My high school friends and other acquaintances from California hometowns are maddened by the state supreme court's ruling on Proposition 8 yesterday, and rightly so—but I don't think all is lost for gay residents and allies who want to see the legal regime of heterosexuality reversed in marriage. In fact, after reading sections of the decision, I think the court leaves more loopholes than a wedding ring shop.
First of all, the court's reading of proposition 8 confines the amendment to a much narrower definition of marriage recognition for the state than I would have expected—and thus allows California to uphold the 18,000 that it has already issued to its residents, and possibly recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states as well (though the Court did not explicitly address the later issue in its decision).
Though Proposition 8 reads: “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California,” but rather than completely strip same-sex relationships of the legal status afforded to straight couples, the court says this constitutional amendment only "carves out a narrow and limited exception to these state constitutional rights, reserving the official designation of the term “marriage.” It is merely the name "marriage,"—albeit significant to advocates of equal protection for same-sex couples who, like me, can't help but compare this ruling to "separate but equal" hypocrisy—not the rights it confers, that this measure alters.
Though I agree that this amendment violates the ethos of the equal protection clause, both in California and in other states with similar constitutions, that's tough to argue, as advocates and dissenter Justice Carlos Moreno are finding. I wasn't expecting the court to bite the revision argument, which suggested that Proposition 8 constituted such a change to the constitution that it would require a 2/3 majority vote in the state legislature, and I'm willing to accept that this was the best outcome the court would offer supporters of marriage equality like me.
More heartening, the court has left room for another ballot initiative to come up and reverse this amendment—something that activist supporters are already working on for 2010. In liberally affirming the amendment process by which Proposition 8 became law, the decision implicitly suggests that, should a pro-gay marriage initiative were to be on the ballot and pass with a majority vote, it would be found constitutional too.
We just have to keep fighting to push this state over 50% next time.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
The Spring Quarter Midway Review is Out!
The quarterly magazine I edit, the Midway Review, is out this week. Please pick one up on campus or take a look at the online version. 
Below are a couple of engravings illustrating this quarter's issue (the hare is called "How to Skin a Hare" from the Joy of Cooking). Enjoy!
Below are a couple of engravings illustrating this quarter's issue (the hare is called "How to Skin a Hare" from the Joy of Cooking). Enjoy!
Sunday, May 17, 2009
A couple of real live published and edited news articles
...by yours truly:
1)UCSC Says "Thank You for Service" to students at annual awards reception. (You have to scroll down)
2)Academic edge in science, math garner Goldwaters-->Two college students win prestigious Goldwater Scholarships.
Have a good weekend!
1)UCSC Says "Thank You for Service" to students at annual awards reception. (You have to scroll down)
2)Academic edge in science, math garner Goldwaters-->Two college students win prestigious Goldwater Scholarships.
Have a good weekend!
Spring in Hyde Park Means...
Tulips, (click to enlarge)
Lots and lots of Tulips...
Wacky wacky Easter decorations...
Nights on the quad...
...And Scav Hunt (fuckin' yeah!)
You'd almost forget about that 20-page paper you haven't started...
Friday, May 15, 2009
Students Challenge Maroon Column as Insulting to Women
One adage of good journalism says: cover the news, don’t be the news. And it looks like the Maroon is having a bad week for news.
University of Chicago students are stamping their feet over Maroon columnist Luke Dumas’s recent op-ed, “A Springtime Strip.” The piece, which was printed on Tuesday and later retracted on the Maroon website, criticized the way students, particularly women, dress when the weather is warm.
According to the Maroon’s retraction, the op-ed was “intended as satirical” but came off as discriminatory against female students. Although most of the offensive material has been removed from the online version, the article has netted more than 50 comments that both criticize and defend Dumas’s piece, some calling for him to be fired as a columnist. (The Maroon does not pay its writers, but editors have the authority to remove students from their staff. FULL DISCLOSURE: I am a former Maroon reporter, and I was asked to leave the paper’s news staff after I accepted an internship with the University’s News Office last quarter.)
One student, Ali Feenstra, took her concerns further, and stamped “This Insults Women” stickers on the front page of hundreds of Tuesday’s Maroon papers after they were distributed around campus. Though Feenstra is a member of the Feminist Majority, a Registered Student Organization that addresses women’s issues, she said she was not acting on behalf of the group.
“The premise of the article is problematic, and its use of words like “skank” and “tramp,” Feenstra said in an interview. “I talked to a lot of people and said we should sticker as many Maroons as we can… It’s to warn people who were picking it up about the kind of materials that was inside. I could have just thrown all the Maroons away that I could find, but being destructive was not my intent at all.”
“Good comedy could deconstruct “skank” and “tramp,” but this is an incredibly shame re-producing article,” Feenstra, a third-year, added. “The [lead story, about civil liberties on campus] talks about free speech and how we have to create a climate for safe and respectful debate to occur. This article is totally antithetical to that. It seals off certain people from being viewed as students… and tells boys you can’t be a real UChicago student unless you’re ashamed about your body.”
Alumna Dana Snitsky agreed with Feenstra’s criticism of Dumas’s satire. “He never hints at the fact that he doesn’t believe these very scary things he’s saying, like that women being present in classrooms makes it very hard for men to concentrate. That was a big argument that people actually have made.”
Supriya Sinhababu, editor-in-chief of the Maroon, wrote a retraction and apology for today’s paper, calling the decision to publish Dumas’s piece “gross editorial oversight.”
By Thursday, bright green stickers with the phrase “This paper can do better. We'll make that happen.—CM” had begun appearing on copies of the Maroon alongside Feenstra’s stickers. Sinhababu declined to comment on the decision to retract the article, and I could not confirm if the Maroon was responsible for the new stickers. Dumas also declined to comment.
University of Chicago students are stamping their feet over Maroon columnist Luke Dumas’s recent op-ed, “A Springtime Strip.” The piece, which was printed on Tuesday and later retracted on the Maroon website, criticized the way students, particularly women, dress when the weather is warm.
According to the Maroon’s retraction, the op-ed was “intended as satirical” but came off as discriminatory against female students. Although most of the offensive material has been removed from the online version, the article has netted more than 50 comments that both criticize and defend Dumas’s piece, some calling for him to be fired as a columnist. (The Maroon does not pay its writers, but editors have the authority to remove students from their staff. FULL DISCLOSURE: I am a former Maroon reporter, and I was asked to leave the paper’s news staff after I accepted an internship with the University’s News Office last quarter.)
One student, Ali Feenstra, took her concerns further, and stamped “This Insults Women” stickers on the front page of hundreds of Tuesday’s Maroon papers after they were distributed around campus. Though Feenstra is a member of the Feminist Majority, a Registered Student Organization that addresses women’s issues, she said she was not acting on behalf of the group.
“The premise of the article is problematic, and its use of words like “skank” and “tramp,” Feenstra said in an interview. “I talked to a lot of people and said we should sticker as many Maroons as we can… It’s to warn people who were picking it up about the kind of materials that was inside. I could have just thrown all the Maroons away that I could find, but being destructive was not my intent at all.”
“Good comedy could deconstruct “skank” and “tramp,” but this is an incredibly shame re-producing article,” Feenstra, a third-year, added. “The [lead story, about civil liberties on campus] talks about free speech and how we have to create a climate for safe and respectful debate to occur. This article is totally antithetical to that. It seals off certain people from being viewed as students… and tells boys you can’t be a real UChicago student unless you’re ashamed about your body.”
Alumna Dana Snitsky agreed with Feenstra’s criticism of Dumas’s satire. “He never hints at the fact that he doesn’t believe these very scary things he’s saying, like that women being present in classrooms makes it very hard for men to concentrate. That was a big argument that people actually have made.”
Supriya Sinhababu, editor-in-chief of the Maroon, wrote a retraction and apology for today’s paper, calling the decision to publish Dumas’s piece “gross editorial oversight.”
“Opinions expressed in Viewpoints inevitably spark controversy from time to time; never offending anyone is not a realistic or intelligent goal for a newspaper. But “A Springtime Strip” was not merely controversial. While it made claims that were intended as satirical, the article read as discriminatory toward female students. The MAROON retracts these remarks, and the article has been amended online at chicagomaroon.com to reflect this action.”
By Thursday, bright green stickers with the phrase “This paper can do better. We'll make that happen.—CM” had begun appearing on copies of the Maroon alongside Feenstra’s stickers. Sinhababu declined to comment on the decision to retract the article, and I could not confirm if the Maroon was responsible for the new stickers. Dumas also declined to comment.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Chicago says: Bisphenol, Eh?
If you drank from a plastic water bottle, ate lunch from a take-out container, or nuked yesterday's leftover lasagna in a plastic bowl, you may have ingested some bisphenol-A. Bisphenol-A, or BPA, is a chemical compound commonly used to line food containers and harden the plastic used to make baby bottles, sippy cups and other consumer goods. But yesterday Chicago became the first city in the U.S. to ban the sale of baby feeding products containing the chemical.
I wrote an article about bisphenol-A leaching into San Diego's oceans a couple of years ago, and part of that story hinged on environmentalists' and surfers' concerns over the hormone-like effects of chemicals in plastics:
The controversial nature of these chemicals drove me to purchase my much-loved aluminum Sigg bottle (now on its third incarnation thanks to my carelessness), which now replaces the four to six plastic water bottles I went through each week of high school. I commend the City Council for their decision, which signals the usefulness of more critical inquiry into the health effects of consumer goods.
Of course, the American Chemistry Council has already released a statement deriding the new law as "contrary to the global consensus on the safety of BPA" and charging that the Council ignores the expert evaluations that have deemed the compound safe. This argument too thoroughly to privilege studies of chemicals and consumer products conducted for the purpose of legitimizing products of dubious safety, so it really heartens me to see a governing body put the question of public awareness and consumer safety over the product.
I wrote an article about bisphenol-A leaching into San Diego's oceans a couple of years ago, and part of that story hinged on environmentalists' and surfers' concerns over the hormone-like effects of chemicals in plastics:
... the plastics used to make bags, clear bottles and food packaging contain controversial hormones like Bisphenol A, a chemical that mimics the sex hormone estrogen, and whose health effects are disputed by scientists and the plastics industry. Some animal studies have shown Bisphenol A to cause certain types of cancer, affect brain functions and cause miscarriages and infertility, but FDA regulators have found it to be harmless at the levels found in plastic packaging. Nonetheless, Moore charged that Bisphenol A and similar chemicals leach from plastic debris into the ocean and put surfers' health at risk.
The controversial nature of these chemicals drove me to purchase my much-loved aluminum Sigg bottle (now on its third incarnation thanks to my carelessness), which now replaces the four to six plastic water bottles I went through each week of high school. I commend the City Council for their decision, which signals the usefulness of more critical inquiry into the health effects of consumer goods.
Of course, the American Chemistry Council has already released a statement deriding the new law as "contrary to the global consensus on the safety of BPA" and charging that the Council ignores the expert evaluations that have deemed the compound safe. This argument too thoroughly to privilege studies of chemicals and consumer products conducted for the purpose of legitimizing products of dubious safety, so it really heartens me to see a governing body put the question of public awareness and consumer safety over the product.
Friday, May 8, 2009
Earth gets its week in the sun on campus
Here's an article that appeared this week on the University's homepage. Please check it out-- there's even a cool video for which [you can't tell that] I interviewed people.
Claire Feinberg’s unofficial job as an intern for the University of Chicago’s Sustainability Council is to turn off the lights and encourage other students to do the same.
“My biggest pet peeve is when people leave [my dorm’s] laundry room lights on all the time,” she says. “It seems so absurd to me to have the lights shining on your laundry while no one’s there, so I always turn that off.”
Feinberg, a first-year in the College, is already well versed in the discipline of green living. Besides hitting the lights when she leaves a room, Feinberg air-dries clothes in her dorm room and carries her food without a tray at the dining hall. These may be only baby steps down the long road of conservation, but fostering simple habits like these in students is a goal of the Sustainability Council.
The council shared its message on green living through a week of campus activities during the University’s annual observation of Earth Day. This year, the University hosted a series of eco-conscious activities that began Saturday, April 18 with volunteer work in community gardens and area parks sponsored by the University Community Service Center.
Highlighting Greener Choices
Earth Week 2009 culminated Friday, April 24 on the Main Quadrangle with “EarthFest”—an outdoor party with music, organic food, and information about what students and community members are doing to “green up” their lives.
Registered Student Organizations and community groups set up tables with information and freebies to raise awareness about sustainability practices, and to spark conversation and new ideas.
In April, the Office of Sustainability launched Sustainable Actions for a Greener Environment, a new campus-wide initiative to offer “SAGE advice” for how to be both green and smart in making everyday choices. Students manned a table for the office and shared some of their ideas.
Earth Week 2009 offered workshops and lectures on raising worms for composting, growing culinary herbs, issues in urban agriculture, the environment in United States law, and sustainable urbanism and green buildings. Speakers included Sadhu Johnston, Chief Environmental Officer for the City of Chicago; Doug Farr of Farr Associates, which specializes in construction of LEED-certified buildings; Esther Bowen, a graduate student in Geophysical Sciences and teaching assistant for the course “Feeding the City;” and Cecelia Ungari, Director of Education and Outreach at Healthy Green Goods.
A collaborative effort among the Office of Sustainability, the University Sustainability Council, the University Medical Center, the Green Campus Initiative, the Program on the Global Environment, the College, the Civic Knowledge Project, and several student organizations, Earth Week 2009 helped students think about their role in promoting sustainability.
“It’s our one opportunity to make people who normally wouldn’t be interested in environmental initiatives take notice,” says Feinberg.
Claire Feinberg’s unofficial job as an intern for the University of Chicago’s Sustainability Council is to turn off the lights and encourage other students to do the same.
“My biggest pet peeve is when people leave [my dorm’s] laundry room lights on all the time,” she says. “It seems so absurd to me to have the lights shining on your laundry while no one’s there, so I always turn that off.”
Feinberg, a first-year in the College, is already well versed in the discipline of green living. Besides hitting the lights when she leaves a room, Feinberg air-dries clothes in her dorm room and carries her food without a tray at the dining hall. These may be only baby steps down the long road of conservation, but fostering simple habits like these in students is a goal of the Sustainability Council.
The council shared its message on green living through a week of campus activities during the University’s annual observation of Earth Day. This year, the University hosted a series of eco-conscious activities that began Saturday, April 18 with volunteer work in community gardens and area parks sponsored by the University Community Service Center.
Highlighting Greener Choices
Earth Week 2009 culminated Friday, April 24 on the Main Quadrangle with “EarthFest”—an outdoor party with music, organic food, and information about what students and community members are doing to “green up” their lives.
Registered Student Organizations and community groups set up tables with information and freebies to raise awareness about sustainability practices, and to spark conversation and new ideas.
In April, the Office of Sustainability launched Sustainable Actions for a Greener Environment, a new campus-wide initiative to offer “SAGE advice” for how to be both green and smart in making everyday choices. Students manned a table for the office and shared some of their ideas.
Earth Week 2009 offered workshops and lectures on raising worms for composting, growing culinary herbs, issues in urban agriculture, the environment in United States law, and sustainable urbanism and green buildings. Speakers included Sadhu Johnston, Chief Environmental Officer for the City of Chicago; Doug Farr of Farr Associates, which specializes in construction of LEED-certified buildings; Esther Bowen, a graduate student in Geophysical Sciences and teaching assistant for the course “Feeding the City;” and Cecelia Ungari, Director of Education and Outreach at Healthy Green Goods.
A collaborative effort among the Office of Sustainability, the University Sustainability Council, the University Medical Center, the Green Campus Initiative, the Program on the Global Environment, the College, the Civic Knowledge Project, and several student organizations, Earth Week 2009 helped students think about their role in promoting sustainability.
“It’s our one opportunity to make people who normally wouldn’t be interested in environmental initiatives take notice,” says Feinberg.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
"What do Women Want?" by Kim Addonizio
Please enjoy one of my favorite poems while I work on midterms!
What do Women Want?
Kim Addonizio
I want a red dress.
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what's underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty's and the hardware store
with all those keys glittering in the window,
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old
donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.
I want to walk like I'm the only
woman on earth and I can have my pick.
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm
your worst fears about me,
to show you how little I care about you
or anything except what
I want. When I find it, I'll pull that garment
from its hanger like I'm choosing a body
to carry me into this world, through
the birth-cries and the love-cries too,
and I'll wear it like bones, like skin,
it'll be the goddamned
dress they bury me in.
What do Women Want?
Kim Addonizio
I want a red dress.
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what's underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty's and the hardware store
with all those keys glittering in the window,
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old
donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.
I want to walk like I'm the only
woman on earth and I can have my pick.
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm
your worst fears about me,
to show you how little I care about you
or anything except what
I want. When I find it, I'll pull that garment
from its hanger like I'm choosing a body
to carry me into this world, through
the birth-cries and the love-cries too,
and I'll wear it like bones, like skin,
it'll be the goddamned
dress they bury me in.
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