03. 04. 10
THESTUDENTWEEKLYSI NCE1 969
Un d e r Su r v e i l l a n c e
I ns i de:Al t r ui s m,Chi l dr enofI nv ent i on,andTi t l eI X.
03.04.10 vol. xli, no. 17 The Indy grapples with the problems of the age. Co-Presidents Patricia Florescu ‘11 and Susan Zhu ‘11
Cover art by SONIA COMAN
Editor-in-Chief Faith Zhang ‘11 News and Forum Editor Riva Riley ‘12
NEWS 3 News in Brief FORUM 3 Throwing (Out) a Tea Party 4 To Recruit or not to Recruit 5 Modern Idols: Apatheism 6 Spying on Schoolchildren 7 Biological Origins of Altruism ARTS 8 The Problem with Modern Poetry Letter to the Editor 9 Children of Invention SPORTS 10 Rethinking Title IX SPECIAL 11 From the Archives: Winter Olympics
For exclusive online content, visit www.harvardindependent.com
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Arts Editor Pelin Kivrak ‘11 Sports Editor Daniel Alfino ‘11 Graphics Editor Sonia Coman ‘11 Associate News and Forum Editor Weike Wang ‘11 Columnists Chris Carothers ‘11 Sam Barr ‘11 Staff Writers Peter Bacon ‘11 John Beatty ‘11 Ezgi Bereketli ‘12 Arhana Chattopadhyay ‘11 Andrew Coffman ‘12 Levi Dudte '11 Ray Duer ‘11 Sam Jack ‘11 Marion Liu ‘11 Hao Meng ‘11 Alfredo Montelongo ‘11 Nick Nehamas ‘11 Steven Rizoli ‘11 Jim Shirey ‘11 Diana Suen ‘11 Alex Thompson ‘11 Sanyee Yuan ‘12 Graphics, Photography, and Design Staff Chaima Bouhlel ‘11 Kayla Escobedo ‘12 Eva Liou ‘11 Rares Pamfil ‘10 Lidiya Petrova ‘11 Kristina Yee ‘10 As Harvard College's weekly undergraduate newsmagazine, the Harvard Independent provides in-depth, critical coverage of issues and events of interest to the Harvard College community. The Independent has no political affiliation, instead offering diverse commentary on news, arts, sports, and student life. For publication information and general inquiries, contact Presidents Patricia Florescu and Susan Zhu (president@harvardindependent.com). Letters to the Editor and comments regarding the content of the publication should be addressed to Editor-in-Chief Faith Zhang (editor@harvardindependent. com). Yearly mail subscriptions are available for $30, and semester-long subscriptions are available for $15. To purchase a subscription, email subscriptions@harvardindependent.com. The Harvard Independent is published weekly during the academic year, except during vacations, by The Harvard Independent, Inc., P.O. Box 382204, Cambridge, MA 02138-2204. Copyright © 2009 by The Harvard Independent. All rights reserved. 03.04.10 • The Harvard Independent
News
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Short & Sweet
News that you could conceivably use. Compiled by WEIKE WANG The earth moved. The magnitude 8.8 Chilean earthquake was indeed a serious natural disaster. Richard Gross, a geophysicist at NASA, found that the length of day has shortened by 1.26 microseconds (millionths of a second) and the earth’s axis has shifted by 3 inches. Due to global warming, the Earth’s axis already shifts an annual average of 1 inch; but it seems that now the axis is tilting towards a permanently crooked state. How can one earthquake have effects of such — pardon the pun — earthshaking consequence? Experts say that the Chilean earthquake was in fact a
thrust earthquake, where one plate dives under the other; such earthquakes cause an increase in Earth’s rotational speed and consequently a higher likelihood that the axis to wobble itself out of its usual place. When it comes to the shorter day, what do 1.26 microseconds actually mean to all of us? Probably not much, but it’s like loose change — give it a few years and it will amount to something substantial. The Chilean earthquake is perhaps a close cousin to the magnitude 9.1 Sumatran earthquake in 2004. The latter set off a deadly tsunami, shortened Earth’s day by 6.8 microseconds, and shifted the axis by 2.5 inches. Intervention? Cure? It seems that any more of these disasters will push Earth over and cut our days in half.
But rest assured, dear reader, our beloved planet has dealt with rebellious earthquakes for millions and millions of years. Its longevity is testament to a brilliant internal correction system.
damselfish, Pomacentrus amboinensis and P. moluccensis, for their UV vision capabilities. It seems that both species use UV facial patterns to differentiate themselves. The highly territorial P. amboinensis males, for example, will chase off members of their own species but leave P. moluccensis intruders Super fish has UV vision. alone. Under UV light, the two species of reef fish do show different scale patterns around the eye. Dr. Siebeck From classic literature (Moby Dick) says that “these are really fine, intricate to classic films (Finding Nemo), the patterns that we can’t see at all” — but life aquatic has always been a topic of the fish can. Now the big question is interest to those of us bound to land. whether other fish species possess the Now, recent research gives the human same capacity for UV vision and practice world another tidbit about our fishy the same kind of differentiation. If friends — UV vision. The Siebeck lab of that turns out to be the case, perhaps the University of Queensland, Australia the live-action Finding Nemo should has been studying two species of employ UV glasses.
Two Lumps of Bitterness
Why we should throw the Tea Party movement overboard.
U
sually, when the phrase
“tea party” shows up in the news, it’s relatively harmless. Maybe the President is meeting with the Queen of England (à la beer summit) and is need of some cucumber sandwiches, or Bostonians, in a fit of outrageous patriotism brought on by an excessive lack of sunshine, are re-enacting (for some reason) the 1773 tea-dumping incident. But no. Although the Tea Party movement (see, it’s capitalized, so it’s different) does involve some little old ladies and some professed patriotism, it is actually an anti-federal government movement egged on by one of my least favorite people in the world: Glenn Beck. These Tea Party activists are not necessarily partyspecific: they think President Obama is going to destroy America, democracy, and freedom as much as Sen. John McCain will. They don’t really have a leader, though many would call Glenn Beck a guide, and they have no central organization. But what else would you expect from people who hate the federal government? Most Tea Party activists are opposed to universal health care, stimulus packages, bailouts, the federal income tax (and therefore, Social Security and Medicare), and the Federal Reserve. For people who The Harvard Independent • 03.04.10
By SUSAN ZHU are terrified of socialism, Americans sure do have an interesting way of embracing capitalism and the principles of free market economies. Hating on the Federal Reserve is like saying you don’t believe in the relationship between interest rates, inflation, the money supply, etc. They reject the idea that the government should provide services for the people, and, presumably, would put private companies at the forefront, never mind that such private companies helped cause this lovely little period of economic depression we’re in now, and never mind that they also wouldn’t want to bail these companies out. I will admit that the government may not be the most efficient, as evidenced by the United States Postal Service, but I really don’t trust people to take care of themselves. The income tax forces them to set aside money for their future by taking away some money now; without it, I see a good deal of manipulation and exploitation by private companies, and a whole lot of bankrupt, health care-less elderly citizens. Instead of the federal government, a good lot of the Tea Party activists promote secession, nullification of federal laws, citizen militias, and tax boycotts. They like privacy, and they
love the Constitution. They would die to protect it from harm (aka Obama). I think they’re advocating for anarchy, but I’m not entirely sure. I would say that these Tea Partyers remind me of an earlier age in the history of the American republic: an age when John C. Calhoun suggested that South Carolina had a constitutional right to nullify federal laws, when Andrew Jackson killed the Bank of the United States, when western vigilantes patrolled the land. Then there’s secession — why does that sound familiar? Could it be because we fought a bloody civil war to keep the union together? Oh yeah, and they also had slavery then, and killed off Native Americans like it ain’t no thang. Health care? A stable economy and money supply? The chance for higher education? Yeah, good luck with that. Before you cast the Tea Party movement off as a group of bored, bitter, and uneducated people participating in some fringe movement, consider this: 46 percent of them have at least a college diploma. They do tend to be older and white, which basically means they’re likely to be conservative. And in fact, 78 percent of them are “very positive” on being an ideological conservative (64 percent get their news from Fox News). They’ve read the Constitution, and
they honestly believe that it spells out the death of the federal government. Never mind that the Federalist Papers, another one of their handbooks and in part penned by the creator of the first Bank of the United States (Alexander Hamilton, what up!), argues in defense of just such a system. With the economy in its current state, a couple of wars, and a slowmoving government, it’s no surprise that people are having fits and flinging tea. With that in mind, I sincerely hope that this movement dies out soon. I wouldn’t be surprised if it makes a dent in the 2010 elections, but let’s be perfectly honest: the federal government is written into the Constitution. There’s no logical way to love the Constitution if all you’re going to do is rip it up and write a new one for each individual region, state, and person. For that reason, I’m not worried about the existence of the federal government. But I am worried about the short-term implications for policy and the general psychological health and logical ability of the American people. I sure hope they take two spoonfuls of sugar with that tea. Susan Zhu ’11 (szhu@fas) wants a bit more sweetness in her life. editor@harvardindependent.com
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Soul Searching I
came into college as a predictable
pre-med. Over the course of three semesters and five premed science classes, I realized that my heart wasn’t in science. What had drawn me to the medical profession wasn’t memorizing the many, many bones of the skull or the many letter-number-combination of genes and proteins. It was, quite simply, the chance to help people through real human interaction. I didn’t mind science, but I didn’t love it, either. And the idea of being responsible for physical lives finally reached me. I didn’t find myself emotionally capable of being a doctor. I stopped being pre-med, and started being completely confused about what to do with the rest of my life. I had lived the previous ten years under the impression that I would go through the medical process — college, medical school, internship, residency, fellowship, retiring to work in a clinic — so I had no back-up plan. I was a government concentrator already, even as a pre-med, so that provided me with a bit of direction, but not much. I found myself saying that I was pre-law, without having much of an idea of why I was doing so. I did love my classes in constitutional law, but I had no idea what to do with that. Regardless, I decided that I was going to apply to law school, but that I would take a year off first. That brought up the question: what would I do in that year off? Towards the end of last semester, recruiting emails started appearing in my inbox. Some of my good friends, and pretty much every economics major I know, started preparing. There were mock interview sign-ups to practice case interviews, information sessions with big banks and big consulting firms, networking sessions with industry leaders and experts, resume workshops, job fairs, and more. When one of my actual premed roommates started signing up for consulting information sessions, 4
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I grew curious. I had never considered consulting. I didn’t care enough for business to go into finance. Consulting seemed like a nice compromise — you would help companies and institutions solve problems; you would be useful; you would get a real sense of accomplishment, and learn about multiple industries, indepth. You could wear jeans to work. And of course, you’d make solid money. It would be nice to be able to pay off law school, and to live on my own money. I started contemplating what it might be like to be rich. I took the On-Campus Recruiting (OCR) quiz in order to be eligible for OCR opportunities. I went to a McKinsey presentation and liked them. They were friendly, confident, and had pictures of smiling people. I thought about it — didn’t I like solving problems? Wouldn’t I like advising governments? Didn’t I like smiling? My own laziness saved me. I didn’t feel like preparing for case interviews over J-term, and instead worked on applications to public interest, public service, and political internships. I wanted at least one chance to see what the public sector was like, and I figured this summer was as good as any. I told myself
Struggling against the tide of recruiting season. By SUSAN ZHU
that I would get prepared for case interviews over the summer, so that senior year, I could enter the recruiting cycle. In the process of writing the application essays, I started finding out what mattered to me. It can be extremely easy to get caught up in the recruiting atmosphere at Harvard and at any top school. People leave with offers that will make them millionaires in just a few years. Here, I started seeing money as something extremely important to me. I saw status, class, and networking skills as things to work toward. For many of the recruiting candidates, finance and consulting is what they really want to do — and what they’re really good at. There is nothing wrong with that, and it would be unfair to make the generalization that every big-salary job is soulless. But for me, I fell into recruiting because I didn’t know what else I would do, and because I would be earning lots of money. There is nothing wrong with making money, but there is something wrong about changing your identity to fit something that you’re not. One of my finance friends took me aside once and asked me why I was thinking about doing recruiting.
I had gone so far as to ask about banking. He looked at me and stated flatly, “You would hate the atmosphere.” I’ve never experienced the atmosphere first-hand, but I have a feeling he was right. Over the next few months, eating dinner with friends became a never-ending cycle of “What did they ask you at this interview?” and fictitious plans of what to do with the money they would make. Even though they were joking, it actually made me lose my appetite. Going back to my applications’ personal statements, I realized that the things I valued and wanted to work towards weren’t things like being wealthy or helping big companies figure out their problems, or even helping governments try to work out new policy efficiently. I wanted to be what I had always wanted to be: someone who helped people through real human interaction. It’s why I was originally pre-med, and it’s still who I am today. My summer internship focus is now on education policy and reform — an interest that was spurred by a government class I took freshman fall. I’m looking into charter schools and summer teaching programs geared towards disadvantaged youth. There’s something about fighting for these kids, and against inequalities, that I find particularly appealing. I want to thank the recruiting cycle for happening, because it forced me to confront myself. That said, I won’t be participating in recruiting next fall. In my year off, I want to continue working in education. I’m not even sure about the law school part at this point (shh, don’t tell my parents), but I’m sure I’ll figure it out eventually. Coming out of college, I probably won’t find a starting salary in the six digits. But I will have — excuse the cheesiness — found myself. Susan Zhu ’11 (szhu@fas) is a burning idealist. 03.04.10 • The Harvard Independent
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Modern Idols:
Religion and Society Today a column by CHRIS CAROTHERS
This week: apatheism.
I
t would be the height of irony
if religion in Europe survived communism only to be washed away by the forces of sheer apathy. Today, only about half of Europeans say they believe in God. The rate of church attendance is lower than that of unemployment. In the intellectual sphere, debates about God’s existence are ignored or dismissed as hopelessly cliché. At Harvard, the trend is similar. Leaders of religious clubs bemoan the half-hearted and sentimental view so many Harvard students take toward religion. The threat to religion is not the spread of positive atheism so much as a growing apatheism. The firmly religious are worried — and so am I. Just as the religious are less likely to proselytize vigorously on behalf of their faith, Harvard’s atheists are less willing to militate against religion. With an eye to reinvigorating the anti-theistic base, I present below responses to some of the most common (and lamest) excuses I have heard from reluctant atheists: “Religious conflict kills people, but people will always find something to fight over.” Yes, people probably will always fight over something. But no one would accept that as a good argument for allowing racial conflict to fester, so why should it stop us from opposing religious intolerance? The NRA cannot defend their support for unrestricted assault rifles ownership by shrugging its shoulders and saying that people will always find some way to kill each other. If people are doomed to kill each other, why not just give everyone nukes? Religion is more dangerous as a tool of social division than race or language because it tells each group (each religion) that they alone understand the nature of the entire universe and are morally superior to other groups. If you can’t see the damage that religious violence is doing to our world, open a newspaper. Some will respond by touting religious pluralism as the solution to religious conflict. While some religious groups manage to live in harmony for extended periods of time, pluralism is a band-aid — not a cure. Religions, in their orthodoxy, hold that the moral communities they define are superior to other moral communities; the truths they lay out are necessarily contrasted The Harvard Independent • 03.04.10
with other religions’ falsehoods. The few religions that don’t exclude others, like Universal Unitarianism, are small and impotent. To become as powerful as Christianity or Islam, a religion must preach the truth of its beliefs at the expense of other “false” beliefs. If being Hindu isn’t any worse that being a Muslim, why should I convert? Religion derives its power as a social phenomenon precisely from its divisive and combative nature. “Religion makes people give to charity and stuff, so it must be good.” The countries that give the most money to charity as a percentage of GNI are Sweden, Norway, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Denmark, respectively. These are among the least religious, if not the least religious, countries on earth. It is true that the (relatively religious) US tops the list for private donations as a percentage of GDP. But many of the US’s largest philanthropists are not religious. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, for example, are both agnostic. Many religious texts do urge people to care for the poor. I think most religious people follow that instruction, as opposed to religious instructions to kill homosexuals, because they have a desire to help the poor that does not derive from the religion itself. People’s values don’t come from religion; people cherry-pick the religious values they already agree with and then ignore the rest. As we can see from secularizing countries like Sweden and Norway, abandoning religion does not stop people from giving to charity. “I’m not religious, but without a critical mass of believers, society would fall apart.” No. This is the most ridiculous argument I have heard at Harvard. Sadly, it is quite prevalent among religious apologists. In a way, it is based off a Marxist understanding of religion as an “opiate of the masses” that keeps everyone in line. I do not subscribe to this view. Not even modern communist governments still accept that this is the whole story of religion. The obvious objection to this view of religion as stabilizer is that religion is tearing so many societies apart right before our eyes. Violent religious
groups are attacking governments in about thirty countries all over the world. Whatever Osama bin Laden is smoking, it isn’t an opiate. By contrast, some of the most stable and egalitarian societies on earth are among the least religious — Denmark, Finland, Norway, and so on. A majority of people in these countries do not believe in God. Let us say, for the sake of argument, that the religious beliefs of the masses are helping to maintain social order in a country. Without religious befuddlement, the people would have a clear-eyed view of their interests and overthrow the oppressive elites. Is that an argument for religion? In my mind, telling people the truth and letting them run with it is the appropriate thing to do. Would that make me responsible for the deaths that occur in the resulting revolution? Of course not. The elites are responsible for basing their oppressive social system on lies and for the consequences when that lie is discovered. For example, if conclusive evidence showed that Bush attacked the twin towers on 9/11, no true patriot would argue that we should hide this evidence to protect America’s social stability. “I know religious claims aren’t true, but it comforts people to believe them.” Yes, but that comfort is to be resisted. I am not suggesting you go yell at your dying grandmother she won’t go to Heaven and that Jesus is a lie. I am not suggesting you always tell the truth to every ugly guy who asks you why he can’t get a date. However, the truth about historical events is to be respected, even if it makes people unhappy. I would be much happier thinking that humans had never done things as horrible as genocide. But how many people would let me live on ignorant of the evil humans are capable of just for the sake of my happiness? No one I have ever met has advocated lying to children about the Holocaust to make them feel better. Lying to people to comfort them is often short-sighted. In China, millions of people still think Mao was the greatest leader the world has ever seen, and seek to return to “the Mao road.” This misapprehension regarding history may yet lead to another catastrophic loss of life, no matter how happy it makes believers to think a Maoist utopia is possible.
Many religious beliefs are similarly uncritical. All comforting false histories, divine or otherwise, should be opposed in the name of truth. “Religion has always been part of human societies. Trying to eradicate it is futile.” If what has always been is always what always will be, how come there is always change? Take heart! Atheists should stop wallowing in defeatism, even in the face of an admittedly brobdingnagian task. Allow me to counter this defeatism with a few facts about the world a hundred years ago. By 1910, only a few geniuses and lunatics had challenged the millenniums-old, nearly universal orthodoxy that women were inferior to men. Likewise, the idea that black people should rule over autonomous countries of black people was, in the western world, a laughably radical proposition. Almost the entire world, in fact, was ruled by a handful of European colonizers. There are people alive today who were alive in 1910. Over the course of their lives, the global systems of racial, sexual, and colonial power stumbled — not dead but wounded. Religion is not so powerful or universal that it cannot suffer a similar shock. As long as there have been believers, there have been skeptics. I was inspired by reading the arguments against spirit worship of the atheists of the Caravak School in India. These thinkers were making sense of the universe without gods 2500 years ago. Many atheists come away from arguments with the religious irritated that religious beliefs are immune to logical dissection. They wrongly conclude that religion is therefore a species of incurable infection. The first time I argued with an open racist, I realized that his beliefs were similarly impervious to logical attack. But progress can and has been made against all kinds of irrational beliefs. The Christianity that most Harvard students espouse, for example, has been freed of the most egregious bits of Biblical nonsense. Satan, an important figure in Christian thought for over a millennium, has fallen by the wayside. Virgin births and talking snakes are scoffed at as if they belonged to some other religion. So don’t tell me it’s impossible. We can do it — I have faith. editor@harvardindependent.com
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Big Brother Is Watching I
magine this : you ’ re sitting in
front of your laptop (as I do for more hours a day than I care to admit to), in the privacy of your own room, surfing the web and eating candy. Then, in school, an assistant principal accuses you of doing and dealing drugs, and whips out a photograph of you—taken from the webcam on your school-issue laptop while you were at home. That is exactly what happened to Blake Robbins, a sophomore at Harriton High School in Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania; his parents are currently suing the school district. In response, the school system is claiming that the application in question was installed only for security reasons and that it has been activated only 42 times in 14 months, in every case with the intention of recovering lost or stolen laptops. In addition, the principal of the school in question has denied the accusation of wrongdoing, saying, “At no point in time did I have the ability to access any webcam through security tracking software. At no time have I ever monitored a student via a laptop webcam, nor have I ever authorized the monitoring of a student via a laptop webcam, either at school or within the home. And I never would.” Meanwhile, Robbins’ family denies that his laptop was ever reported missing, while other students have reported that they had noticed the green light that indicates webcam use on MacBooks coming on, and that the school district told them it was merely a glitch. That is all very well and good; it is at least possible that the principal is telling the truth—that remains for the courts to decide. (Far be it from me to point out that there are much better ways of locating a lost or stolen laptop, such software that will provide network coordinates, which can then be converted to geographical locations—rather more useful than 6
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a picture of a face that could be anyone, anywhere.) The disturbing part is that this is not an isolated incident. A PBS interview with Dan Ackerman, an administrator at a school in the Bronx, reveals the cavalier attitude he and others like him take toward surveillance: “There’s an observe button and it brings up their screen. Photobooth is always fun. A lot of kids are just on it to check their hair, do their makeup: the girls... They just use it like it’s a mirror. They don’t even realize that we’re watching. I always like to mess with them and take a picture.” As a student only recently escaped from under the thumb of the public school system and the petty tyrants contained therein, I find the entire situation outrageous—and yet not entirely surprising. Suppose we put the best possible face on it: that the case is only one of an overzealous school administrator with the best of intentions, trying to keep kids out of trouble outside school as well. I have long been a firm believer that the road to hell is paved with good intentions; that, in fact, most people mean well, which nevertheless leads them to do terrible or merely stupid things. (I do realize that this worldview then begs the question of what can be done—bad intentions are hardly more likely to lead to good results.) If we grant that the administrator was led by good intentions, the situation remains a blatant invasion of privacy; it is, frankly, none of the school’s business what a student does at home. Imagine it: being watched, all unaware, at any time. It requires no wrongdoing to be disturbed by that. That is only the most favorable spin on the situation; what about the worst one? Allow me to put it this way. What does anyone do in the privacy and security of their own bedroom? Undressing is the least of it, and indeed the
School administrators spy on students at home. By FAITH ZHANG
suit filed by the Robbins family reserves the right to add to their list of grievances “should discovery disclose that Defendants are in possession of images constituting child pornography.” In sum: someone is lying. The claims being made are not compatible. Either a high school student and his family are doing their best to raise a ruckus and squeeze money out of the school district, as some have charged,
or a school has engaged in an unconscionable act of spying on something entirely outside its purview and committed a blatant invasion of privacy. I am sorry to suspect that it is the latter, and sorry to know that whatever the truth of the matter may be, it will be the students of the Lower Merion school district who will lose out. Faith Zhang ’11 (fhzhang@fas) is busy taping over her own webcam.
03.04.10 • The Harvard Independent
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Thicker Than Water I
t was an early morning, one of those
days that start early and go long, and I went trudging to Mather dining hall to have some breakfast before it got off to a proper start. I sat at the empty end of a table occupied by three others, two girls and a boy, none of whom I recognized. I tried to start the readings for my history class, but it was early and my eyes were bleary and, like the rest of the country, my tablemates were having a piercingly loud conversation about healthcare. The most vocal of the group, a confident girl with a carrying voice, was criticizing an unnamed classmate about his view on universal healthcare. This is a paraphrase of her anecdote because it was early and I can’t remember the exact wording: “He asked why he should have to pay for some other person’s medical bills just because he’s worked harder and has more resources. And of course I responded, because they’re your brothers!” This statement represents a common view about the subject of healthcare, but unlike the other nearly identical arguments I’ve heard, it made me contemplate the issue seriously. I’ve never heard it put so bluntly — “They’re your brothers.” Of course, they’re not really his brothers. The speaker meant that symbolically, but nevertheless, she was wrong. As a result, she missed something crucial about the issue, which is not universal healthcare: rather, the real question here is one of altruism. To what extent do humans act altruistically, and to what extent should they? Now, before I continue, I’d like to clarify a few things. I am not a conservative — in fact, my personal views and the way I choose to live my life align closely with what is commonly called the liberal viewpoint. For the record, I support universal healthcare, and my family emphasizes giving to charity and helping those “less fortunate than ourselves.” In many cases I believe helping another human being is a noble and splendid thing, but, unlike many others, I am not under the delusion that altruism is in and of it itself a noble quality. As a biologist in training, I have a very different perspective. Survival. That’s what it all comes down to. What’s the best way to keep one step ahead of the predator, of famine, of disease? How do we do it — how do we protect our young and keep our line going? Humans have done a beautiful job of answering these questions. We figured things out. To help our The Harvard Independent • 03.04.10
descendants, we keep our resources largely within our families. However, this isn’t always the case. Humans quickly discovered that, by helping others, the species tends to survive. You help me, I’ll help you, and we’ll both make it through hard times. And, despite our arrogance, humans were not the only ones to discover this remarkable phenomenon. Elephants have been known to assist cripples throughout the elephants’ life spans, and several species of monkey share food with destitute comrades and receive food when they are themselves hungry. These are only the examples I have encountered so far, but I am sure there are many others, and this evidence suggests beyond a reasonable doubt that altruism is a behavior that evolved in multiple lineages to increase the likelihood of survival. For this reason, perhaps, I do not understand attempts to romanticize altruism. The self-assured proponent of universal healthcare who asserted “they’re your brothers” was actually referring to a much more selfish evolutionary phenomenon — the practice of protecting and preserving your kin to make sure your genes are passed on. We don’t think of it that way anymore, but that’s the cold truth. In countries that share a common ancestry, the “they’re your brothers” argument is perfectly logical evolutionarily — your neighbors may well share your genetic background, and it is in your best interest to help them out whenever you can. Altruism, however, is a different animal entirely. What is altruism? Does a religious missionary who tries to convert people to save them from hell constitute an altruist, even if his rationale is based on false reasoning? Studies have proven that acts of “altruism” actually bring measurable pleasure to the altruistic individual; in other words, even altruistic acts are associated with a distinct advantage, even if it’s just feeling a bit better about yourself. So why, then, do people act so righteous about altruism? Logically, it represents nothing more than a successful mechanism for keeping your species going. Other species, including ours in some instances, have used polygamy for the same purpose. Altruism, then, is nothing particularly special, and it does not define any inalienable laws about the way the human animal should live. Nobody owes anybody else anything — the boy from the anecdote who didn’t support universal healthcare
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Demystifying altruism. By RIVA RILEY
doesn’t owe his fellow citizens access to treatment. Unlike the vocal girl at breakfast that busy morning, I don’t believe that the boy has an inherent obligation to help other Americans. They are not his actual brothers, the beneficiaries of universal healthcare will not reciprocate his generosity, and he will probably not benefit in any way. According to the sometimes harsh logic of biology, universal healthcare makes no sense for those who will not reap the rewards. Even as I write this, though, and even as I study biology, I don’t agree, and I’ve asked myself why. I have, of course, been conditioned to think in certain ways that are not consistent with scientific truths, and I’ve been raised in such a gentle, caring way that it has clouded my view of survival — I have never worried about the simple reality of living from day to day. It
is likely that this upbringing has softened my viewpoints and made me more empathetic than I would have been otherwise (I might have been a vicious cavewoman), but even if I try to overlook that considerable advantage, I shudder at the notion of a civilization in which citizens who cannot afford to pay for food, shelter, or medical services will die for that lack. That fact that I am not alone, and that millions of people feel the same way, is what I believe represents something beautiful about human nature. We don’t like to see others suffer. We are by no means alone in that sentiment (elephants come to mind again), but at least we have that grace. Riva Riley ‘12 (rjriley@fas) thinks elephants are fascinating — did you know they bury their dead? Even early hominids didn’t do that!
Kayla Escobedo/INDEPENDENT
editor@harvardindependent.com
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Arts
Pick Up Some Shards A few casual thoughts on poetry. By SAM JACK
I
find it distasteful to take one
or two images (and only these because you have to have one or two) and load them onto the skeletal framework of a cold, mechanical form, only to launch them at one another at a significant fraction of light speed — all so that we can look at the quarks and gluons flying by and learn something of their qualities, not from their own selves, but from the trails they make on the computer screens back in the lab. The conclusions one arrives at through these high-speed blasts of disjointed and self-conscious inarticulateness are certainly useful and interesting to a small sub-class of theoretical physicists of the arts, but the conclusions I often see bandied about, the conclusions they are supposed to lead to — “language is oppressive,” “meaning does not exist,” “poetry is not up to the task of representing life” — whether or not they are true, aren’t they better avoided? At least for now — at least during our youths. I get the feeling that young artists today are taking care to disillusion themselves in advance so that they can never be embarrassed or thought naïve. Nothing has yet give us cause to spin away into the outer orbits, out beyond Neptune where it is so cold and everything is so clear and yet so dead and therefore so obscured. So how about putting three or four identifiable word-
things (representational packages — they can even be abstractions just so long as they have a line that lets a reader think about what belongs inside and outside the category delineated) in a poem before you gather up the shards, the indicators of our tragically choked-off, futile, self-defeating consciousnesses? This probably seems like a huge imposition, and the mind rebels at the idea of making judgments about poems that are not “on the terms” of the poem being judged, but really it isn’t so much: out of the huge Erector Set of language in front of you, take a few pieces, and then! Maybe just lay them side by side on the carpet. Fine. No one has to build a thing, just let’s look at a few things with a sustained gaze before ripping them into little bits. The rest of the set — put it in the blender and it can be the thick, suffocating foamy incoherence that is, by all counts, the tragedy and the great problem of contemporary life. I’ve no doubt that the maelstrom of signifiers that we are bombarded with constantly is one of the Great Problems — I’m just tired of reading poems and literature that are about how the problems are so overwhelming, art that seems to be in competition to surrender most fully to the fog of incoherence. Sam Jack ‘11 (sjack@fas) but then — and how — if not— or else —
Kayla Escobedo/INDEPENDENT
Letter to the Editor Many people think that the status quo in health care is sustainable. They are wrong. Per capita health care costs in the United States rose to over $8,000 in 2009, and at their present rate of increase will surpass $16,000 by 2019. Without the passage of comprehensive health care reform,
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editor@harvardindependent.com
the number of uninsured, inflation, unemployment, bankruptcy rates, taxes, trade deficits, and budget deficits will all be increasingly higher than they would otherwise be. We have the most expensive health care in the world, with per capita costs that are at least double those of any other country, and yet
we live shorter, sicker lives than do people in the vast majority of other advanced industrial countries: our infant mortality rate is higher, our life expectancy is shorter, and we experience many more years of severe, chronic, debilitating illness. Congress must pass comprehensive health care reform
now so that millions of jobs and hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes will be saved, so that millions of personal bankruptcies will be prevented, and so that we and our children and grandchildren may be able to live longer, healthier lives. Kevin Costa, Fall River KevinCosta@alumni.brown.edu
03.04.10 • The Harvard Independent
Arts
indy
Life on the Other Side Children of Invention captivates at the Brattle Theatre. By SANYEE YUAN
I
like to cry during movies. There’s something comforting about the cloak of anonymity that the darkness of the theatre affords, along with the group-therapy feeling that stems from hearing multiple other sniffles in front of, next to, and behind me. This past weekend, I went to the
bittersweet snapshots of the family’s difficult life: the mother, Elaine, carrying cardboard boxes out of the house during an eviction; the older brother, Raymond and his little sister, Tina, eating ramen noodles by themselves at the kitchen counter; and the two siblings arguing about whether or not their mother is gone,
Movie Review Children of Invention
Brattle Theatre for the first time and watched an independent movie that not only made me (and several other members of the audience) cry, but also captivated me with its honest and touching story. Children of Invention, a Sundance feature and Independent Film Festival Boston Grand Jury Prize winner, began its Boston-area, one-week exclusive theatrical premiere at Harvard Square on Friday, February 26. Produced by Harvard alumna Mynette Louie (class of ’97) and directed and written by Randolph native Tze Chun, the movie follows the lives of an immigrant single mother in the United States struggling to raise her two young kids. Prior to watching the movie, I had seen the trailer, which had portrayed The Harvard Independent • 03.04.10
after Elaine does not return home one night. The script, the actors, and the quick pacing of the film drive Children of Invention forward. Chun wastes no time jumping into the heart of the family’s hardships — right away, the audience sees the abrupt eviction and little Tina’s insistence on bringing the family couch (which she has quaintly named “Skirtsy”) with them as they move to an unfinished apartment building that is still undergoing construction. The phone lines do not work, there is no room for Skirtsy, the children have to constantly move quietly, and Elaine has to tape up the windows with dark paper so nobody suspects their squatting. However, Elaine’s hard work and love keeps the small family together.
During the week, she makes endless payphone calls, seeking new job opportunities and trying to sell homes for a realtor. On the weekends, she takes the kids out for their “family days” — allowing them to call the shots on how to spend their time. When she gets swept up into a pyramid scheme, attempting to scam people into paying “one-time checks” to the dubious GoldRep organization, she gets into trouble. When Raymond and Tina wake up without Elaine’s presence, Raymond immediately takes charge of the situation. Knowing that they have no money and no food, he devises a creative plan to get both of these for him and his little sister. Here, the title begins to make sense. The two are, quite literally, children of invention. Dreaming up their own hopeful schemes to improve their prospects, they work together to survive without their mother. The two argue and annoy each other, like any pair of siblings, but just as Raymond exudes a protective big-brother air — finding affordable pizza to satisfy Tina’s pizza craving and indulging her request to walk past their old house — Tina looks up to him, believing and trusting in her brother’s ingenuity. Although their father and mother are both gone, the two of them are not alone. The audience gets the feeling that, as long as the two stay together, they will be able to fend for themselves and survive anything from the public transportations system to the dark streets of Boston at night. On the movie’s premiere night at the Brattle Theatre, Chun, Louie, and members of the cast and crew came to answer questions at the end of the showing. When asked about the inspiration for the movie, Chun cited his own story and the multiple pyramid schemes in which his mother had participated while he was growing up. Interweaving other subtler details of his childhood into the movie, including passing off one of his former inventions as one of Raymond’s ideas, Chun’s use of his personal story is the factor that
successfully connects the audience to Children of Invention. I felt the crushing disappointments that Elaine felt as she dealt with the foreclosure, her deadbeat husband, and the failure of the pyramid scheme. I felt the fear and disbelief that Tina felt as she woke up without her mother and sought plausible explanations on the local news channel. I felt the frustration that Raymond felt as he got lost, attempting to bring his sister to the bank and withdraw his birthday money savings. Through it all, though, I also felt the steady strength of each of the characters — Elaine’s resilient strength in her struggle to find a job and make money for her kids, Raymond’s persistence in devising his plans to take care of his sister, and Tina’s maturation in realizing that people, not a house, make a home. I have always gravitated towards big-budget studio films, drawn in by enticing two-minute teasers and famous star power. However, after watching Children of Invention, I realize the pull and power of the independent film. The strength of the movie came from the pure honesty of the story, and the actors’ basic portrayals, coupled with the real Boston locations where the movie was set, made the story believable. I go to the movies hoping to experience a journey paved with humorous and heartfelt moments, one that resonates with me after I have left the theatre’s projector screen, popcorn, and plush seats. Children of Invention took me on the perfect journey — stirring up a mixture of emotions, reminding me of my own family, and most importantly, making me both laugh and cry. Children of Invention will play at the Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square until March 4. Sanyee Yuan ’12 (syuan@fas) has begun her journey into the world of indie films. editor@harvardindependent.com
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Sports
Leveling the Playing Field
Men are entitled to more than Title IX. By DANIEL ALFINO
L
ast month, Duquesne University Athletic Director Greg Amodio cut four men’s athletic programs, citing Title IX compliance requirements as the primary culprit. Limited by recent budget constraints, Duquesne was forced to drop men’s swimming, baseball, wrestling, and golf in order to abide by the current understanding of the 1972 law. And Duquesne’s experience is far from isolated. In fact, according to fairnessinsports.org, “more than 2,200 men’s athletic teams have been eliminated since 1981.” Was this the original intent of Title IX? I think not. Title IX states that “no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” At the time this legislation was passed almost forty years ago, gender discrimination in higher education was certainly prevalent. In the 1970s, women were only 44 percent of the undergraduate population, and their opportunities in sports were even more meager. With women now surpassing men in enrollment at colleges, however, 10
editor@harvardindependent.com
it is time to reevaluate how we measure “gender equity” in sports. In 1979, Washington attempted to clarify the immediate controversies that developed over the implementation of the law by publishing the Intercollegiate Athletics Policy Interpretation of Title IX. This document outlined the three ways in which the law applies to college sports: 1) equal access to athletic financial assistance; 2) equal additional benefits and opportunities; and 3) “effective accommodation of student Interests and abilities.” To ensure effective accommodation, the report established a “three-prong test” to standardize evaluation. The first prong asserts that gender equality requires “substantial proportionality” so that athletic opportunities are proportional to the school’s gender ratio. Temporary equality can also be established if a school continues to expand athletic opportunities for females. Finally, an institution can be deemed compliant according to this test if the “interests and abilities” of the underrepresented sex have been upheld. Four decades later, budgetstrapped schools struggle to abide by the judicial validation of this interpretation. Now that over 57 percent of undergraduates are
female, schools must ensure that 57 percent of athletes are female, as well. And without the continual abundance of money necessary to expand female sports programs at a constant rate, schools opt instead to get rid of men’s athletic programs, especially those which produce the least revenue. For schools like UCLA, that means getting rid of its men’s swimming and diving team and its gymnastics team in 1994. These programs used to pump out Olympians like it was their job. But thanks to Title IX, gender equality apparently means allowing women to have access to these sports but not allowing men to have access to these same opportunities. Is that the meaning of fair? How can we judge gender equality by outcome when we discuss collegiate athletics but then define it in terms of opportunity with respect to the college admissions process? Should we limit female enrollment in colleges to at most 52 percent in order to ensure that women and men are subject to equal outcomes? Try getting that piece of legislation passed by Congress. The current interpretation of Title IX thus institutionalizes discrimination against male athletes. It continues to force colleges and universities to cut men’s programs first in times of economic difficulty,
even though females already have access to more athletic facilities than men. And what happens if women continue to enroll in college in increasing numbers? Must coeducational institutions like Duquesne and UCLA further cut male athletic programs? This will only encourage the homogenization of sports preferences among men. No longer will men be able to play water polo or fence because they will be an even smaller minority. But women, on the other hand, will have bocce ball and croquet teams. And everyone knows how important bocce ball and croquet are. It is the twenty-first century, and we students should be proud to be riding the coattails of our mothers (and fathers). We should recognize the importance of what they have accomplished and make sure that we continue to fight for civil rights. This fight, however, requires a reevaluation. It requires an objective look at the social consequences of civil rights era legislation, and it should make sure that the laudable principles of that era, and not their poor execution, are upheld. Daniel Alfino ’11 (dalfino@fas) is ready for the next phase in gender equality. 03.04.10 • The Harvard Independent
Special
indy 1980
1980
The Harvard Independent • 03.04.10
editor@harvardindependent.com
11
captured & shot
By PATRICIA FLORESCU