost is worth the benefit of reducing carbon emissions. According to climate models, CO² emissions are a contributor to climate change which, if continued, will result in a substantial increase in temperature across the globe, leading to other changes in climate directly caused by human activity. These models predict a rise of anywhere from two to nine degrees Celsius over the next century. Similar models predict the impact of the House’s climate bill to be a drop of 0.05 degrees Celsius by 2050[3]. Simply put, if these climate models are indeed accurate, then this bill will do virtually nothing to change the warming trend. However, by 2050, this bill will have cost us $3,000,000,000,000 ($3 trillion) to change the global temperature increase from 3 degrees Celsius to 2.95 degrees.

With those facts in mind, let’s look now at climate change.

Carbon and the Climate

The theory behind anthropogenic (human-induced) climate change is that CO² emissions are causing a rampant increase in global temperature. Thus far, proponents of this theory have largely succeeded in making the public believe that this is an undisputed fact among the scientific community. The truth is, this scientific hypothesis is disputed by many notable climatologists and other scientists. To name a few:

1.     The Polish Academy of Sciences[4] who submitted a letter discussing ten problems with the theory of anthropogenic climate change.

2.     Princeton Physicist Dr. William Happer[5], who testified before Senate in February that current climate models are inherently flawed.

3.     Ivar Giaever, Norwegian Nobel Prize winner[6].

4.     Dr. John Cristy, a lead author of the U.N.’s original IPCC report in 2001[7].

5.    Over 700 scientists according to a list provided by the U.S. Government[8].

Clearly, any claims of a scientific consensus on climate change are inaccurate. All of these scientists provide theories of their own regarding human activity and the causes and effects of an increased level of CO² in the atmosphere. It’s understandable, since even climate models that predict runaway warming can’t agree on its role.

The climate models that do predict global warming provide an estimated increase in temperature of anywhere from two degrees Celsius to nine degrees Celsius by year 2100. These models require hundreds of assumptions to be made – one of them being carbon’s role in regulating the climate. As Dr. Happer explains in his senate testimony though, about 90% of the “greenhouse effect” on earth is due to water vapor, not CO². CO² plays a much smaller role, and according to Dr. Happer could at most cause a 1 degree Celsius increase in global temperature. He explains:

“There is little argument in the scientific community that a direct effect of doubling the CO² concentration will be a small increase of the earth’s temperature — on the order of one degree. Additional increments of CO² will cause relatively less direct warming because we already have so much CO² in the atmosphere that it has blocked most of the infrared radiation that it can.”[9]

Dr. Happer continues to explain that models currently used rely on the assumption that small increases in CO² levels will lead to increased levels of water vapor in the atmosphere, causing runaway warming. However, empirical evidence has shown this correlation to close to zero of even negative[10]. By definition, the climate change hypothesis is not something we can prove or disprove at this time, so let’s look at some things we can predict.

Climate in the Real World

Looking to what will actually happen; there are a few things we can know for sure.

1. When the U.S. stops emitting CO², China and India won’t. With one third of the world’s population residing in China and India, both countries are going through rapid economic growth. Economic growth is inextricably tied to cheap energy consumption, and hence CO² emissions. China’s emissions of CO² have increased at a rate of 11% over the past five years, and are expected to continue at a similar rate[11]. These emissions will counteract any cooling effects the Waxman-Markey bill may have.

2.  If the world does get a little too hot, it is actually very cheap and relatively easy to cool Earth down. Geoengineers have already devised methods of cooling earth, some of which involve ejecting particles like sulfates into earth’s atmosphere to reflect sunlight[12]. This solution lacks appeal to environmentalists, but the result is that humans would see little effect from any warming that does occur.

3.  Interestingly enough, a warmer earth is not even the biggest threat that our climate can offer. In the past, events such as Ice Ages and supervolcanic eruptions have wrecked havoc on humans and animals alike[13]. With such events being inevitable over the course of time, at some point we may want more of a greenhouse effect than we have today. As unpleasant the picture of a world 8 degrees warmer is, a world 8 degrees cooler would be much worse. Ironically, the next ice age was the focus of much climate research and alarmism in the 1970’s, and even now there are scientists who claim that we still are quickly headed for another ice age[14].

Money and How to Waste It

For the sake of clarity, here’s what the Waxman-Markey bill does in real terms:

1. Takes a lot of money from 80% of Americans

2. Gives some of that money to the poorest 20% of Americans.

3. Uses the rest to create a huge government agency that monitors and attempts to regulate the emission of an invisible gas.

4. Creates cost incentives that will drive industry elsewhere, as unemployment continues to rise.

5. All of this is done in hopes that we can cool the planet by a 1/20^th of a degree over 40 years.

Now, it is worth noting that supporters argue that this bill will also work to create a “green industry” here in the United States which would create jobs, and also decrease our dependence of foreign oil. These claims are, to a certain extent, accurate. Proponents argue that these benefits outweigh the price tag of $84 billion per year, lost manufacturing jobs, and higher energy prices. That’s simply silly.

Clean and domestic energy are worthwhile goals, no one can dispute that. But, in typical government fashion, this bill goes about “achieving” those two goals in the most convoluted and inefficient way possible. This huge sum of money – about $12,000 per person – over 40 years shouldn’t be taken in the first place. Even if President Obama insists on raising taxes, the $3 Trillion could just be used to directly fund clean energy research and technology. It could be used to build more nuclear power plants to provide cheap and clean electricity. It could be used to just reduce the huge deficit built by President Obama and his predecessor. Instead, this bill is directly transferring wealth from citizen to citizen, and being used to fund yet another massive bureaucracy at the federal level. To cap it all off, it will do essentially nothing to combat any human-induced climate change that exists. No matter what you believe about climate change, this is an opportunity to unite to defeat a bill that will do much more harm than good for this country.

---

[1] Steven Mufson, Washington Post, 6/23/2009. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/22/AR2009062202836.html)

[2] Darren Samuelsohn, New York Times, 6/8/2009. (http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2009/06/08/08climatewire-house-climate-bill-would-trim-budget-deficit-83573.html)

[3] Chip Knappenberger, MasterResource.org, 5/6/2009. (http://masterresource.org/?p=2355)

[4] Kevin Mooney, Washington Examiner, 4/24/2009. (http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/Examiner-Opinion-Zone/Polish-Academy-of-Sciences-Questions-Gores-Man-Made-Global-Warming-Theory-43618922.html)

[5] Dr. William Happer, U.S. Senate Testimony, 2/25/2009. (http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/reprint/happer_senate_testimony.html)

[6] Christina Reed, Nature, 7/15/2008. (http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/2008/07/nobelists_talk_energy.html)

[7] Jon Birger, Fortune Magazine, 5/14/2009. (http://money.cnn.com/2009/05/14/magazines/fortune/globalwarming.fortune/index.htm)

[8] Marc Morano, U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, 12/11/2008. (http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=2674E64F-802A-23AD-490B-BD9FAF4DCDB7)

[9] Dr. William Happer, U.S. Senate Testimony, 2/25/2009. (http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/reprint/happer_senate_testimony.html)

[10] Dr. Roy Spencer, Earth System Science Center, 2/28/2008. (http://www.drroyspencer.com/Spencer-and-Braswell-08.pdf)

[11] Univ. Of California – Berkeley, 3/10/2008. (http://www.physorg.com/news124384270.html)

[12] Jamais Cascio, The Wall Street Journal, 6/15/2009. (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204771304574181522575503150.html)

[13] Suburban Emergency Management Project, 1/11/2005. (http://www.semp.us/publications/biot_reader.php?BiotID=164)

[14] Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski, 21^st Centure Science and Technology, 7/12/2003. (http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202004/Winter2003-4/global_warming.pdf)