Spectrum Article 10/23/2009

Here is my last opinion article for the Spectrum:

I remember meeting Joe Chapman several times during my years at NDSU.  I met him at his old house when I was debating whether or not to attend NDSU and several times when I was a member of student organizations.

He always seemed to be interested in me and the other students and genuinely cared about our successes and difficulties.  He did some great things for NDSU and I will always remember the positive contributions he made to this university.

That said, I will not bury my head in the sand and pretend that he didn’t screw up when it came to handling his expenditures and discretionary fund money.

I also will not go and vilify the local media because they were the bearer of the bad news and did a good job of investigating just what was going on with the President’s house and Chapman’s discretionary spending.

Edifying Chapman by remembering only the good and ignoring everything bad or ominous serves no purpose except to set him up as a one-dimensional character and that does a disservice to both Chapman and NDSU.

FDR and Abraham Lincoln are some of my heroes but I don’t remember them as the mythic demigods that history books make them out to be.

I learn about and remember them as they were, warts and all, and the more I learn the more I respect what these men have done and accomplished and struggled through.

The same is true for me with Chapman.  His successes and failures and screw-ups make him more human, and more relatable than any myth of the amazing super president who was brought down by the evil and malicious media.

The media did a good job of objective reporting.  They tried to get Chapman’s side of the story, but he was unwilling to give an explanation when given the chance.

So they then went to NDSU’s Media Relations Director to get the other side of the story, and the NDSU Development Foundation as well.

In the end it was not the media that brought down Chapman, but truth and Chapman’s actions.

Whenever the media reports on the foibles of someone you don’t like, everyone is happy that the media covers those mistakes.  But if the media reports on the mistakes of a popular public figure everyone acts as if the media is this evil group bent on destroying peoples’ lives.

The media exists to keep people honest and that is what the local media has done in the case of Joseph Chapman, trying to keep him honest about what is going on.

In my mind its always better to know the truth than live a lie, and the local media has done a good job and a fair job of shining a light on what the President and the administration of NDSU has been doing over the last few years.

Anal Newspaper Checker a D-Bag

So I work for the NDSU Spectrum the student paper at North Dakota State University.  Recently we have been attacked by someone calling themselves Copy Editor in the comments section of the online version of the paper.

He is the self-styled savior of the paper because we are supposedly an incredibly poorly run paper that has so many grammatical and style errors that no one takes our newspaper seriously or even reads it anymore.

He goes from serious to flippant, saying that he was amazed we have advertisements considering the supposedly horrible quality and poor readership the paper has.

He likes to point out what he thinks are our copy mistakes, not bothering to mention what we did wrong and why it is wrong.  I personally could quote any person’s blog or online paper and make people believe as a result that the quality of the journalism is piss poor.

Yes we do have errors, but in a newspaper with about thirty articles per issue, and each article containing five hundred or more words, it is remarkable how few errors we let creep into all of that.  And we do this while still having real jobs and going to school full-time as students.

I personally am amazed at the job our writers, editors, copy editors, and editor in chief do a the Spectrum.  They put in countless hours more than they are required to and are paid for they get paid for each and every day to make the paper the best they possibly can.

Copy Editor is most likely an ex employee of the Spectrum who probably has adequacy issues, and is using his anonymity and the power it allows to fulfill his wet dreams.

Free Speech Literature Racks, NDSU’s First Step Towards a Free Speech Gazebo?

Restricting expression on college campuses to certain pre-approved areas is the new tool in administrator’s box of tricks in order to censor students, faculty and staff.  Texas Tech had their famous free speech gazebo which was the only place on campus where students could protest and hand out literature freely without facing punishment for actively using their first ammendment rights.  Other areas on campus needed written permission six days in advance in order to speak or distribute literature or protest, which could be denied if the university disapproved of the views being expressed, a form of prior restraint on speech.

NDSU doesn’t even offer its students a gazebo.  All of campus requires pre-approved written permission twenty-fours in advance from the administrators and campus police in order to have any kind of structure rally, protest, or demonstration on NDSU’s public campus.  If NDSU does not approve of the message, then you can be denied your right to free expression and free speech.

And now NDSU is segregating the availability of literature on campus as well.  Free Speech Literature Racks have sprung up on campus, being the only viable option for placing non-flyer literature on campus without it being destroyed and the student involved facing punishment.  One tiny rack in only some of the buildings on NDSU, while official publications like the student paper get at least one rack per building and some buildings have a half-dozen or more.

The state of free speech at NDSU continues to decline people.  Do something about it! Protest, demonstrate, rally, let the administrators know that you will not sit back and let them silence you, one speech code, one student handbook rule at a time.

Megan Fox and Her Man-Bashing Movie

Sleep deprivation is not conducive to blogging and writing in general.  I’ve been working on an English paper, a sci-fi novel, and now this blog post since 11:30 last night, so its crazy that I have been sitting and typing for fourteen hours straight, but I’m not inclined to go to bed now and I ain’t got anything better to do right now.  So here goes:

Megan Fox of Transformers fame has a new movie coming out.  It’s called Jennifers Body, and its about two girls.  One’s the hot prom queen type, and the other is the nerdy type.  You know the highschool stereotypes in movies.  However Megan’s character is supposedly pure evil, puts cigarettes out on her tongue and kills boys for fun.  Not that she does not kill people, she goes and kills boys because they’re just boys.

And that’s  big telling of the way the media and our culture views the male gender.  Its funny and cool to brutally murder and kill men on the big screen.  The only reason one of the boy’s in the movie is valued is that she is the bookish girl’s brother and therefore he’s a special boy, and therefore unlike other boys deserves the special treatment and consideration that he isn’t just a boy and it isn’t cool to kill him.

Pretty crappy, and another indictment to the man hater that is Megan Fox, who doesn’t like men and thinks that girls that have dated men are icky and therefore can’t date her even though she says she identifies as bisexual.  Yup, man-hating is deeply ingrained and cooll now in today;s culture.  Sick and sad.

NDSU Bias Reporting System, Again

After looking at the NDSU bias reporting system 2007-2008 schoolyear report, which can be found here, I had more questions than answers about just exactly what the bias reporting systm is supposed to be for and do here for us NDSU students.  The report was not very high quality and didn’t do much to explain what goes on at the bias reporting agency.  It just listed the crimes and identity group of the ‘victim’s and ‘perpetrators’ and vaguely mentioned that 26 out of the 31 complaints were acted upon.  It didn’t mention what the punishments were for the specific crimes, how the discipline was handled, or any other necessary facts to get a clear picture of what these people are doing with their anoymous reporting system.

Many of the categories of bias listed on the report, like flyers or exclusion looked to me like an excuse to chill and punish speech the adminstrators didn’t like, but was still perfectly legal and protected speech here on campus.  The exclusion category just struck me as ridiculous and incredibly vague, since it seems to allow a student you don’t like reporting you for exlcusion for simple things like not wanting that person at your birthday party or other similar innocuous ‘crimes.’

I sent two emails to the NDSU Bias people, asking them simple questions like, what kinds of punishments have the students faced for their ‘bias,’ and what forms of due process are there for those charged with something due to the bias report.  I also asked how the Bias Reporting agency was protecting our free speech rights.  Neither of the two emails were responded to.  Since they don’t want to talk about what they are doing behind the scenes in between the big lines left by the admittedly poorly written up report, one has to assume that they know that they are probably stepping on our free speech rights. Disciplinary hearign for ‘harassment’ or ‘bias’ are notoriously illiberal and unfair proceedings where the student charged has to do the work to prove his innocence.  I seriously doubt the students brought to a hearing for their bias were given a fair hearing or any semblance of due process.

And we probably won’t be able to find out if the system is fair.  The anyonimity that protects the reporter is probably used against the one charged against, because any transparency in this system is argued to hurt the people reporting.  That of course is just a bad rationalization but it is used all the time today and is starting to enter the courtroom with shield laws that protect the identity of those bringing criminal charges against someone. All in all, this bias reporting system strikes me as a horrible idea.  No one really knows what is going on, since the little bit of transparency we do see is very vague and cannot tell us what is really going on with this system.

NDSU should take a good look at its Bias Reporting system and do what Cal Poly did with theirs, realize that it is illiberal and violates the free speech rights of its students faculty and staff.  Then they shoudl get rid of it.  FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights on Campus has reported on Cal Poly and other public university bias reporting systems and how unfair and detrimental they are.  You should go over to their site and take a look for more information.

Comments

I realize that my job is to post regularly in order to have posts in order to comment on, but its just weird that I have 4400 views with only 60 or so comments on my post.  So here are the comment rules in case people think that I am not receptive to comments.  There are no hoops to jump through for the comments section.  Post your comment no matter how harsh you feel for or against my words and it will remain there.  I am very receptive to comments and would like more comments to that which I write, and when comments start coming to what otehr comment.  This facilitates discussion on this blog and enriches the experiences of everyone who visits this site.

So please comment on my posts and make this weblog even better!

Thanks,
Nathan Hansen

James Sterba, and Feminist Hypocrisy

I should be working on my English assignment, but I can’t seem to focus on it for some reason right now.  So more blogging.  I think three posts in a day is a record for me actually so YAY! Record breaking moment here at PIC, not that anyone follows this thing regularly anyways.

I finished a ‘debate’ book by William Farrell and James Sterba last night called Does Feminism Discriminate Against Men? It purports itself as a debate but it is really not.  William Farrell gets to go first and lay down his counterargument that feminism was worthwhile and did great things for women but left men behind and actually works to keep men left behind.  No mention that feminism was evil and should never have been and needs to be torn down, just and argument in favor of working for men as well.

Sterba uses his essay to go point by point attackign Farrell and every book that he has ever published and making the false claim that Farrell and MRA’s are trying to destroy feminism and put all the women back in the kitchen with bare feet.  Not really a fair debate if the other person has all of talking points and extra time to research all those talking points to twist them against you.  Its like those Faceoffs I have run in the paper where one of the editor’s faces off against me and waits until I load my side to write theirs in total counterpoint.  Makes their job a lot easier, and a lot less academic, but hey who ever said feminism was an academic discipline anyways.

The logical fallacies Sterba uses are replete in his essay.  He uses ad hominem attacks against Mr. Farrell for being a man or being stupid or other things that have no relevance to the argument he is ‘debating’.  He uses circular reasoning especially when it comes to DV.  DV  is men hitting women, but Farrell says that women hit men just as often, well the study he uses came out durign the early stages of feminism so its unlikely women have enough equality to hit men, so men hit women.  Completely lacking in any logical structure, but whatever.  He does criticize the studies Farrell cites, but his criticisms are of the form that the study didn’t look ino whether the man deserved to be hit or not.

Sterba loves red herring fallacies as well.  When criticizing Farrell about any of the topics he will drive off onto a different topic.  When discussing medical funding it wasn’t an issue about gender according to Sterba, is was an issue of lobbying and fund raising.  The argument is incredibly weak, and can be used against feminists.  Title IX shouldn’t be because sports teams are not a gender issue, its a funding issue.  Men’s teams do a better job of fund raising and lobbying so the women’s teams should just work harder is a similar argument to the one Sterba made, but I don’t think anyone would have let it fly were it made on the senate floor during debates on Title IX before it was passed.

All in all Sterba did not really address any of Farrell’s concerns.  He brushed off the ones he knew he couldn’t fight, attacked the ones he knew he could by using logical fallacies, and then ended the book with his biggest fallacy.  Feminism is morally perfect because is it (circular again), men need to join feminism as it grows and those who don’t are not moral and all men should be moral (appeal to emotion, appeal to fear, appeal to status quo, no facts to back up claim that feminism is moral and that men are not moral and need feminism to become moral or more moral).  Farrell on the other hand laid out a case without attacking Sterba or individuals in teh feminist movement.  He used a litany of facts and figures to support his claims and therefore won out in my mind.

Update: When I posted this my word count said 666.  Just thought that was fricking cool!

All in

Universal Health Care and the Free Market

Universal health care is a big part of Obama’s platform and promises from campaigning and he has said that he was going to get universal health care through Congress before the August recess.  And just like when Bill and Hillary Clinton were pushing for health care reform over a decade ago, there is the enevitable cry that this health care reform is nothign short of a Stalin style communist agenda, and this will further weaken the free market economy.  I think howeverm that the free market people don’t really understand a free market or have that dual definition style reminiscent of adolescent kids sharing toys (“he won’t share his toys” “BUT this is MY toy”).

An English style universal health care plan (or at least the idea of one in my head) actually bolsters the free market.  The free market people say their definition of a free market is one where the consumers get to choose and the government doesn’t control private business.  But if the voters decide they want a government plan where they choose to pool their resources through taxes in order to join the program, then this is a private enterprise.  Its a corporation run by the government yes, but that’s because the stakeholders choose the government as CEO and can choose to remove their stake in the ‘corporation.’

This in turn increases comepetition and quality, which is the biggest claim of why free markets work better.  So health care reform and a public option actually improve and are part of the free market.  But of course this isn’t a free market solution to teh big insurance companies that will lose money once they realize that they don’t have a monopoly on running the health care industry.  Like I said, when it fattens their wallet, ‘capitalists’ love free markets and government helping them.  But when it hurts their wallet, its socialism and Marxism, and the Black Stalin coming to gas everyone sho doesn’t take the public health option.

And no this in not and endorsement of the ridiculous co-op plan that Conrad loves to spout off about.  Im the son of a dairy farmer and know just how succesful agricultural co-ops have been.  My hometown is full of broken farms and a few large corporate farms because the co-op was just too small to actually make a difference for the farmer.  And thats the problem of having a few states or cities band together.  Metlife and Blue Cross/Blue Shield are national chains that have too much clout for a couple of states or cities to band together and compete against.  A large government run program will have that clout, need less overhead because it will be more efficient since each co-op will need leaders and lawyers and negotiators and a one program will only need one set of these getting you more bang for you buck.  It will also be more transparent since the private group of co-ops will need government oversight anyways and we can just roll that into the government option.

All in all, universal healthcare can help the ‘free market economy’ and isn’t this giant socialist mechanism that will result in the government tellin all private businesses how much of what to make or you get shot.  Fricking retarded Republicans.

Wrestling, Gymnastics, Sexism, and Male Disposability

I know how sexist femnists feel that gymnastics is.  And I agree.  I really don’t see the appeal of a sport that forces woment to essentially be bulimic or anorexic, wear skin-tight outfits, and deprive their bodies of nutrients so a twenty yeard old gymnast looks like a twelve year old girl.  Plus those domineering gymnastic coaches that invade their atheletes lives 24/7 is admittedly pretty creepy.  But while driving around Fargo today I noticed the USA wrestling atheletes and that got me thinking of the similarities about wrestling and gymnastics and the sexism and wrongness involved in the sport.

I saw a couple of the athletes coming from the local Subway, which is five or six blocks from their lodging on campus.  There were dressed up in sweatpants and sweatshirts and were running with their sandwiches, no doubt to burn off the calories that they were about to imbibe so that their weight did not change or even went down.  It reminded me of William Farrell and his anology of football to male disposability, and I think wrestling ties in with this analysis very well.

Wrestlers get slammed around just as much as football players, suffer twisted muscles and torn ligaments which can cripple for life.  Their training regimen is worse than boot camp in some instances.  Wrestlers have been known to be bullied into running ten or fifteen miles in heavy sweats while fifty to a hundred pounds of weight on their back in order to get into that smaller weight class.  They are on just as strict a diet as gymnasts in order to stay in that weight class.

Now admittedly most people will admit that this is tragic but what does this have to do with sexism?  The sexism is that society pushes young men to joing sports like football and wrestling to fit in, to be that normal male in society.  Cheerleaders and scholarships and money and fame are also societal pressures to do this.  And once they are in the sport this conditioning to sacrifice health and desires for a good meal and personal safety later translate into adult life via the military or the male push to sacrifice health in order to succeed at their career.

Amanda Marcotte Should Really Look at What She Writes, Her Words desribe her to a T.

Amanda Marcotte, the famous ex blogger for John Edwards, who is known for curse filled, hateful diatribes against anyone who is not in her small box definition of feminism, recently placed a quote on her blog that I find absolutely hilarious.  Hilariosu because the quote describes her and the people like her so well, that the irony is almost gut-wrenching.  Here is the quote:

“The most predominant mentality in right-wing discourse finds expression in this form:  “I am part of/was born into Group X, and Group X—my group—is better than all others yet treated so very unfairly.” This claim persists—indeed, is often intensified— even when Group X is clearly the strongest, most privileged and most favored group.  So intense is their need for self-victimization—so inebriating is their self-absorption and so lacking are they in any capacity for empathy—that, for all the noise and rhetoric, the arguments they make virtually always have this tribalistic self-absorption at its core.”

Obviously, Amanda is not a member of the right wing, but her Group X, women fits the description so well.  Women are the dominant performers in school and college, get all the cool scholarships, grants, legislation, and benefits that go with schooling that men are denied.  They are the rulers in the home, with the right to the kids and the finances if the marriage goes badly, have all the reproductive health options compared to only one for men.  Clearly they are the dominant, most privileged, and most favored group in many ways.

And clear is their need for self victimization.  They want the family, but the career too and wonder why the unmarried males who don’t have kids to take care of get the promotions in an industry that requires sacrifice to get ahead and be the leader.  They cry foul that its too hard to get a rape conviction when sexually based offenses are already becoming a one sides struggle where all the rights and rules of law for the defendent are thrown out in favor of the woman who is brining the charges.

They have centers, and councils, and research groups dedicated to their health, their causes, their gender, yet they are underrepresented everywhere and in everything.  Men live shorter than women, and yet we are told women’s illnesses are not funded enough, that men are simply weaker.  Try sayign that about the low black life expectency: “Blacks are just frailer than white people and thats why they die off sooner.”  That last quote is total racism, to say it about a male is empowerment.

They have six or seven centers and a major dedicated to them, yet they are victims on college campuses of everythign from bias to discrimination.  Yet there are no men’s groups or majors or support systems set up, and it shows.  Men are increasingly rare on campuses and if the trend continues the gender gap will have gone further than just reversing itself, men will be less prevalent on campus than when women were discriminated against.  Yet its women that are the victims at all times.

So maybe its time feminists take a good long look at themselves.  Maybe they be afraid of how they are simply the mirror image of crackpot conservatives, the leftist version of fascists and Bill O’Reilly.