Harrison Hohman – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com Breaking news from the Farm since 1892 Mon, 28 Jan 2019 05:24:29 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://stanforddaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/cropped-DailyIcon-CardinalRed.png?w=32 Harrison Hohman – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com 32 32 204779320 Eliminate SOE https://stanforddaily.com/2019/01/28/eliminate-soe/ https://stanforddaily.com/2019/01/28/eliminate-soe/#respond Mon, 28 Jan 2019 09:00:41 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1148827 This past week, a Daily columnist wrote an article entitled “In Defense of Standards of Excellence.” Her argument in favor of the administrative process that recently unhoused the TDX fraternity (before the decision’s reversal) was well written and, on a superficial level, reasonable. However, the foundation upon which many of her claims lie is a […]

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This past week, a Daily columnist wrote an article entitled “In Defense of Standards of Excellence.” Her argument in favor of the administrative process that recently unhoused the TDX fraternity (before the decision’s reversal) was well written and, on a superficial level, reasonable. However, the foundation upon which many of her claims lie is a fundamentally flawed one. Stanford’s “Standards of Excellence” (SOE) and the administrative machinations that underpin it are inherently regressive mechanisms whose implementation speaks volumes about the University’s ability to fairly judge Greek organizations.

Much of the author’s claims were informed via her own organization’s largely positive experience with SOE. This perspective is a somewhat unsurprising one given that her multicultural sorority (SYZ) was (alongside SigEp) the first and thus-far only group to be awarded a residence via the SOE process. Such a reductive view, however, denies the possibility that other houses may have had a markedly different experience with the standards of excellence program.

She states, “Every fall quarter, SYZ’s leadership spends hours compiling information about how the organization contributes to the Stanford community through scholarship and service on campus. Our presentation to SOE also delineates how decently our internal and external development processes work. We convey why it’s worth Stanford’s while to have us living together and collaborating as scholars, community change agents and friends.” Newflash: Every Greek organization does this exact same thing. Nobody is claiming that Theta Delt failed to put in many hours, assembling and presenting a report that discussed the merits of their continued existence on this campus. Rest assured, they did.

The issue, however, and the fundamental discrepancy that seems to animate the entire debate over SOE’s existence, is how fairly those committees are judging each organization. Because while SYZ may have received a passing grade from the process, it’s clear that the margins between “meets expectations” and “needs improvement” are both obscure and rapidly shrinking. And as TDX’s brush with oblivion shows, the consequences of all this are more damning than ever.

Any argument in favor of SOE hinges on the assumption that the system judges all organizations equally, with objective and consistent criteria. Many who have dealt intimately with the process, however, will readily confer that this isn’t the case.

SOE is not an unbiased system. Because its procedures are so opaque and Kafkaesque, there is almost nothing to hold it accountable as an institution. Beyond these basic flaws in its design, SOE also largely fails to educate Greek communities on what is expected of them.

By way of example, try and Google “Stanford Standards of Excellence.” The relevant results consist of two articles from The Daily, one a news piece describing its creation and the other the aforementioned column. There is not a single link, document or website that could help enlighten a student seeking more information on SOE from a clear-cut source. This lack of an online footprint is indicative of a process that makes almost no effort to explain itself to the broader Stanford community. And when so few people understand the system — and what it does and doesn’t expect of the organizations it regulates — it makes it far easier for its administrators to make controversial decisions with little to no input from anyone outside the walls of their cubicles, much like the one that nearly gutted TDX.

When searching for answers on these matters, organizations also find it incredibly difficult to know exactly whom they are accountable to. The Standards of Excellence program is nominally run through The Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life (FSL), a part of the office of Residential Education (ResEd), which is itself a branch of the Office of Student Affairs, although their findings can be influenced by the Office of Community Standards (OCS) and Organization Conduct Board (OCB), among other offices and administrative groups. Confused yet? Allowing so many different strands of bureaucracy to meddle with the process delegitimizes the notion that SOE is a unified, consistent tool for organizational improvement. A more streamlined program would seem like a prerequisite for having a fair and equitable system. Without it, there are far too many avenues for bias and residual resentment to play a role in SOE’s decision-making.

Worse than its shortage of accountability is SOE’s track record of legitimate guidance. The improvements that the Standards of Excellence reports suggest — and thus the improvements that are apparently necessary for a Greek organization to maintain its survival on this campus — are rarely concrete. For example, TDX’s 2017 SOE feedback states that its “Areas for Improvement” included three items: “Membership Development,” “Chapter Operations” and “Chapter Purpose.” One would be hard-pressed to think up three items that are half as nebulous. Even worse, the report included next to no actionable items that would allow these goals to be achieved, beyond vague platitudes and calls for change.

This is the sort of abstract, administrative nonsense that uniquely characterizes the entire SOE experience. It’s understandable that, when calling for improvement, exact metrics and precise measures are not always available. When the entire system, however, hinges on these vagaries, one can’t help but question the legitimacy of the decisions that are made and inflicted upon Greek houses.

In her column, the author specifically defended SOE on the grounds of it being “meritocratic.” Just because the system has historically favored her organization and her preferences, however, makes it neither “meritocratic” nor worth defending. The argument effectively reads as “sure, the system could be more transparent, but we’re doing well so we don’t really care what the criteria are.”

And if an organization is doing well, there would be no reason to do so. However, when a fraternity or sorority does not know exactly what it must do to improve, its survival is immediately jeopardized. And unfortunately, that is all too often the case. The author correctly points out that Theta Delt failed to achieve a passing grade over the course of multiple years. Nevertheless, when the SOE judges choose to use moving goalposts and changing criteria in judging these houses, all the time in the world wouldn’t be enough to placate them. In TDX’s case, the Standards of Excellence documents readily stated that the fraternity had improved in many of the areas that the panel saw as needing attention. As soon as these improvements were made, however, the University consistently found new sources of criticism. And while those renewed complaints may have indeed been legitimate, the University’s history of anti-Greek bias and past treatment of TDX make it difficult to dissociate the conjecture from the justifiable.

None of this hypothesizing would be necessary were the system more explicit and transparent. And in an era of increasing suspicion towards Greek life and single-sex institutions, it is understandable that the University would desire some method of formalized calls for improvement from fraternities and sororities. Standards of Excellence, however, is not that. It is instead an arbitrary instrument that the administration can bluntly wield against whichever group has fallen out of its favor.

I happened to write all of this before it was announced that SOE’s decision would be revoked, a decision ostensibly made due to the office’s failure to disclose details of its decision-making process to TDX. And frankly, I owe the Standards of Excellence group a thank you. Because nothing I possibly could have written here could make SOE look any worse than what it managed to do itself by botching its own decision. The fact that an undisclosed procedural error was all it took for the administration to originally take Theta Delt’s house is the only evidence one needs to make a judgement on the abilities of SOE to make fair and rational decisions. The process is not clear, not transparent and not unbiased. And although TDX may have gotten lucky, the reversal of its decision does not justify the Standards of Excellence’s current form of existence. This university cannot allow such a flawed process to dictate the fates of students ever again.

 

Contact Harrison Hohman at hhohman ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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TDX and the End of Greek Life at Stanford https://stanforddaily.com/2019/01/20/tdx-and-the-end-of-greek-life-at-stanford/ https://stanforddaily.com/2019/01/20/tdx-and-the-end-of-greek-life-at-stanford/#respond Mon, 21 Jan 2019 04:00:31 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1148435 TDX never received an ultimatum. There was no final warning, specific crime or particular indication that it was all going wrong. Instead, they got an email: “We have decided to remove Theta Delta Chi from the facility at 675 Lomita Drive beginning academic year 2019-2020.” Theta Delta Chi’s demise, pending an appeal, is a sad […]

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TDX never received an ultimatum. There was no final warning, specific crime or particular indication that it was all going wrong. Instead, they got an email: “We have decided to remove Theta Delta Chi from the facility at 675 Lomita Drive beginning academic year 2019-2020.”

Theta Delta Chi’s demise, pending an appeal, is a sad day for this campus and telling as an incident, in that it makes totally clear how the university feels about Greek life and single-sex organizations in this day and age. Unlike the recent unhousing of other fraternities, who went down on the backs of repeated investigations and contentious incidents, TDX’s case was much more benign, and as a result, much more frightening from the perspective of other housed Greek organizations. There was never one incident or particularly heinous crime that damned Theta Delt, but rather, a slow strangulation by red tape and administrative whim.

The Standards of Excellence (SOE) program is little-known outside of certain circles, but essential to the continued survival of Greek organizations at Stanford. The four-year-old policy calls for every fraternity and sorority to write annual reports, sometimes numbering up to 80 pages, that effectively detail why they deserve to exist on this campus. The written reports are accompanied by in-person presentations, which summarize each group’s house culture, via eight different categories which include items like Chapter Management, Equity and Inclusion, and Public Service and Civil Engagement. Panels of university administrators then judge the reports and, along with input from the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life (FSL), give each house a grade ranging from “Exceeds expectations” to “Needs Improvements.”

In consecutive years, TDX received Needs Improvements. That’s all it took. One panel, a presentation and an email, and Theta Delt suddenly found themselves in the position that every organization dreads. As an institution, TDX was far from perfect, a fact their leadership will readily admit. They faced investigations, probations and administrative drama, just as almost all Stanford fraternities have in recent years. But despite those shortcomings, absolutely no action of theirs merits such a harsh penalty — the harshest, in fact, that the university can inflict.

TDX was failed by the system. The SOE process was riddled with inconsistencies and a lack of clarity, and the institutional bias that courses through the Stanford bureaucracy festered within every aspect of the case.

Perhaps the greatest fault in TDX’s judgement and eventual SOE ruling was the administration’s ever-changing narrative on how, exactly, the fraternity was supposed to improve enough to hit the “Meets expectations” mark. In their 2017 report (For which they received Needs Improvement), the SOE panel stated Theta Delt’s top priority for the following year: “Ultimately, the chapter needs to identify, cultivate, and articulate a sense of purpose in order to ensure sustainability on campus.” In the following year, the new 2018 SOE report stated that “Leadership shared a fresh clarity on the foundational values of the fraternity that informed their objectives the past year” and that “Panelists were very moved by the narratives shared by various members about the role the chapter has played in their personal growth and outlet for support.” This would seem to indicate a sense of improvement in the university’s eyes. Nonetheless, it was clearly not enough.

Similarly, the university also indicated in their 2017 report that “The chapter should prioritize improving chapter operations (finances, officer structure, accountability measures, membership expectations, meeting times, etc.).” In turn, their 2018 SOE statement seemed to indicate that substantial strides had, again, been made in those departments:

“Proactive communication with Residential Education, Fraternity and Sorority Life, housing staff, and other campus partners was must [sic] stronger than prior years. The executive board and staff were routinely commended for their transparency and proactive approach to addressing situations. Specific examples included the closing and damage billing process, engagement with the Organizational Conduct Board (OCB) process, and subsequent dialogues with the Office of Alcohol Policy & Education (OAPE). The chapter has generally maintained a healthy reserves balance in recent years and have enhanced their financial stewardship this academic year following the transition in house staff.”

Despite that, the 2018 report listed “financial management” and “chapter management” as areas that needed improvement, a seemingly direct contradiction of the statement that the panel themselves provided. From the outside, it’s not a terribly far stretch to read this as the administration simply looking for items to ding TDX on, regardless of the substantial improvements that SOE themselves admit to.

By setting nebulous objectives and constantly creating new ones, the university can continuously move the proverbial goalposts for Greek houses and the expectations that they face. Placating the university is difficult for organizations under the easiest of circumstances but when the whims of a few minor administrators can dictate such harsh swings of fate, many houses find it almost impossible to know what is expected of them, or what improvements, if any, are enough.

In a separate part of the report, the administration admonished TDX for undergoing an OCS investigation and subsequently receiving a quarter-long social probation and other minor penalties. This too was somewhat unseemly in that it effectively represents one branch of the administration punishing TDX for the crime of being punished by a separate administrative arm. It was backhanded, circular logic that played a large factor in the SOE report and undoubtedly influenced the school’s final decision.

Furthermore, the house’s most recent SOE report promised TDX the opportunity to “Draft an action plan and demonstrate improvement to earn accreditation,” stating further that “Failure to demonstrate improvement during the probationary period may result in loss of University recognition or the privilege of a chapter facility if housed.” This opportunity, however, was never granted. The administration had already made up its mind.

To add insult to injury, the administration gave the house some eight days to put together an appeal. The process is one that requires extensive research, appeals to alumni and collective reflection, and to compress all this into the span of a little more than a week substantially harms TDX’s ability to put together a reasoned and cohesive response. Given that the decision won’t be implemented until next year, it is wholly unreasonable that this window should be so short. It’s just another nail in the coffin and a further indication that the university has a set agenda towards Greek life’s continued existence.

There is no hard and fast rule dictating that a fraternity who receives a “Needs Improvements” grade in consecutive years must lose their house. But nonetheless, Stanford still decided to pull the plug. On a human level, this fate is much more depressing than those of other recent fraternity cases. A proud community, with some 70 current members and almost 65 years of history in the same house were all undone by a single, seemingly arbitrary decision. This was a decision made by a small number of minor administrators, whose power is clearly disproportionate to their stature and knowledge of the situation.

The whole debacle allows for the possibility of much further reaching implications. If it could happen to TDX, why not other fraternities? If it no longer takes some particular crime or investigation for a Greek organization to receive the ultimate punishment, what’s to say that the same couldn’t happen to the other remaining houses and communities on this campus?

Arbitrary decisions and capricious administrators are nothing new on this campus. The fact, however, that such whims are now enough to unhouse existing Greek organizations is terrifying. One can only hope that Theta Delt’s appeal is successful and that the university backtracks on their continued assault against housed fraternities. As a part of those efforts, a campus-wide petition to save their house is circulating to gain signatures. Should those fail however, anyone with concern for campus life should be appalled by the case. If TDX does receive this harshest of punishments, it may indeed be remembered as the inflection point upon which Greek life was no longer welcome at Stanford.

 Contact Harrison Hohman at hhohman ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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New approach, same bureaucracy https://stanforddaily.com/2019/01/15/me-asl-new-approach-same-bureaucracy/ https://stanforddaily.com/2019/01/15/me-asl-new-approach-same-bureaucracy/#respond Tue, 15 Jan 2019 09:00:42 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1148237 Last week, in an email sent to all Stanford undergraduates, the Office for the Vice Provost of Student Affairs promised, in its own words, “a new approach” to alcohol policy on campus. In vague terms, the message detailed a supposed epidemic of binge drinking on campus and a series of forthcoming administrative efforts to curtail […]

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Last week, in an email sent to all Stanford undergraduates, the Office for the Vice Provost of Student Affairs promised, in its own words, “a new approach” to alcohol policy on campus. In vague terms, the message detailed a supposed epidemic of binge drinking on campus and a series of forthcoming administrative efforts to curtail it.

All of these claims came without any obvious motivating factors or hard data to justify them. But nonetheless, the email made clear that the administration is hell-bent on addressing the matter with every bureaucratic tool they can invent.

The renewed efforts that the email entails are laughable given the existing administrative infrastructure that already surrounds alcohol consumption on this campus. The Office of Alcohol Policy and Education (OAPE) nominally holds responsibility over the matter but ResEd, the Office for Fraternity & Sorority Life, the Office for Student Affairs, the Stanford Police Department and the SARA Office (among others) all additionally play their own roles in deciding what, where and how students drink.

The resulting amalgamation of red tape and expensive administrators is a financial quagmire funded by your own tuition dollars. OAPE alone maintains no fewer than six full time employees, an unfathomably high number for an office whose job is effectively to convince a relatively small undergraduate body to drink less. Stanford attempting to regulate how students spend their free time is nothing new, but the email’s notion that even more administrative presence will serve as some sort of antidote is astoundingly out of touch. This University however, is no stranger to bloat.

Stanford currently maintains 31 different provosts and directors, which themselves can host numerous smaller groups and divisions. The Office for Student Affairs (that originally called for more administrative response to campus drinking) alone has 28 sub-offices (of which OAPE is one) and six associate vice provosts under its umbrella. This ivory-tower brain trust appears to have come to the conclusion that the only way to solve a problem is to create more offices to regulate it.

And indeed, the aforementioned email would suggest just as much. In it, Provost Persis Drell and Vice Provost Susie Brubaker-Cole promise to create an “Alcohol Solutions Group” and a “Stanford Law School Policy Practicum on Alcohol Use Among Stanford Undergraduates,” to invest more in “training, support, resources,” to expand existing programs including Cardinal Nights and 5-Sure, and to “compile data on Stanford student alcohol consumption,” among other new measures and initiatives.

Creating additional layers of apparatchiks and regulations is frustrating under even the best of circumstances. To do so however, for something as trifling as campus drinking culture is completely dumbfounding. When combined with all of the already existing offices and university schemes, the resulting administrative beast is enough to infuriate any objective viewer.

A further point of confusion is the justification for the heightened scrutiny of student alcohol consumption. Stanford itself claims that rates of freshman drinking and hard alcohol consumption are down, while on a national level, binge drinking amongst youths is decreasing. On a less quantitative note, no one can claim that Stanford is a crazier place than it was 20, 10 or even five years ago, or that its drinking culture is becoming more dangerous. The truth in fact is quite the opposite.

Last week’s email then, and the ensuing measures it promises, would seem to be, at best, unnecessary, but more likely, outright harmful. Its headline-inducing lead quote, “We cannot turn away from this” is almost comedic in its self-seriousness and lack of nuance. The sentiment it expresses, however, represents the marriage of helicopter-parent attitudes and the misguided notion that administrative expansion is the solution to all the school’s problems, real or imagined. Stanford needs to recognize the fallibility of its own bureaucracy. Until then, it will continue to grow, unchecked by the bounds of reasonability, and with it, administrative reach will infringe further upon student life.

Contact Harrison Hohman at hhohman ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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OCS and the veneer of justice https://stanforddaily.com/2018/11/12/me-asl-ocs-and-the-veneer-of-justice/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/11/12/me-asl-ocs-and-the-veneer-of-justice/#respond Mon, 12 Nov 2018 09:00:08 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1146661 The Office of Community Standards (OCS) at this school is entrusted with a lofty moral mandate: They alone are singularly responsible for ensuring that the Honor Code and Fundamental Standard of the University are upheld by all members of the Stanford community. The office’s task is a thankless one, and one constantly beset by controversy […]

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The Office of Community Standards (OCS) at this school is entrusted with a lofty moral mandate: They alone are singularly responsible for ensuring that the Honor Code and Fundamental Standard of the University are upheld by all members of the Stanford community. The office’s task is a thankless one, and one constantly beset by controversy and universal scrutiny; I do not envy them.

With that acknowledged, however, OCS has failed that mandate. The office has created a culture of inconsistency and unreliability that is, by any reasonable standards, unacceptable for a body entrusted with so much authority. The incompetence they have wielded with such fervor has left a tangible effect on this campus and continues to impact potentially innocent students in profound ways.

The most public realm through which OCS decisions play out is in that of investigations against Greek houses. To my own knowledge, the office currently has five known, active investigations running against four different fraternities.

OCS’ track record suggests that these investigations will have neither impartiality nor just results. In recent months, the office has made much more frequent their use of interim sanctions. These are an optional measure the office can indiscriminately elect to take, that effectively implements a presumption of guilty-before-proven-innocent. The sanctions allow the University to place punitive measures on an organization as soon as a complaint is filed with the OCS office.

What this means is that organizations or students can (and currently do) find themselves being punished for a crime for which they have not been given a platform to respond. It marks a total collapse of OCS’ credibility and makes an absolute mockery of the judicial impartiality the office should be expected to uphold. There are currently multiple organizations who find themselves on social holds and probations owing to charges that have been levied against them – charges for which investigations have yet to even begin.

In one particularly recent example, a prominent Stanford fraternity has been on probation all year for an incident that happened in September. And yet, interviews – and much less appeals or panels – for that investigation have yet to even begin. OCS has made it their policy to punish houses for extended periods of time without providing any manner through which the groups can challenge or even discuss the charges at hand.

This example is made all the more egregious when one considers the fact that the Office of Community Standards maintains no less than four full-time employees and ancillary volunteers and staff that include a Judicial Panel Pool, Board on Judicial Affairs and Organizational Conduct Board.

Now, perhaps I am misjudging the scope of the mandate given to OCS, but I personally find it somewhat difficult to believe that despite all the institutional support they are given, OCS cannot even begin the preliminary steps of an investigation multiple months after the alleged violations occurred. To then automatically assume guilt and allow their own sluggishness to fester in the form of real and ongoing punishments for students is almost unfathomable. The office’s attitude towards the case belies a total lack of regard for the welfare of the students under scrutiny and suggests that there could be more deeply held biases at play.

No one has ever claimed that OCS creates a free and fair court on par with that of a legitimate legal body. Its current manifestation, however, represents something far worse – a kangaroo court where the charges aren’t jokes and the participants stand to have their lives affected in very real ways. It represents institutional ineptitude and moral authoritarianism taken to their logical extremes.

If these improprieties were an isolated incident, one could forgive this as a mistaken abuse of power. In its recent history, however, OCS has never proven itself capable of properly handling the authority it’s been given.

In another OCS Greek life investigation from the previous school year, the Fountain Hopper (FoHo) newsletter reported a series of damning accusations about the office’s investigative procedures that seem remarkably similar and relevant to the cases currently open.

In their campus-wide email, the FoHo claimed that OCS’ report on the matter included lies, unsubstantiated accusations and blatantly untrue claims, revealed confidential, FERPA-protected personal health information, fabricated key investigative evidence and failed to include a single interview (sound familiar?) from the case’s lead investigator.

The end result was so bad, in fact, that University Provost Persis Drell was forced to implement a “never-before-used special panel process” in order to wade through the mess that OCS had created. The panel found that many of the supposed violations committed by the fraternity were unsubstantiated. As the FoHo said themselves, “If recent developments are any indication, [OCS] can’t be trusted to treat you or anyone else fairly.”

Beyond Greek organizations, OCS has also spearheaded several other highly controversial investigations, the most notable of which was the 2017 case against the Stanford Marching Band. Its findings called for the wholesale gutting of LSJUMB, including provisions that attempted to replace Band leadership with University-led committees and other punitive social sanctions. The report stated that while the results of the investigation could be appealed, the findings behind it couldn’t be. These findings, however, were largely dubious and tended to punish the Band for things that were out of their control.

In the beginning of that same school year, the deep, internal issues with the office were put on blast to the campus when a laughably tight-lipped letter from the University’s associate provost was published in The Daily, explaining a “comprehensive staffing change for the office due to personnel matters.” It was later reported that the entire OCS staff either resigned or was fired due to “controversy over how investigations were being handled.” The office remained empty for almost the entirety of fall quarter.

Clearly, incompetency is nothing new for OCS. Even going back as far as 2012, the office was accused of “phenomenal misconduct” and “student-journalist intimidation” by the independent Student Justice Project. The list of sins goes on and on, almost exhaustingly so.

I’ll finish this in the same way that it began – with an acknowledgement that the Office of Community Standards has an incredible difficult job and one that is, by its very nature, unlikely to be popular with students. Nonetheless, the office has managed to redefine bureaucratic ineptitude in a never-ending game of limbo that seems to ask, “How low can OCS go?” The office has consistently assumed the guilt of the accused and practiced improper investigation procedures. They can no longer be trusted with the authority they have been given.

 

Contact Harrison Hohman at hhohman ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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The case for saving the Stanford social scene https://stanforddaily.com/2018/10/30/me-asl-the-case-for-saving-the-stanford-social-scene/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/10/30/me-asl-the-case-for-saving-the-stanford-social-scene/#respond Tue, 30 Oct 2018 08:00:01 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1145876 The Stanford social scene is dead — or, at the very least, on life support. The case for that claim is obvious enough to anyone with eyes and a few free hours on a weekend night. The case for why it should be kept alive, however, is a different one, and as far as the university […]

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The Stanford social scene is dead — or, at the very least, on life support. The case for that claim is obvious enough to anyone with eyes and a few free hours on a weekend night. The case for why it should be kept alive, however, is a different one, and as far as the university is concerned, a much more difficult one to make.

In recent years, the administration has played a direct and proactive role in this slow degradation of campus nightlife. The higher-ups within this body tend to view the social scene through the lens of the statistics thrown at them during their weekly Tuesday morning meetings: MIP’s, transports, arrests. One can almost understand how, when witnessed only through this prism of data and delinquency, these decision makers could genuinely find merit in the slow strangulation of all that is fun.

What the bureaucrats so consistently fail to understand however, is that the value a social life brings to a campus an inherently unquantifiable metric. And try hard as they may, the university will never be able to regulate away students’ desires to explore the newfound freedom so essential to the American college experience. People will still want to meet new faces, to go out, to drink with their friends. This is an immutable truth.

The system as it currently exists is a far more manageable and egalitarian one than that which will arise should the trend of targeted condemnation continue.

One obvious starting point is that of money and equity. Relative to other schools, there are incredibly few financial barriers to having a social life at Stanford. All-campus parties are free, fraternities and sororities employ robust financial aid programs and there is generally a “don’t discuss it” attitude toward wealth and social standing. If the pipeline of campus social events were to be totally closed off tomorrow however, these discussions would quickly become much more uncomfortable.

Inevitably, a certain percentage of social activity would shift toward the surrounding Bay Area and its smattering of bars and nightclubs. Your average student will simply not be able to afford these excursions on a regular basis. If you think things are already separated by race and class, just wait until we have to filter out everyone who can’t pay $14 for a mojito at The Patio. Those with money will self-segregate and those without will be relegated to four years of listless weekend evenings and pumpkin painting workshops with Cardinal Nights.

Beyond the obvious financial barriers, shifting things toward Palo Alto presents its own host of problems. All those MIP’s, hospital visits and drunken misdemeanors that the university already frets over so much will be shunted beyond the gates of campus and onto the schools’ neighbors.

In the relatively sequestered bubble of Stanford, these antics tend to fly under the radar. The campus safety department takes care of things and the outside world is mostly oblivious. When, however, the Palo Alto police and the famously overbearing parents of the town get involved, that relative anonymity will no longer keep these things out of the light of day. The relationship calculus between the university and its neighboring town, historically an amicable one, will change dramatically. Something tells me that Palo Altans won’t take too kindly to the public urination, loud noises and beer cans-littered streets so visible at other traditional college towns.

There is also the question of oversight. Currently, the university can play an outsized role in how social events are planned and executed. They force the implementation of certain preventative measures, including the checking of SUID’s, registering of all social events, blocking of alternative entrances and dangerous spaces (read: roofs) and banning of hard alcohol and other substances. If fraternities or other groups fail to comply, they will become subject to the administration’s byzantine probation policies, as a number of houses have recently found.

The elimination of a cohesive, on-campus social scene will do away with all of this. Nightlife will splinter entirely: bars in Palo Alto, drinking behind closed doors, secret events and the wholesale fracturing of what was once a reasonably united student body. The police and residential staff will not know what to expect or where to focus their efforts, gatherings will be smaller and the the undergraduate community will no longer share common and collective social outlets and events.

Beyond the external effects of all this — the questions of equality and risks of fracturing campus life as it currently exists — we must also consider the wellbeing and happiness of the students here.

Stanford is a high-pressure, high-stakes place. The constant stresses of studying for exams, finding jobs and internships, competing against spectacularly talented peers and simply navigating through the college years can feel like a herculean task, and even a hopeless one — a sentiment that feels especially true if there exists nothing to look forward to at the end of a taxing week. Waking up day after day and struggling through these challenges simply isn’t possible without something on the horizon worth looking forward to.

For myself and countless others, campus nightlife has always been the answer to that void. The promise of seeing my friends, forgetting even briefly about all the stress and angst, and having a fun night out has been an invaluable tool in the constant battle we students rage against apathy and dejection. Without such things to look forward to, every facet of student life will become a less fulfilling and worthwhile version of its previous self.

Quantifying the value that the social scene brings to Stanford is an impossible task. It’s meeting new faces at a party in your dorm; it’s howling laughter at Wilbur brunch while discussing the night before; it’s fountain hopping at 3 a.m. and quiet conversations and raucous karaoke and a million other moments and memories that make it all the hard times worth it. If that’s not something this school needs to protect, I can’t imagine what is.

 

Contact Harrison Hohman at hhohman ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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A Requiem for the Stanford Social Scene https://stanforddaily.com/2018/10/15/a-requiem-for-the-stanford-social-scene/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/10/15/a-requiem-for-the-stanford-social-scene/#respond Mon, 15 Oct 2018 08:00:09 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1144834 Last Saturday night, I walked alone down Mayfield Avenue. Most of the windows in the row houses were dark, and, but for a distant car or two, the street was silent. It was eerie, spectral even, and a stark reminder of just how much this campus has changed in my own time here. Ask almost […]

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Last Saturday night, I walked alone down Mayfield Avenue. Most of the windows in the row houses were dark, and, but for a distant car or two, the street was silent. It was eerie, spectral even, and a stark reminder of just how much this campus has changed in my own time here. Ask almost anyone who was here only a few years ago, and they’ll tell you the same thing: This isn’t how things used to be.

I remember being able to walk up the same street as a freshman on any given weekend night and see half the houses alight with music and bodies and events. People would open their doors and welcome guests. One could literately hop between addresses, making half a dozen stops before heading back home. Nowadays this couldn’t be further from the truth.

The reasons for this sudden oblivion are many and varied, but their collective effect is unambiguous in its potential to destroy an essential part of student life. At its current pace of suppression-by-bureaucracy, Stanford will become unrecognizable sooner rather than later.

A major and obvious cause of this sudden dearth of social activity on campus is the evisceration of Stanford Greek life that has taken place in recent years. At the end of last spring, Sigma Chi lost its house. Since the start of this year, Kappa Alpha, Theta Delta Chi and Pi Phi have all gone onto probation for reasons of varying validity. And in the winter prior, the University awarded the former SAE (also kicked out) house to both a fraternity and two multicultural sororities (one of whom opted to leave before year’s end), effectively undermining that residence’s ability to cohesively host events.

There now remain only three fraternities left with their own houses and no probation status. This number is not nearly large enough to support the collective social burden of the campus and all its students. As freshmen and other guests are funneled towards the same houses, more negative attention will be forced onto the surviving organizations, and the positive feedback loop will continue to shrink the pool of fraternities that are left.

Amidst this unprecedented wave of suspensions and closures, one can not help but lament the toll this change has taken on the campus nightlife. For decades, fraternities have underpinned much of the social scene here. Yes, co-ops and other row houses hold occasional events, but realistically, few of these have the continuity and wherewithal to continually open their doors to the broader undergraduate community.

Unlike Greek houses, self-ops and co-ops technically cannot collect dues from residents to fund these sorts of ventures or self-select the types of members who are willing to put up with the noise, dirt and damage these events inevitably cause. The result is a campus largely bereft of social venues beyond those few remaining with Greek letters above their doors.

This problem is also compounded by the nature of Stanford and its surrounding area. Unlike many other schools, which have restaurants, bars and true “college towns” frequently within walking distance of student residences, our own campus is not blessed with such an abundance of student-friendly options. Palo Alto is a long bike- or Uber-ride away, but few want to deal with the hassle of getting there just to rewarded with its notoriously exorbitant prices for food and drinks.

San Francisco is even worse. Students are faced with paying either $100 round-trip for Ubers or $14 on a Caltrain that for the foreseeable future won’t even run weekend service to the city. Even if one has the money to go to SF for a night, the logistical restraints from doing so make it difficult if not impossible for all but the most financially and temporally liberated of students.

The on-campus social scene has always served as an antidote to all of the regional stratification — an egalitarian bubble where parties open their doors, and free all-campus events serve as a unifying force on a student body whose proclivities and financial backgrounds are often disparate. The importance of this to the campus’ collective wellbeing cannot be overstated.

I remember the shock of being a freshman, new to California and to college, and being not only allowed but genuinely welcomed into houses all across campus. And once I got there, I saw people from my dorm, people from my classes, people whom I’d only just met and more new faces than I could count, all under the same roof; it was, in a word, thrilling.

But as the University slowly makes it more and more of a liability for organizations to host these gatherings, we’ll eventually reach a point where it is no longer worth the risk of putting them on in the first place. As rules tighten and fewer groups are left with houses to host events, the collective social scene will slowly (if it hasn’t already) be reduced to a shell of its former self.

And just as the Row is becoming strangled by bureaucracy and red tape, the University has begun to tighten the snare in dorms too. Incoming RAs were informed during staff training this year of a new reporting protocol that will erode the traditional trust between student staff and their residents. It counts “drinking games” and “consuming shots” among the list of “high-risk behaviours” that must be discussed in weekly meetings with staff and that can eventually even result in expulsion from housing for offending students.

Beyond their blatant absurdity and ambiguity, the guidelines represent a total abandonment of the traditional “open-door policy” that has encouraged dorm bonding and community building for years. Although the University has promised further improvements and clarifications upon the mandate, substantial changes have not been forthcoming.

Unverifiable rumors on campus hold that all of these attacks are the result of a coordinated effort from the highest levels of the new administration to change the drinking culture at Stanford. Regardless of the validity of those whispers, what cannot be denied is that the enacted changes have resulted in the wholesale gutting of student nightlife.

I’m writing as a senior and therefore with the knowledge that whatever the University’s end game is, I will almost certainly not be a part of it. I fear however, for the younger ones — the sophomores and the freshmen and all the untold future generations that will one day call this campus home.

My time here has been filled with social and personal opportunities that have enriched my Stanford experience beyond belief. For those here in the years to come, I worry that the same will not hold true.

 

Contact Harrison Hohman at hhohman ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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The not-so-radical case for de-zoning San Francisco https://stanforddaily.com/2018/10/02/me-asl-the-not-so-radical-case-for-de-zoning-san-francisco/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/10/02/me-asl-the-not-so-radical-case-for-de-zoning-san-francisco/#respond Tue, 02 Oct 2018 08:00:01 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1144172 The cityscape of San Francisco is an iconic one: a fist of land jutting out into blue water, blanketed with bucolic hills and Victorian homes; iconic bridges guarding its periphery and cultural landmarks lying in the shadows of glass towers, reaching ever higher toward the clouds. But to the west of that postcard image of […]

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The cityscape of San Francisco is an iconic one: a fist of land jutting out into blue water, blanketed with bucolic hills and Victorian homes; iconic bridges guarding its periphery and cultural landmarks lying in the shadows of glass towers, reaching ever higher toward the clouds.

But to the west of that postcard image of San Francisco lies an alternate city; one far removed from freshman dorm scavenger hunts and swarms of camera-doting tourists. Neighborhoods like the sunset district, Richmond and Parkside host an insipid geometric grid of duplexes and built-in garages; a low-slung, featureless expanse that sits as a monument to cynical urban planning and profligate spatial design.

The existence of this suburbia, transplanted into the core of one of the nation’s most important cities, is permitted by a rigid collection of ultra-restrictive zoning laws. These regulations limit the height of all buildings (generally 40 feet maximum), the types of developments that can be built (almost exclusively duplex and single-family) and even the locations where buildings can cast their shadows (not over parks or public squares).

The links between these laws and the housing crisis that has become synonymous with San Francisco are indisputable and well-documented. By limiting the height, number and type of buildings that can be built, neighborhoods strangle the supply of housing and push renters further and further afield.

And in line with longstanding micro-economic tradition, the negative ramifications of all this are felt most poignantly by the middle and lower classes, whose displacement has itself resulted in a host of demographic crises, homelessness, segregation and gentrification chief among them.

The issue of San Francisco’s zoning laws is not one that falls upon the traditional fault lines of the country’s prevailing political and cultural divide. Activists from the left have been perhaps the most vocal in their desire to ease restrictions in order to increase the existing supply of housing for all. But at the same time, anyone with even a passing affinity for the Adam Smith school of thought can sympathize with the idea of doing away with regulations and opening up the city to market forces.

In a normal setting, this merging of right and left would be more than enough to pass seemingly common sense legislation that could prevent the crystallization of power and wealth via home ownership. San Francisco however, has never fit under the umbrella of “normal.”

The opposition to de-zoning efforts has been spearheaded by existing homeowners and the city council members and neighborhood associations that represent them. Their case has traditionally hinged upon a few loosely-related arguments, some reasonable, if outdated, and others downright immoral.

The most pervasive of these is the always-nebulous notion of “preserving neighborhood character.” In theory this is not an all-bad thing. Nobody wants a toxic chemical plant in their backyard.

The trouble arises however, when these ordinances are used as blunt weapons wielded toward any and all development projects that the neighbors don’t like, regardless of their potential to improve a city. In the case of San Francisco, preservation laws seek not to adapt but to suffocate any change long before it can threaten the status quo. And besides, anyone who believes that the architectural character of neighborhoods like Outer Sunset is truly worth preserving at all costs probably needs to reassess their views on the matter.

Other commonly cited arguments against development and de-zoning include the threat of earthquakes and the interest in maintaining the ocean views so synonymous with the city.

The earthquake argument is an outdated one. Building codes and technology have improved significantly since the 1940s and 50s when a majority of the homes in western San Francisco were first built. The idea that an act of God would destroy all the city’s newer or slightly taller buildings but not its middle-of-the-century two story ones is, at best, fearmongering, and at worst, an outright lie.

And as for the ocean views, well, if the supposedly hyper-progressive denizens of San Francisco seriously believe that their partially-obstructed vistas of the Golden Gate Bridge are more important than homelessness, inflation, societal partitioning, cultural implosion and economic alienation, they’ll overdose on irony long before their minds are changed on much of anything.

All of these sideshow arguments are collectively a smokescreen — a deceitful proxy meant to dress more gluttonous ambitions in a facade of neighborly ideals and community protectionism.

The central reason for these regressive attitudes and the real cause of all this is a simple one, familiar to even a first week dropout of Econ 1: when supply falls, prices rise. Homeowners’ assets are worth more when there are fewer of them to go around. And the prices have indeed risen.

The current average price for a home in San Francisco is $1.62 million. This figure amounts to a 91 percent increase over the past five years alone. By one study, the median house in San Fran would require buyers to earn 9.2 times the median salary of the city.

Homeowners will then argue that real estate investors are being rewarded for their foresight and financial savvy. To chalk the gains up to the glory of capitalism alone however, denies a more difficult reality — the very system that gave homeowners such a bountiful yield on their investment was in fact not a terribly capitalistic one at all.

Zoning laws are meant to stifle market forces, in a spirit that completely contrasts that of the traditional American economic ideal. These homeowners’ gains were not earned fairly and it is thus not unfair to challenge their suppression of the market.

Despite all the inequitable gains, the preposterous price hikes and the raw absurdity of the area’s economic climate, de-zoning proponents aren’t asking for much. They (largely) aren’t calling for homeowners to pay more taxes or be forced to part ways with their newfound wealth. They just want to be able to build more of it, to ease the stranglehold on prosperity that a small minority has wielded over the rest of the Bay Area for the past decade or so and lend a lifeline to those who are not as fortunate.

The city has miles and miles of land that are heinously undeveloped. A quick detour through anywhere in the western half of town will reveal just as much. And although pundits and politicians tend to keep the housing crisis discussion limited to just that, a discussion, this here is a very clear opportunity to make a tangible, positive change — one that will ease the burden on the most disadvantaged and make the city a more free and fair place for all.

 

Contact Harrison Hohman at hhohman@stanford.edu

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The egregious exceptionalism of Palo Alto https://stanforddaily.com/2018/06/05/the-egregious-exceptionalism-of-palo-alto/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/06/05/the-egregious-exceptionalism-of-palo-alto/#respond Tue, 05 Jun 2018 12:00:23 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1142017 “Palo Alto is an elitist sh*t den of hate.” “Kind capitalism is a myth and our city is proof.” “I hate ‘social justice’ in Palo Alto. What a f*cking joke.” The messages — or rather, tweets — are uncompromising in their boldness; brash and confrontational, with a clear target for their ire and a disdain […]

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“Palo Alto is an elitist sh*t den of hate.” “Kind capitalism is a myth and our city is proof.” “I hate ‘social justice’ in Palo Alto. What a f*cking joke.” The messages — or rather, tweets — are uncompromising in their boldness; brash and confrontational, with a clear target for their ire and a disdain so apparent it almost pains to read them. Somewhat surprisingly, these were not the admonitions of an antifa member or Synergy listserv, but rather, a Christian priest from a local church.

The First Baptist Church of Palo Alto found itself in national headlines last week after Rev. Gregory Stevens, a 28 year old self-proclaimed “leftist libertarian” resigned from his position at the church. The resignation came on the heels of the aforementioned string of tweets and the predictably outraged backlash that followed. Palo Alto Vice Mayor Eric Filseth called the messages “vile,” and a group of local residents gathered and presented them in document form to the City Council, who at the time were voting on the church’s status as a “community center.”

Amidst the uproar that followed, Stevens resigned but made sure to burn a few more bridges on his way out, saying that “I believe Palo Alto is a ghetto of wealth, power and elitist liberalism by proxy, meaning that many community members claim to want to fight for social justice issues, but that desire doesn’t translate into action.”

Many will rightfully disagree with the politics Stevens promotes. His propositions are diametrically opposed to the ideals of many Americans and it would be difficult to envision such a message taking hold in a more red-blooded congregation. Superficially however, it would seem that Stevens found the perfect place to preach — a community whose politics supposedly aligned directly with his own drastic calls to action.

The incident was Palo Alto at its finest — a community so self-absorbed and totally lacking in genuine empathy that it failed to see the preposterous irony of its own actions. For one of the wealthiest communities in the country to attack a Christian priest for his calls at equality sounds more like 1930’s Berlin than one of the more self-proclaimed progressive areas in 2018 America. Nonetheless, this is the alternate reality that the citizens of this lovely town have created for themselves.

This same reality — propped up by $6 coffee and shielded from the outside world by rigid zoning laws — has been allowed to flourish in a community where everybody agrees on the liberal ideal but exceedingly few seek to actually act on it. Sure they may vote for Hillary in national elections and talk like good liberals at their weekly farmer’s markets, but realistically, the citizens of Palo Alto have turned a collective blind eye towards the blatant socio-economic problems that plague the community here and now.

One needn’t look far for examples. In the past year new ordinances made it harder for homeless people (many of whom were pushed to the streets by the very people now voting against them) to live in Palo Alto. The housing crisis continues to loom large and residents regularly refuse to allow for more building (wouldn’t wanna lower our home prices!) or large infrastructure projects that could free up resources for new developments (don’t want those dirty construction men in my backyard!). This exceptionalism — the idea that the rules should apply to everyone except for the broadly defined “us” — is an absurd and laughable juxtaposition given the economic realities of the area. However, when a community leader with no motives beyond his own notions of empathy decided to call out Palo Alto on its willful ignorance, he was unsurprisingly met with a cacophony of backlash that resulted in his own resignation and effective dismissal from the community itself.

The average home in Palo Alto costs over $3.3 million dollars. Its median income is more than $163,000 and anecdotally speaking, it’s home to more Teslas than any place reasonably should be. It would be one thing for its residents to own up to these truths and face the world as such. But by wrapping their wealth in a façade of ‘social good’ and limousine-liberalism, Palo Alto, and more broadly, Silicon Valley, have managed to have their proverbial cake and eat it too.

Stevens himself perhaps put it best when he said “If the same energies used to organize neighbors around minor parking issues, young girl’s choirs and ‘nasty tweets’ were honed to fight actual injustices, Palo Alto would be a very different city. Palo Alto needs more action, less lip service.” Few could deny the profound sardonicism of the whole situation. The citizens of this city live in a world where eating kale and buying $140,000 electric cars constitutes social good but providing homeless people with basic shelter does not.

This refusal to confront the true nature of things has cemented Palo Alto as America’s capital of hypocrisy. And as home prices continue to rise, gentrification eliminates more of the area’s demographic backbone and the ever-widening gap between rich and poor carries on with its unique brand of societal hemorrhaging, the members of this community may one day decide that it’s time for change. Until that day comes however, people like Rev. Stevens will find themselves in the smallest of minorities. Their calls will fall upon deaf ears.

Contact Harrison Hohman at hhohman ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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The stifling hypocrisy of Turning Point https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/25/the-stifling-hypocrisy-of-turning-point/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/25/the-stifling-hypocrisy-of-turning-point/#respond Fri, 25 May 2018 12:00:06 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1141578 Harrison Hohman discusses how Turning Point USA is not what campus conservatives need to show the value of their thought.

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The collective discourse of campus politics in recent weeks has been dominated by the discussion surrounding Turning Point USA. The conservative activism group has stumbled its way into a number of campus news stories as of late, including word of their founder Charlie Kirk tabling in White Plaza, the announcement of an upcoming speaker event led by Kirk himself and the news that said event violated Stanford Student and Activity Leadership (SAL) policy, among others.

One of the more alarming of these stories took place last week when our campus’ resident investigative journalists at FoHo “exposed” connections between Turning Point and a handful of undergraduates. These connections were hotly contested by some of those named in a Daily Op-Ed, and as a result (and rather ironically I may add) FoHo found their own motives and practices being questioned by much of campus.

Compromising the public image and privacy of a group of 19-year-olds for the great crime of being associated with conservatism is itself a moral farce. But despite their heavy-handedness, FoHo was at least correct about one thing: Turning Point USA is not a force for good.

Turning Point was founded in 2012 by recent high school graduate Charlie Kirk. Since then, the group claims to have established a presence at over 1,000 universities, organized some 5,000 activist events and taken the title of “fastest growing conservative student organization in the country.” The group’s goals, as stated by their own website, are to “identify, educate, train and organize students to promote the principles of fiscal responsibility, free markets and limited government.”

As a vaguely conservative (at least by this campus’ standards) person myself, I take no fault with any of these ideas on principle. However, the methods and underlying goals of the organization have condemned them to an existence that’s even more dangerous than the supposed evils Turning Point claims to fight.

During my sophomore year, Turning Point contacted me about founding a TPUSA chapter at Stanford. I was skeptical at the time but at least read through their sales pitch, a key component of which was establishing a social media presence from conservatives on college campuses.

A cursory scroll through Turning Point’s Facebook page ended any chance of me wanting to associate with them: Loading screen after loading screen filled with little more than memes bashing Bernie Sanders, Trump-haters and really anything and everything that could be considered leftist. The memes themselves (which are still pumped out at an alarming rate) are belittling and rather stupid, even by millennial standards. Their very existence, however, spoke to a much more sobering reality about what Turning Point really stands for, which is to say, a belligerent, low-brow branch of conservatism that stifles critical thought and serves to do little more than aggravate our left-leaning classmates.

Never in my own life have I heard of a message like #BigGovSucks, #SocialismSucks or #TaxationIsTheft (just to name a few) actually succeed in changing anyone’s opinion on anything. Yes, it’s true that many conservatives like smaller government, and many liberals would prefer the opposite, but to believe that social media crusades such as these are at all constructive in building a positive discourse is dangerously naïve. And while the desire to replicate more left-leaning social media presences such as ‘The Other 98%’ and ‘Resist Create’ is admittedly an attractive one, to sink to these levels lowers the bar of critical thought for all involved parties. Simply put, memes don’t forward democracy.  

And while social media is one example, the group’s other material efforts are no more encouraging. Perhaps the most offensive of them all is the “Professor Watchlist” the group maintains regularly. This watchlist consists of a ledger with all the names of any university faculty members the group has deemed unfavorable to its own purposes. Beyond being an obvious threat to academic freedom, the watchlist is sadly ironic in that it is meant to inspire fear and stifle dialogue, much in the fashion of the supposedly repressive institutions Turning Point claims to fight against. This blatant hypocrisy is indicative of an organizational culture that has an utter disregard for courtesy or dignity. And while many may argue that such a culture is just a response to equally indignant efforts from the left, fighting fire with fire is a strategy that will almost certainly serve only to further polarize and isolate an already fractured campus political scene.

On May 29th, Turning Point will host a speaker event on campus titled “Make Stanford Great Again,” led by the group’s founder Charlie Kirk and noted conservative activist (and somewhat oddly, Kanye West idol) Candace Owens. In his many interviews and Youtube videos, Kirk claims that the organization is a diverse and openminded one, but the advertisements for the event suggest a much different truth: “Trump is great. Build the wall. Deport criminal illegals. Guns save lives. There are only two genders. Abortion is murder. Defund sanctuary city San Francisco. Taxation is theft. Affirmative action is racist. White privilege is a lie.” This is not the rhetoric of an openminded, hear-all-ideas organization. If anything, it’s just a mindless co-opting of the same progressive rhetoric whose moral absolutism and half-baked nature caused many conservatives to rebel against leftism in the first place.

Additionally, leaked brochures suggest that the group attempts to finance campus elections (as FoHo previously reported) through laughably-named “leadership scholarships” but expects rigid compliance with their policies in return – defunding of progressive organizations, no divestment from fossil fuels and the blocking of all boycott movements chief among them. This attempt, to draw all right-leaning students towards a single ideological coalition, is an affront to independent thought and effectively an effort to brainwash anyone who feels the slightest alienation from the leftist hegemony of most universities. Exploiting the political isolation of campus conservatives is novel in its audacity but is bound to accomplish nothing other than further widening pre-existing political chasms.  

Turning Point USA is an organization whose motives are murky, at best. Their “laissez-faire” attitude towards campaign financing laws, allegations of internal racism and general air of unearned moral superiority all only serve to compound the idea that they are not fit to bear the torch of conservative America’s future.

If any political progress is going to be made in this country by either side of the aisle, it will happen on the back of efforts to understand and empathize, rather than further alienate and anger. Turning Point is an organization that capitalizes on fear and the desire to incite opponents, where angering the left supersedes legitimate thought and discussion. It all is indicative of our reactionary culture – an antagonistic breed of modern politics that is, more than anything else, simply depressing. Turning Point claims to be the future of conservative America. If this is truly the case, we all have good reason to fear for the country’s future.  

Contact Harrison Hohman at hhohman ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Giving religion new meaning in a changed world https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/11/giving-religion-new-meaning-in-a-changed-world/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/11/giving-religion-new-meaning-in-a-changed-world/#respond Fri, 11 May 2018 12:00:53 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1140885 Harrison Hohman discusses how we should view the Catholic Church in a world where realities sometimes contradict doctrine, and the Church's moral authority has been on the wane.

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With his papacy now entering its fifth year, Pope Francis and the church he leads face more challenges and opposition than ever before. Despite the near-universal optimism that characterized the beginning of his tenure, the pope’s recent years have been defined by turmoil wrought internally upon the Catholic church. Lambasted by the clergy’s more conservative wing for his attempts at liberalization and frowned upon by the left for not liberalizing quite enough, Papa Francesco has found himself at the crux of a fight over the very survival of the church itself.

Since his ascension to the role of pope in 2013, Francis has made his priorities clear. The denouncing of unabashed capitalism, treatment of immigrants and the impoverished with respect rather than revulsion, and the movement to fully re-embrace those who have divorced or practiced non-hetero relationships have all been linchpins in his fight to modernize the world’s perception of Catholicism. Predictably, these goals, and the astounding fervor with which Francis has pursued them, have made him more than his fair share of enemies within the Vatican.

The pope’s ideological foes contend that the church should set the moral agenda for the world, rather than vice-versa. In their opinion, by compromising the long-held tradition and rigorous mandates that have so defined the church’s past, its entire foundation of legitimacy will collapse, leaving behind a fragmented and lawless body. Some of this contingent, led by American Cardinal Raymond Burke, have even gone so far as to claim that the stances of the new pope may constitute outright heresy, which would be grounds for excommunicating Francis from the very institution he claims divine authority over.

The fight over Francis, however, is indicative of a much larger conflict at play. It’s a struggle that strikes at the very heart of organized religion and its place in the modern world, and whichever side comes out on top will have already set in motion the fate of Christianity’s future.

In 2018, the church finds itself strangled by a web of oftentimes contradictory decrees, edicts and rulings 2000 years in the making. Unable to move on from its tumultuous past and unwilling to progress towards the future, Catholicism has profoundly suffered from rising indifference towards what it has to offer. Francis has attempted to combat this reality by bypassing many of the traditions of the past in favor of basing his personal ideology in the most basic of the bible’s offerings: “Who am I to judge,” “The meek shall inherit the earth,” “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” The key to these messages lies in their simplicity and universality — regardless of where you lie on the spectrum of piety, these are all notions that any reasonable person can get behind.

A millennium’s worth of corruption and spite have diluted the importance of these simple ideas within the church itself, thus eliciting both Francis’ efforts at simplification and an equal and opposite wave of backlash from Vatican conservatives. This backlash has been a coordinated effort to drag the church back towards the medieval attitudes its image is already so tied to. These desperate grasps at regression, however, are a moral and practical catastrophe of the highest order for a 21st century organization that claims to invoke an enlightened authority.

Famed playwright and activist George Bernard Shaw once said that “the problem with Christianity is that it’s never been tried.” This was not an indictment of the church’s level of effort but rather of its boldfaced hypocrisy and inability to mirror the same qualities it attempts to espouse. In order to sustain its long-term viability in our ever-changing world, the church must return to its earliest roots — not the ones planted at the Vatican or throughout the centuries-long calcification of its byzantine hierarchy but rather those hinted at in those most basic bible teachings. It wasn’t Jesus himself after all who called for the crusades, inquisitions and outdated cultural norms that have come to define the church’s public image but rather his followers, whose interpretation and application of the faith have created an institution comically ill-suited for the rigors of 21st century existence.

It’s somewhat ironic that in these times so full of political polarization, cultural bewilderment and the general sense that all is not well, the church as a force for good has largely been absent. Now more than ever it would seem, there is a vacuum of major institutions whose goals are inherently for a better world. But just as mistrust in the intentions of our governments and major corporations has reached unprecedented levels, the church’s internal conflict has undermined its supposed moral high ground.

Jesus’ vision for the Catholic church presumably didn’t involve the rote denial of a massive child-abuse scandal, institutionalized bigotry against entire swaths of people and a truly astounding number of abhorrent headlines coming out of the Vatican. But nonetheless, this is the very past that the conservative wing of the church has attempted to cling onto with such desperation. It’s absolutely laughable that anyone, much less the very hierarchy of the institution in question, would attempt to justify and carry on with such behavior, but these are the very forces that Francis finds himself up against.

Rather than investing all of its political and moral capital into such obviously lost causes, the church would do well to embrace the message of Francis, no matter the costs: Care for the poor, take a stand for the marginalized and serve as a legitimate moral lighthouse for a world that is so clearly lacking one. In doing so, Catholicism may actually come to find that it still does have a place in modern life — perhaps not in the form of the absolute authority it held in the past but rather as a more pragmatic force — one that could tangibly influence national policy, established norms and human behavior, all for the better.

Catholicism sits at a crossroads. One path holds the re-entrenching of accepted doctrine and the continued hemorrhaging of churchgoers and common interest. The other road, and the one Pope Francis seeks to take, is a much more uncertain one. It does not guarantee or even try to claim that the pews will suddenly be full again or the world will re-embrace religion en masse. It does, however, promise a reinvigorated faith, one that is not based in the institutionalized absurdity or shallow pontificating of the past but in simple, universal truths. These truths are ideas that can be agreed upon by everybody, religious or otherwise, and that are directly applicable to all the greatest challenges of the 21st century. Pope Francis has thrown his full force behind fighting climate change, wealth inequality and hatred of all kinds, and it’s lessons like these that could make the church relevant once more, if only it could wholeheartedly embrace these stances.

Regardless of your personal beliefs, a Catholic church based in genuine morality is an undeniably good thing. No amount of theological squabbling or appeals towards the past are ever going to aid the church as an institution in its fight to see the world become a better place. Francis however, and the values he so desperately clings to, could be the key to restoring the church’s status as a moral authority at a time when the world has such an acute shortage of positive institutional influence.

Contact Harrison Hohman at hhohman ‘at’ stanford.edu

 

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The rise of reggaeton https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/27/the-rise-of-reggaeton/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/27/the-rise-of-reggaeton/#respond Fri, 27 Apr 2018 12:18:35 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1140139 Harrison Hohman discusses the rise of reggaeton as a genre in the US, and how it signifies a shift in how the country consumes music and what music is.

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“Mi música no discrimina a nadie así que vamos a romper, Toda mi gente se mueve.” In the opening lines of J Balvin’s reggaetón hit Mi Gente, the Colombian superstar makes his listeners a few promises. For one, this song is gonna be for everyone — Latino, gringo or otherwise. And, even more importantly, this music and everyone who moves to it are going to change everything.    

Late last year, Mi Gente shot up the Billboard charts in both the Spanish speaking world and, somewhat more surprisingly, here in the United States. From Madrid to Mountain View, its thumping bass and infectious rhythm received countless hours of playtime on mainstream FM radio and made innumerable appearances at bars, nightclubs and parties. Mi Gente, however, was far from alone. Its success was largely indicative of a new wave of foreign-inspired and produced music, the likes of which hadn’t been seen stateside since the famed ‘British Invasion’ of the 1960s. But unlike the English-language crooning of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones that so characterized that era, this particular ‘invasion’ has been led by a vanguard of Spanish-speaking acts, a phenomenon that speaks volumes about where American music — and America itself — is heading in the years to come.

Reggaetón is itself a term whose exact definition and ownership are somewhat nebulous and even controversial. Broadly speaking, it refers to a genre of Spanish-language dance music that’s “characterized by a fusion of Latin rhythms, dancehall, and hip-hop or rap.” Although Reggaeton’s earliest roots took hold in Panama in the 1970s, it remained something of a niche sound until it began gaining traction in Puerto Rico and Colombia in the 90s. The genre’s first forays into American markets were largely in the form of one-off singles and other guest verses (think Gasolina or, even further back, the Macarena), but these were always more of a novelty than a truly sustainable movement — a quick change of pace to inject life into a dance floor rather than a tangible shift in American preferences.

In the early 2010s, the rise of streaming and the movement towards digital modes of consumption like Spotify and Pandora meant that for the first time, large swaths of America had instant access to reggaetón records, and it was this change that gave the genre its initial bout of sustained exposure in America. Domestic consumers could now find songs from San Juan or Medellín interspersed with their algorithm-curated zumba playlists, party mixes and top-40 charts. This allowed now-renowned artists like Ozuna, Maluma, Nicky Jam and the aforementioned J Balvin to enter the nation’s collective music consciousness.

Then, in 2017, one song forever blew up whatever prior divide had existed between reggaetón and U.S. mainstream music. Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s Despacito and its subsequent remix with Justin Bieber achieved a level of ubiquity unprecedented in the history of American music, reggaetón or otherwise. It spent 16 weeks on top of the U.S. billboard charts (tying the all-time record for longest duration at number one), became the number one song in 47 separate countries and became the first video on YouTube to hit three (and then four and five) billion views.

Despacito was certainly a colossal event in its own right, but even beyond that success, its true lasting impact was to completely open the floodgates for subsequent songs and artists from Latin America in a way that has given them unprecedented exposure in the United States’ musical landscape. Since that release, numerous other hits like Mi Gente, Chantaje and Me Rehuso have found widespread success with American audiences. Anecdotally speaking, it’s no longer out of the ordinary or at all unusual to hear entire medleys of Latin songs in settings previously reserved for the standard fare of hip-hop, pop and electronic music.

Many will argue that the genre has been propelled to such heights on the backs of America’s Latino population, and it would be foolish to deny this outright. After all, there are some 57 million Hispanics in the United States, and their spending power is expected to exceed $1.8 trillion by 2021. Advertisers and influencers clearly have substantial motivation to tap into these markets, and in doing so, they’ve clearly helped propel reggaetón into the public eye. But with that being said, a sizable portion of Latin music listeners are indeed the very gringos who took so long to adapt to non-English music.  

Why then did we collectively choose, en masse, to embrace this new trend with such open arms? Well for one, reggaetón is a genre perfectly-designed for 21st century consumers. Long before their American counterparts picked up the same trend, Latin artists re-pioneered the idea that music could be released via a constant stream of singles rather than through more cohesive (albeit unwieldy) albums. Reggaetón was also a forerunner in the “features craze” that has come to dominate most hip-hop and pop releases. Major artists have found that by conceding a verse or two to other stars or up-and-comers, they can imbue their music with newfound vitality while simultaneously widening their shared listener-base, and no genre has been as prolific in this sense as that of our Latin neighbors. The inherently modern nature of the genre is also furthered by the fact that, like the trap and EDM music that constituted the last two major waves of pop, reggaetón is dependent less upon lyrical dexterity and complex productions and more on soaring refrains and catchy melodies. The overall impression is one of a genre whose rise, perhaps not coincidentally, was timed to perfection.

The consequences of reggaeton’s arrival extend far beyond recording studios and dance floors. This is a movement that asks questions and challenges many of the basic notions we’ve previously held regarding music in America. For one — what even is American music? After all, reggaetón largely came to be on the island of Puerto Rico, which is itself a part of America. But can a genre really be an American one when half its participants are foreign, and it’s almost entirely performed outside the bounds of the English language? Would that in fact make it more American instead of less? Like any good mental exercise, these are questions that lack simplistic answers, but regardless of your take on the genre, it’s not a stretch to say that reggaetón looks like it’s here to stay.  

At the time of writing, eight of the top 10 and 17 of the top 22 songs on the U.S. billboard youtube charts are by Latin artists. Cardi B’s I like It (anchored by a Latin sample and appearances from reggaetón superstars J Balvin and Bad Bunny) appears to be an early front-runner for song of the summer. Everywhere, it seems, Latin beats are thumping and, as J Balvin promised, people are moving to them. Clearly, reggaetón has arrived.   

Contact Harrison Hohman at hhohman ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Catalonia, Brexit and media hypocrisy https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/12/catalonia-brexit-and-media-hypocrisy/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/12/catalonia-brexit-and-media-hypocrisy/#respond Thu, 12 Apr 2018 12:00:26 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1139257 Harrison Hohman discusses the similarities that exist between Catalonia's independence referendums and Brexit which the media chooses to ignore.

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In the wake of the British right’s successful attempt to remove itself from the European Union, much of the democratic world order skewered the supporters of the campaign for their supposed shortsightedness and undermining of progressive ideals. Now whether or not you think said political persecution was misplaced depends on your personal opinions regarding self-determination and international economics, but what is much less debatable is the massive gulf between how the leaders of said Brexit movement have been treated compared to their ideological compatriots in Catalonia. Now, on the face of it, these two campaigns may seem somewhat different in scope. After all, Brexit was an attempt at destabilizing European order while the Catalonia issue is one of national independence. However, below the surface level, many of the underlying motivations and arguments are more similar than one may think.

Just last week, widespread protests in Barcelona, London and Berlin called for the release of Carlos Puigdemont, the President of Catalonia and de-facto leader of the independencia movement. This is the same Puigdemont who fled to Brussels following October’s independence referendum and who was later detained in Germany where he is currently held. The overall feeling towards Puigdemont among the more left-leaning segments of European (and much of the broader world’s) political society seems to be largely one of solidarity and support. This stands in stark contrast to the critical fortunes of Brexit leaders such as Teresa May and Boris Johnson, who have been crucified by liberal-leaning media outlets for their roles in the independence efforts. The handling of the two issues by the media and the movements’ sympathizers has revealed a certain fundamental level of hypocrisy.

At the end of the day, the true reasons for the Catalan independence movement are economic ones. Puigdemont and his allies are well aware of the fact that by separating from Spain, Catalonia could create its own sovereign tax system. This would mean that rather than sending a percentage of their tax dollars to Madrid (and then on to the more impoverished regions of Spain), Catalonia would get to keep 100 percent of their own tax revenue. As things currently stand, Catalans pay a relatively large portion of the nation’s taxes (since they are also responsible for a relatively large portion of the nation’s wealth). Broadly speaking, these taxes are used to prop up the poorer regions of Spain, such as Extremadura and Andalucía, much as taxes to the EU (which largely come from more developed member states including Germany, France and, yes, the United Kingdom) are used to support poorer members from Eastern and Southern Europe. To further the comparison, it is widely accepted that if Catalonia were to become independent, it would lose its status as an EU member, (as the EU doesn’t want to set a precedent for other potential breakaway states that would lead to further destabilization) essentially creating a “cataloniexit”–esque situation.

Although the similarities between the two campaigns are manifold, the media’s treatment of the two cases has been startlingly divergent. The base reasons for this are that the leaders of the Brexit campaign were up front about their motivations for such a change. Those from Catalonia have not been so transparent. The Catalans knew that to frame the campaign in purely economic terms would be to guarantee its critical demise, so they chose to wrap said concerns in a guise of newfound nationalism and rewritten history. For example, the Catalans have stated that this is a campaign to regain their independence, but even a cursory glance at a Spanish history book will reveal that Catalonia itself has never been an independent state and that the ‘famously autonomous’ Barcelona has been a part of Aragon (which went on to merge with Castile, forming the modern Spanish state) since the 15th century.

Puigdemont & friends similarly state that the Catalan language alone is grounds for autonomy, but this oversimplification fails to acknowledge the fact that Galicia, Andalucía, the Basque country and Valencia all have their own unique dialects and versions of the Spanish language and implies that these regions are less deserving of autonomy. Further, polls indicate that less than 36 percent of Catalans actually use Catalan as their first language (compared to the 51 percent of Catalans who recognize Spanish as their main tongue). These appeals to reclaim a recently invented past have largely served to mask the politicians’ true motivations for independence. Historically speaking, money and power have always been underlying factors in such decisions, and Catalonia is not an exception.

Whether or not Catalan independence and Brexit should be realized is a question that could never be comprehensively addressed in a college newspaper column. However, to frame the two campaigns in such diverging terms is misleading and intellectually dishonest. Belligerent levels of ignorance are required to truly believe that the issue of Catalan independence is not an economic one. However, due to their framing of the conflict as one of history and the oppression of culture, Puigdemont and the rest of the Catalan leadership have managed to put themselves in the good graces of much of the progressive world, despite the clear similarities between themselves and their counterparts from the ‘vote leave’ campaign. It is indicative of a movement whose general appeals and public perception have been as far skewed from reality as those of any other western political crisis in recent memory.

Contact Harrison Hohman at hhohman ‘at’ stanford.edu

 

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Amazon and corporate responsibility https://stanforddaily.com/2018/03/13/amazon-and-corporate-responsibility/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/03/13/amazon-and-corporate-responsibility/#respond Tue, 13 Mar 2018 12:00:04 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1138169 Harrison Hohman reflects on Amazon's decent reputation and measures to pay as little tax as legally allowable.

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Throughout its rise to prominence, Amazon has quietly presided over one of the most successful cases of brand management of any company in American history. Despite a litany of red flags, including the appalling treatment of its workers, ever-growing privacy invasions and a general quest to achieve dominance over every facet of American life, our collective attitude towards the company has remained largely one of ambivalence.

This is not exactly a coincidence. Amazon’s entire business model is one of image preservation. Everything from the cheeky smile on their corporate logo to its bright-colored, playful packaging invites one to see the bright side of this industrial giant. Even the very process of ordering a package from their ever-growing store (three clicks, two days and it’s at your doorstep!) encourages us to ignore the inner workings and internal mechanisms of its sales process, a level of opaqueness traditional retail simply isn’t afforded.

One of the greatest successes for Amazon in its quest to maintain such a pristine public image is the level of taxes that it pays in the United States, which is to say, none. In 2017, Amazon paid no U.S. income tax. None. Amazon, the corporate giant, trustbuster wet dream and unabashedly Machiavellian behemoth of 21st century capitalism paid no U.S. taxes last year. There’s something seriously wrong with that! Could you imagine the political and societal backlash that would occur if, say, an oil company or big bank paid no money to the United States government for the last 12 months? Its nothing short of unfathomable.

In 2017, Amazon took home some $5.6 billion in profits and a further $789 million from the Republican tax reforms. It also had $178 billion in total sales and its CEO Jeff Bezos become the first human in history to have a net worth in excess of $100 billion. The point is, they made a lot of money. And yet, thanks to a small army of corporate lawyers, and a byzantine, if loophole-ridden US tax code, none of that money made it back to the American people.

Over the past five years, Amazon did pay an effective corporate tax rate of 11.4 percent, a shockingly low rate in its own right (compared to the on-paper standard of 35 percent) but a rate at the very least. However, in the 2017 fiscal year, Amazon leveraged a complex series of deferments and tax credits that made the company, in one economist’s words, “Not excessively burdened by the workings of the US tax system.” Some of these manipulations included the aforementioned $789 million windfall from the new tax plan and an additional $980 million from the exercising of tax-deductible stock options, but without a fuller picture of their tax payments and returns (which aren’t released in SEC filings or other public documents), we don’t truly know what steps they took.

Compounding those domestic concerns is the fact that Amazon’s headquarters is located in Luxembourg, a landlocked European nation famed for its tax haven status. But even by Luxembourg’s generous taxing standards, Amazon pays only a pittance, as evidenced by the fact that the European Union is currently suing Luxembourg, claiming it gave illegal tax benefits to the internet giant. Even more suspect is the fact that only three-tenths of one(!) percentage point of its employees are actually located in Luxembourg. Offshoring money and “headquarters” location is by no means a new concept, but the audacity required by Amazon, one of America’s most visible and image-friendly companies, to leverage these loopholes to the extent they have is perverse to an extreme degree.

Amazon’s tax dodging hasn’t stopped there however. Over the course of the last year, a constant source of news has been the “inter-city hunger games” taking place for the right to serve as the “HQ2” (A somewhat baffling title given that Seattle, and not Luxembourg is the presumed “HQ1”) for the company. Across America, cities from Denver to Miami have been falling over one another to offer billions more in tax breaks to Amazon, on the basis of the supposed jobs and prosperity such a move could bring, despite past studies suggesting that this logic is an utter fallacy. Amazon has been largely successful in portraying this as a sweepstakes to be won rather than a brutal quest to pit cities against one another in a twisted game of one-upmanship. Once again, Amazon’s branding has won the day.

All of this isn’t to say that there are no solutions to these problems. Some have suggested outlawing such public subsidies for private companies in order to prevent municipalities and states from offering themselves up as sacrifice to the benefit of major corporations. Others simply want to simplify the tax code, in order to close many of the loopholes that Amazon has manipulated to such an incredible extent. Perhaps the greatest large-scale change that we could embrace, however, is a collective reckoning of just what it is that Amazon is doing. Few companies in this country have a greater presence in day-today life (a presence whose rate of increase is so astonishing that it’s not even worth attempting to dive into here), and yet the vast majority of this country remains oblivious to the harm that Amazon causes and the negligible that price they pay for it. It’s no longer a niche opinion to believe that Amazon is more evil than the oil companies and big banks that we tend to demonize, but still too few are actually calling for any concrete actions to be taken against them.

For now however, Amazon marches on. Alexa continues to spy on our conversations and prime puts your neighborhood retailers out of business, while Jeff Bezos and his C-suite dehumanize their workforce to charge up the Forbes 500 list. And yet, despite all of those presumed causes for concern, the world mostly turns the other way. The very least we can do is make sure they pay their taxes.

 

Contact Harrison at hhohman ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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The fatal flaw of ‘white privilege’ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/02/15/the-fatal-flaw-of-white-privilege/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/02/15/the-fatal-flaw-of-white-privilege/#respond Thu, 15 Feb 2018 13:00:37 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1136811 Some of the defining pillars of the modern college experience–its culture, politics and perception by the general public included–have all undergone seismic changes in recent years. American awareness of the “ism’s” (racism, sexism, homo/transphobia, etc.) and the rise of identity politics to accompany them have fundamentally altered the way that students both at Stanford and […]

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Some of the defining pillars of the modern college experience–its culture, politics and perception by the general public included–have all undergone seismic changes in recent years. American awareness of the “ism’s” (racism, sexism, homo/transphobia, etc.) and the rise of identity politics to accompany them have fundamentally altered the way that students both at Stanford and other institutions around the country experience their time on campus. The 2016 election and its subsequent splintering of many of the traditional bastions of American life have proven that this isn’t a short term fad, but rather a lasting change to the fabric of our society.

As we have come to collectively question many of the truths we once held, both sides of the aisle have sought refuge in the creation of a number of weaponized ideologies intended to explain these unprecedented levels of societal uncertainty. Many of these sociological concepts draw upon vaguely constructed meta-trends of oppression. There are many one can potentially cite—the patriarchy, the ‘liberal agenda’ and intersectionality all come to mind— but regardless of the political ideology they serve as a proxy for, these contrived axioms have poisoned the figurative well of American politics and contributed in a very real way to the polarization that has brought productive discourse in this country to a standstill.

In my personal (and undeniably biased) opinion, the most egregious of these empty phrases is that of ‘white privilege.’ Leftists believe that by acknowledging their unearned benefits in life, light-skinned people can develop a more empathetic and socially conscious view towards racial relations and the fabric of modern America. The problem with the idea of white privilege, however, isn’t the notion that Caucasians have advantages over their fellow Americans. It’s instead the blunt wielding of this idea as an all-utility tool to explain the evils of the world and all the problems that minorities face. This ubiquity and relentless application have converted it from a potential teaching tool into a catalyst for little more than polarization.

Because white privilege does not have one specific lens through which it is intended to be viewed, its proponents tend to apply it to every single situation that they can, regardless of the validity of said usage. This constant ramming of “white privilege” down the throats of the American public dilutes the message’s importance for those who believe in its merits and bewilders any skeptics to the point of utter alienation from the entire subject of identity politics. This shaming—of whites, republicans, the wealthy or really anyone who doesn’t wholeheartedly agree with leftist ideology—is exactly the type of cultural bewilderment that has led to so much conservative backlash. This is the same backlash that originally manifested itself in the form of the Tea Party and anti-Obama sentiment, but that quickly morphed into the far more sinister realities of the alt-right and the election of Donald Trump. In essence, the usage of the term white privilege has swollen the very evils it originally sought to combat. Its general air of vagueness only amplifies the confusion and frustration that conservatives feel towards racial politics and the left at large.

All of this uncertainty only encourages the idea that our lives are governed by invisible forces that we are powerless to stop–not exactly a positive development for a generation that claims to seek so much change. True “change,” however, will require the exchange of hard data and concrete information, concepts that are once again betrayed by the usage of white privilege and similarly incomplete explanations for the toughest questions that our society faces today. Unfortunately, political discussion is made virtually impossible when every debate can become stymied at the single mention of “check your privilege.” It is political and cultural suicide to deny the existence of white privilege and the like, and yet the vague nature of its existence means that acknowledging it doesn’t actually help us solve the issues that it seeks to address. This idea is, in my own opinion, the greatest flaw of all these terms–white privilege, the patriarchy and intersectionality included. We cannot take a proactive attitude towards the solving of individual issues and examples of inequality and bigotry when these hollow phrases are used as catch-all scapegoats to explain every hardship that the self-deemed oppressed may face. Nobody in their right mind can claim that unearned benefits don’t inherently exist for certain groups. And yet, building a throne of victimhood out of empty ideas and blanket accusations does absolutely nothing for those who are truly disadvantaged. Perhaps instead of ending our more socially conscientious tweets with #whiteprivilege, we should consider including ideas like #doawaywithsfzoninglaws or #nomorevoteridrestrictions. Of course these may not be as convenient for easy consumption, but their specificity and willingness to tackle actual issues means that their potential for catalyzing change is so much greater.   

Politics are concrete and have very real and tangible effects on people’s lives. They therefore must be discussed in concrete terms. If we want to instigate real change, then we must focus on the precise, specific and oftentimes uncomfortable realities of the conversation–not the inherently reactionary and counterproductive screaming of white privilege this, liberal agenda that or whatever other empty phrases enter the modern lexicon. Despite its best intentions and supposedly enlightened design, the application of the phrase white privilege–and all that goes along with it—defeats the very purpose of the phrase itself.

 

Contact Harrison Hohman at hhohman ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Re-examining Drake’s legacy https://stanforddaily.com/2018/02/01/re-examining-drakes-legacy/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/02/01/re-examining-drakes-legacy/#respond Thu, 01 Feb 2018 13:00:06 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1135911 A brief Instagram post last week heralded the release of Scary Hours, a duet of tracks from hip hop superstar Drake, titled “God’s Plan” and “Diplomatic Immunity.” The songs were always bound to get millions and millions of plays regardless of their quality – such is the commercial and critical stature of the Canadian rapper. […]

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A brief Instagram post last week heralded the release of Scary Hours, a duet of tracks from hip hop superstar Drake, titled “God’s Plan” and “Diplomatic Immunity.” The songs were always bound to get millions and millions of plays regardless of their quality – such is the commercial and critical stature of the Canadian rapper. Rather than simply serving as filler until his next album however, the tracks have been met with nearly universal praise from musical pundits and casual listeners alike. “God’s Plan” immediately broke the Spotify record for most plays in a single day (4.3 million for those of you wondering) and assured that that catchy drop – I only love my bed and my momma I’m sorry – will boom through car stereos and fraternity parties alike for the foreseeable future.  

The immediate ascendency of these songs to the top of the charts was somewhat unsurprising. But nonetheless, the casualness with which the two new tracks slid into Drake’s catalogue of smash-successes goes to show just how much we take for granted the Canadian’s ability to consistently redefine both himself and the very heights musical artists can reach.

In modern hip-hop, Drake’s run of success is unprecedented. Since 2010’s “Thank Me Later,” Drizzy has managed to make seven albums eight years, all of which received widespread critical and commercial acclaim (with the possible sole exception of 2016’s “Views” which, personal opinions aside, still became the most streamed album of all time). It’s truly quite difficult to express how incredible of a feat this really is. There is not a single other living artist who has produced so much music at such a high level for so long. None of his contemporaries have come close. Kanye West has released only two albums in the last eight years, Kendrick Lamar has (despite more critical success) still not managed to appeal to such a broad swath of the general public, and Lil Uzi Vert, Lil Pump, Lil Yachty and the rest of the Soundcloud brigade only need to prove that they can stretch their meme-ability out for eight more years (good luck ;)) before they can claim the same threshold of success.

Hip-hop is not exactly a static entity and so to dominate the charts for so long would inherently necessitate an incredible amount of stylistic limbo. Drake’s chameleon-like ability to rap, sing, act and sell himself allows him to craft different personas uniquely tailored to appeal to just about every sector of the listening public. Early tracks like “Find your Love” and “Best I Ever Had” introduced us to the braggadocious Drake – the maker of raucous club bangers oozing with arrogance and swagger. 2011’s Take Care showed us the Canadian’s vulnerable side, mixing wavy R&B beats with Drake’s surprisingly adept vocal range to create debatably his best ever album. A consistent flow of radio-ready singles (“Hotline Bling,” “Hold on We’re Going Home,” Know Yourself,” etc.) cemented his wide-ranging pop music appeal, and more hard-hitting numbers like Meek-Mill diss track “Back to Back” even gave him some credibility amongst the more staunch defenders of rap music.

Although this ability to wear many hats has made Drake the most commercially successful artist of his generation, it has somewhat conversely undermined his standing within many of these specific sub-sectors of urban music. After all, this is a guy who has managed to include lines like both, “I pop bottles because I bottle my emotions” and, “F*ck n*ggas gon’ be f*ck n*ggas/That’s why we never give a f*ck when a f*ck n*gga switched up,” in the same body of work. This ability to play multiple parts – the hard hitting gangster rapper, sensual R&B hit-maker, international pop star and everything in between – is Drake’s most important asset but also his biggest limitation. Few, if any, fans of rap would seriously claim that Drake is the best artist alive and fewer still would call him the greatest of all time, despite the commercial success that has outpaced perhaps every other artist in the genre’s history. The widely held view of Drake is one of love, but not absolute respect.

Some even go so far as to argue that Drake isn’t a rapper but something more akin to a corporate shill, capable of moving records and selling brands but not of truly dedicating himself to any one facet of his own craft.

The problem with this line of thinking is that it attempts to portray Drake as a pretender – a guy who can recycle other’s styles and create hits for the masses but not truly innovate as the all time greats are expected to do. I personally however would argue that Drake’s success in this field – borrowing, sampling, layering and experimenting – is exactly what sets him apart from his peers. Drake doesn’t have the the pure rapping skill of Kendrick, the production genius of Kanye, the vocal range of The Weeknd or the raw energy of Travis Scott. But even despite that lack of a single defining trait (an automatic death sentence for most musical careers) Drake has managed to consistently redefine the very direction of hip-hop culture and appeal to a broader audience than anyone before him. To do this at all is an incredible balancing act, but to do it for seven consecutive albums is nothing short of astonishing.

Those seven albums and the endless stream of singles and features in between them clearly haven’t saturated the public’s desire for more Drake. Even today, eight years on from his coming-out party, the musical world still comes to a halt for anything from him – much as it did last week for “Scary Hours.” That EP featured only two songs, but their predictable likability and immediate success were more than sufficient as a reminder of Drake’s brilliance. It’s a brilliance that must be viewed over the long term to be fully appreciated and one that we may never see again once Drake does eventually decide to stop making music. Until that day however, we can still acknowledge Drake for what he is – a championing pioneer of hip-hop culture and an artist who has succeeded where no other has before.

 

Contact Harrison Hohman at hhohman ‘at’ stanford.edu

 

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The political celebrity class https://stanforddaily.com/2018/01/18/the-political-celebrity-class/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/01/18/the-political-celebrity-class/#respond Thu, 18 Jan 2018 11:00:21 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1135219 Political talk at the dinner table is a staple of the holiday season. For me personally, this past break was in large part no different, but one refrain seemed to stand out above the rest, not out of novelty but rather due to sheer repetition. “Well today, Rush said (insert predictable conservative stance on environmental […]

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Political talk at the dinner table is a staple of the holiday season. For me personally, this past break was in large part no different, but one refrain seemed to stand out above the rest, not out of novelty but rather due to sheer repetition.

“Well today, Rush said (insert predictable conservative stance on environmental politics here) and then Rush said maybe even (insert slightly less predictable Hillary conspiracy to retake the White House here).” Rush, Rush, Rush.

“Rush” is, of course, long-time conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh. Now say what you may about the name itself, but far more important to me is the tone with which it was used in this setting. People (at least in my own experience) talk about “Rush” in a sappy tone generally reserved for people with some notion of immediacy or familiarity. A visitor to our dining room table could be forgiven for thinking that “Rush” was a close friend or family member, rather than an obscenely wealthy and divisive media figurehead.

My family is not unique in this respect. Rush Limbaugh averages 14 million weekly listeners, good for the third most of any radio program behind only NPR’s “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered.” He has a net worth reported to be around $550 million and an empire of children’s books, t-shirts, coffee mugs and other paraphernalia all espousing the benefits of conservative politics. By all accounts, Limbaugh has built up a near-cult of personality that has managed to inflame and provoke a large swath of society — all while making him a millionaire many times over. The ramifications of this are devastating. With one single statement or claim, Limbaugh can change or formulate the opinions of millions.

Now on its own, having a large audience is no sin. The problem arises, however, when this audience becomes so mindlessly devoted to its supposed leader that he can change the very political fabric of America simply by appealing to that existing audience, regardless of the validity of those appeals. For what it’s worth, Politifact’s “Rush Limbaugh Scorecard” rates his statements at 5 percent mostly true, 13 percent half true, 26 percent mostly false, 29 percent false, and 26 percent “pants on fire.” Now, this is clearly an incomplete and possibly biased report, but nonetheless, its results are fairly easy to interpret. Mr. Limbaugh is, simply put, not the most reliable of news sources and certainly not a great journalistic torchbearer for his 14 million-plus weekly listeners.

Limbaugh is by no means alone or even new. All across the political spectrum, similar idols are worshipped and their stated opinions accepted as creed by millions. Cenk Uygur, Thom Hartmann, Alex Jones and even established political figures like Bernie Sanders have managed to create enormous followings largely based on a culture of mindless devotion rather than original or outside thought. The danger of all of this isn’t that these pundits have followings — it’s rather how willing these followers are to take everything they’re told as gospel.

One could argue that the fault for this phenomenon doesn’t rest with these content creators themselves. They are simply economic agents filling a role in a capitalistic society. Much more important in their rise than even their own beliefs are the millions who follow them with such reverence. In a world as complicated as that of our own in 2018, it’s all too easy to seek answers from figures who who exude confidence, certainty and commitment to a given viewpoint. The sheer volume of news and content thrown at us every day makes us all feel impossibly small in the grand scheme of things. We then naturally reach out and grasp for anybody who can seem to make sense of it all — as long as that anybody agrees with our personal politics, ideology or whatever other vehicle of self-fulfillment we might choose to embrace. These figures then have a habit of frequently reminding us that the mainstream is biased, the system is broken and that only they have the correct tools and information to fix it all, thus further reinforcing their audience’s aversion to other sources of information.

Man is an inherently fallible creature, and to claim otherwise is disingenuous in the most dangerous sense. The fault is partly in the hands of the media-industrial complex that helps to build the idea of these people up in the name of creating storyline, and partly in the hands of us, the people who contribute to this notion with our mindless reverence — done every day through our consumption and diffusion of different forms of media. Some of us are more guilty of this than others and no one (most certainly not myself) is entirely innocent, but a certain degree of critical thinking and a willingness to see our heroes for what they really are (people just like you and me) can go a long way towards creating a more realistic understanding and sense of empathy for these supposed role models.  

There is absolutely nothing wrong (quite the opposite, in fact) with listening to political pundits or other figures with massive followings. The key distinction to make, however, is that we must not view these people through the lens of perfection as we so often tend to do. People make mistakes. No one is right 100 percent of the time. And keeping those small truths in mind can help to restore some of the civility that we may have lost in this age when everything has been made political.

 

Contact Harrison Hohman at hhohman ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Affirmative action and Appalachia https://stanforddaily.com/2017/11/16/affirmative-action-and-appalachia/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/11/16/affirmative-action-and-appalachia/#respond Thu, 16 Nov 2017 11:00:47 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1133538 During the 2016 election, Appalachian America received unprecedented levels of press. The lion’s share of these stories related to the region’s collective malaise – a potent combination of job loss, drug use and outright poverty – and attempted to use these cultural ills as an explanation for the people’s rabid and widespread support of Donald […]

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During the 2016 election, Appalachian America received unprecedented levels of press. The lion’s share of these stories related to the region’s collective malaise – a potent combination of job loss, drug use and outright poverty – and attempted to use these cultural ills as an explanation for the people’s rabid and widespread support of Donald Trump. And although Trump has long since ascended to the Oval Office, the media’s attention gone with him, those same ills haven’t lessened in the slightest.

Across the newly deemed “opioid belt,” a region-wide sense of resignation has long since set in. The jobs are gone, the drugs have arrived, public interest has waned and opportunity – in the broadest sense of the word – continues to remain elusive.

The effects of this phenomenon, however, aren’t limited to the eastern mountains and are instead felt by the country at large. For evidence of that, look no further than our current Oval Office; put simply, Appalachia’s problems are America’s problems. Collectively, however, our nation’s response has been, to put it lightly, pathetic. We of course have nationwide systems of welfare and other scattered small charities and do-gooders, but more robust, widespread systems of social betterment uniquely designed for Appalachia are almost nonexistent. Some have blamed this collective lack of interest on the fact that Appalachians did widely vote for Trump, or on Appalachia’s general dearth of cultural clout. Regardless of our indifference, though, our fellow Americans continue to suffer.

There are, however, other potential opportunities to assuage the region’s problems. Perhaps the most prominent and feasible of these solutions is in fact something that has existed in our nation for decades but whose confines have long excluded Appalachian America. Just as we attempted to combat spiraling racial inequalities with affirmative action in the 1970s (bullshit), so too can we use that exact same tool to help stem the tide of grief and devastation that has enveloped this region.

Since its inception in the early 1970s, affirmative action has been wielded by college administrators, hiring teams and socially conscious people to promote equality of opportunity, increase wealth and create role models for groups that need them most – all notions that, I think we can all agree, Appalachia is in desperate need of.

The problem with this line of thinking, however, is that affirmative action has traditionally been wielded as more of a blunt, one-size-fits-all weapon than the more dexterous tool that it has the opportunity to become. The reality of this system is that it tends to view its constituents in quite literally, black and white (and Latino, Native American, Asian, etc.) terms. The result of this is that those who would seek to use affirmative action for good tend to view it through an ultra-simplistic lens that leaves little room for the subtleties and modern realities of a “post-race” America.

For example, on paper, a wealthy African-American student that comes from a good family, went to a good school and grew up in, say, Manhattan, is frequently viewed as being more in need of special consideration for college applications than, say, a student with identical academic credentials who comes from an opportunity wasteland in the opioid belt, with the caveat that this latter hypothetical student is white. Now, on its own, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. African-Americans have undeniably been systematically persecuted throughout the history of this country and fully deserve whatever advantages they can get. To call this fair, however, is something of a stretch. Because although that second student may have gone to worse schools, had less familiar support and been surrounded by a less development-oriented environment than his hypothetical peer, there are no systems consistently put in place that can account for this difference.

What I am implying – or rather, imploring – through all of these anecdotes and claims is that more robust systems of affirmative action absolutely should be put in place for people in Appalachia and similarly disadvantaged communities that don’t meet the traditional race-based requirements imposed by our existing notions of affirmative action. This will not be an easy thing to do. This will require something of a mental leap. We absolutely must expand our personal notions of what, or rather who, affirmative action can benefit. Race alone is no longer sufficient as an indicator of the challenges people face in their unique upbringings.

One issue in this plan harkens back to the original geographical limitation I set on this very piece: By constraining this idea to just Appalachian peoples, it was significantly easier to compress this idea into a single, digestible package. The simplicity of this premise, however, is most challenged by its potential for scalability. Because while the Appalachian people do suffer from a lack of opportunity and social protections, they are not alone in that regard. Dozens of American regions, subcultures and groups can rightfully claim to have been slighted by the tide of economic development and subsequent equality-building movements. They too, should, in theory, receive special consideration on school applications, job interviews and social opportunities. But then the question arises of, where to draw the line? How are we to say, for example, that someone from West Virginia has more of a claim to affirmative action than someone from, say, rural Idaho?

On a micro-scale, opportunity for social mobility is nearly impossible to quantifiably identify. The absolute unlikelihood of finding any way to truly flesh this out leaves college administrators, potential employers and equality-minded citizens in a difficult position. How are they to assure that all peoples, regardless of race, upbringing or otherwise, are being treated as fairly as possible? I would personally posit that the only way to achieve true equality in this regard would be a complete overhaul of what “affirmative action” truly means. This new definition would need to encompass the many and varied factors that predict success in a child’s life and be able to more accurately correct for them.

To be frank, this is something of a pipe dream. But nonetheless, if we are to truly stand for the idea of equality on modern society, we owe to it ourselves to look beyond the traditional boundaries of perceived privilege corresponding to race. Instituting a more holistic evaluation program for students from Appalachian America would be a good place to start, and given Stanford’s relative autonomy and self-proclaimed moral righteousness, there is perhaps no institution better positioned to help these people in their time of greatest need.

 

Contact Harrison Hohman at hhohman ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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The moral demise of the GOP https://stanforddaily.com/2017/10/27/the-moral-demise-of-the-gop/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/10/27/the-moral-demise-of-the-gop/#respond Fri, 27 Oct 2017 08:00:21 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1131944 I consider myself a conservative. This alone shouldn’t be cause for concern (although on this campus, I’m certain not everybody would agree with that sentiment). The label itself encompasses a wide variety of political viewpoints that range from “reasonably moderate” to “radically regressive.” And for the better part of the last 60 years, these widely […]

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I consider myself a conservative. This alone shouldn’t be cause for concern (although on this campus, I’m certain not everybody would agree with that sentiment). The label itself encompasses a wide variety of political viewpoints that range from “reasonably moderate” to “radically regressive.” And for the better part of the last 60 years, these widely varying ideologies and political factions have all banded together under the banner of the Republican Party.

I am also a registered Republican. Given recent history, one could be forgiven for considering officialized affiliation with the party to be, indeed, a cause for concern. As the Republican Party’s voter base has aged and money has come to play a preposterously large role in politics, distinct but intertwined forces have unintentionally stretched the party’s moral platform to its absolute edges and, in the process, eliminated any credibility that the GOP may have once held. The Republican Party is now more radical and less in touch with reality than it has ever been.

The reasons for this phenomenon are varied and complex. Nonetheless, a few chief perpetrators have played an outsized role in this decades-long moral erosion. One of the primary culprits for this was a collective failure in long term strategy and decision making.

Years ago, the Republican leadership chose to prioritize cultural battles as a central target for legislative efforts. As America has eased into the information era however, conservatives have failed on nearly every front. Gay marriage, abortion, drug laws, bathroom bills and more — the list goes on and on. It would be one thing to advocate for one side of these issues with dignity and to accept their eventual defeat with a certain amount of grace. What has actually played out, however, has been much more damaging — because rather than simply lose these individual battles, the Republicans’ drawn-out campaigns of denial have managed to alienate throngs of potential young voters. Frankly, any party whose leaders don’t accept gay marriage in 2017 simply has no long-term prospects in the modern political arena.

In its failed attempt to win the culture wars of the last decades, the party managed to spend nearly all of its political capital on an unwinnable (and in some cases, immoral) fight, at the expense of its actual political platform and tangible plans. This process has whittled the party’s voter base down to the type of people that the supposed bastion of liberal America would deign to call “deplorables.” By appealing to such an ideologically narrow slice of the American populace, the party is only ensuring that honest political discourse will continue its downward spiral.

Modern cultural changes alone weren’t solely responsible for the demise of the GOP. Another enormously detrimental feature of the conservative political landscape has been special interest spending. Once the party of the egalitarian, enlightened individual, the Republican Party’s moral foundation has been distorted beyond recognition via the influence of privately funded super-PACs.

It is a fact that the majority of political campaigns are won by the candidate who spends more money. And thus, if hypothetically, the NRA agreed to contribute $500,000 to a given political campaign, in exchange for favorable stances toward gun laws, it would far too easy to take the money and look the other way regardless of prior opinions of gun control or utter reasonability. Individual ambition outweighs moral conviction in all but the most resolute of people. The vast majority of senators and congressmen capitulate to the hard cash of these special interest groups, in the process compromising rationality and common sense.

In the modern political climate, doing so is an absolute necessity in order for a politician to maintain their own longevity. Perversely, elected officials are incentivized to follow the money in order to keep their own jobs. And although campaign finances is an issue that affects both sides of the aisle, time and time again the Republican Party has found itself especially susceptible to the temptations of K Street lobbyists.

For moderates, the effects of this phenomenon have been disastrous. Tax policy has come to be dominated by a relentless desire to shield the 1 percent from economic deterrences so much that it’s almost difficult to envision a time when the GOP wasn’t inherently tied to the idea of protecting the ultra-wealthy. Out-of-touch evangelicals have made the party almost unapproachable for young people, while the more unsavory groups of conservative society have convinced the left that every card-carrying party member is either uninformed or downright racist. Calling this an image problem is a laughable understatement. By making itself so unappealing to reasonable people, the GOP is assuredly sealing its own ruin.

I personally share fewer and fewer opinions with the Republican Party. This is not because the college experience has pushed me to the left but rather because my disgust with the party that is supposed to represent my interests has grown to the extent that I now see eye-to-eye with party leadership on an exceedingly small list of issues.

I support higher taxes on the ultra-wealthy. I think it would be, at the very least, sensible to have background checks on high-caliber firearms purchases. I don’t believe that the alt-right deserves a seat at the table of legitimate political thought. And yet, despite all of these opinions maintaining at least a vague aura of sensibility, the GOP has managed to squeeze out nearly all room for ideas like these.

What we are left with is a party that has no well-defined space for moderates. Consider this Senate primary in Alabama just last month. On one side of the contest was Republican A (supported by Steve Bannon), whose Wikipedia page opens with the line: “Moore has earned significant national attention and controversy over his strongly anti-homosexual, anti-Muslim, far-right views, his belief that Christianity should order public policy, and his past ties to neo-Confederates and white nationalist groups.” On the other: Republican B (supported by Donald Trump) who “was a leading voice in urging the president to leave the Paris Climate Accord” and gained nationwide recognition for failing to recognize the legalization of gay marriage. These are no silly anecdotes. Its characters are, ostensibly, the torchbearers of conservative America. Republican leadership now consists of editors of alt-right websites, egomaniacs and a soon-to-be-elected United States senator whose CV reads like a Richard Spencer to-do list. All of this would be almost be funny if it didn’t have such dangerous potential to affect our nation’s collective trajectory. The GOP has become a caricature of itself.

Gone are the days when morals and justice guided Republican thought. The resulting ideology is a mish-mash of outdated ideas, special interests and outright fallacies that are strangling the very lifeblood of conservative America. A party-wide implosion could in fact be the medicine that conservative America needs to take a step back and reexamine its values. Unfortunately however, that’s not happening any time soon. Voters are too entrenched and money still flows, so the Republican Party will forge onward, radicalizing itself further and further until it eventually capitulates under the weight of its own idiocy. In the meantime, an enormous swath of American conservatives will languish, feeling that they have few true representatives in Washington.

I frequently ask myself why I continue to maintain an official affiliation with the Republican Party. Any pride I may have once associated with this label has been replaced by a profound sense of shame, both for the party itself and the broad state of American politics. My final remaining excuse is that no viable alternatives exist. This particular vacuum might just be the most terrifying aspect of all. Indeed, little optimism remains for the American right.

 

Contact Harrison Hohman at hhohman ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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The reframing of the Kaepernick debate https://stanforddaily.com/2017/10/05/the-reframing-of-the-kaepernick-debate/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/10/05/the-reframing-of-the-kaepernick-debate/#comments Thu, 05 Oct 2017 16:00:45 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1130641 The world has been a pretty turbulent place these last few weeks. And yet, despite the disasters – both natural and manmade – that have characterized this past month, one story continues to receive an outsized amount of coverage. Indeed, NFL players kneeling for an anthem has received more attention in many circles than some […]

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The world has been a pretty turbulent place these last few weeks. And yet, despite the disasters – both natural and manmade – that have characterized this past month, one story continues to receive an outsized amount of coverage. Indeed, NFL players kneeling for an anthem has received more attention in many circles than some of the most shocking news events of recent memory.

By now, the details of this story are all too familiar. In 2016, Colin Kaepernick, an NFL quarterback, took a knee for the national anthem, in protest against the treatment of people of color in the United States. He subsequently lost his job, hundreds of others picked up where he left off and the story was reignited once more when our own president chose to interject with a series of controversial tweets denouncing the players’ actions.

The entire story has been something of a blight on our nation’s collective sense of pride. Commentators on both sides of the issue have managed to twist the story beyond its origins as a method of black protest into something much more sinister and much less consequential – a political football that’s been punted all the way to the “Twitter fingers” of our commander-in-chief. In doing so, the ever-opportunistic national media has managed to sully the story to such an extent that little of the conversation now centers around the point of the protest itself, having long ago splintered into one of patriotism, partisanship and our president.

One of the great ironies and unfortunate side effects of this splintering has been that the level of productive discourse regarding the topic has sunk to a virtual nadir. No longer do we discuss the place of black men in modern America. Instead, we decide to listen to Skip Bayless’ screeching about Kaepernick’s football abilities, MSNBC’s near constant moaning about Trump and Facebook pundits’ punctuation-free rants on those “ungr8ful flag burning terrorists.”

These latter subjects are, of course, easier to approach than the bigger questions at play. They offer easy, mindless, knee-jerk reactions that don’t require viewers to invest any level of critical thought into their own consumption. This perhaps shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, given that modern media is undeniably experiencing a shift towards those same hot takes and mindless instances of click-garnering. But even despite its predictability, there is still something depressing about just how pathetic coverage of these athlete-activists has become.

One of the most obvious effects of the absolute loss of journalistic integrity regarding this particular story has been the shifting of terms upon which its debate is staged. In the early days of the protest, when Kaepernick was still employed and his message bore a sense of edgy originality, the media and its pundits at least deigned to discuss the cause he was protesting. This was uncomfortable – especially given its placement in the realm of sports, whose relationship with politics has traditionally been awkward at best – but nonetheless, some degree of positive conversations still occurred. We actually managed to bring up those previously untouchable topics of police violence, racism and the place of politics in sports. But now, the conversation has changed. Rather than actually talking about the issues at the heart of the matter, the topic has flipped towards discussing “unity” and “patriotism” in their vaguest forms.

Almost without exception, those who seek to detract from these athlete-activists do so not on the basis of what’s being protested but rather on the method of that protest. I would certainly argue, however, that for the vast majority of these people, their true issue lies with those causes that Kaepernick and friends are trying to forward. I have yet to hear of a single person who believes Kaepernick’s protest is “anti-American” but who still supports Black Lives Matter, black liberation and the like.

This may seem fairly obvious, but it goes to show that this is not an issue of patriotism, no matter how hard some outlets may have tried to portray it as such. Those who decry Kaepernick and his fellow protestors are almost never in opposition to the action itself, but rather the cause for which they’re fighting, whether they choose to admit it or not. Now, whether you agree or disagree with Kaepernick’s stances on police brutality, Black Lives Matter, etc. is a different discussion entirely. However, to do so behind the veil of patriotism is both counterproductive and disingenuous. It does nothing other than limit productive discourse and further widen the chasm between two already polarized sides.

To set the record straight, this was, originally at least, not a discussion of patriotism. Colin Kaepernick didn’t get on one knee during the anthem to display his lack of reverence for the American flag or to involve a president who was not yet in office. He did so to protest the treatment of black people in America, but recent coverage has distorted this original vision beyond recognition.

Although there are exceptions, the majority of the NFL protesters have carried out their cause with a distinct air of dignity. As an isolated act, kneeling is one of the more theatrical displays of reverence in the arsenal of human interactions. And although it may not be a traditional response to the playing of the national anthem, it’s difficult to envision a more dignified manner of protesting the injustices that said flag and hymn may or may not represent, depending on your point of view. To therefore claim that the problem here is a lack of respect or patriotism is a simple lie, bought into by so many people that the media itself can propagate it as truth.

As it so often tends to do, the media’s heavy-handed coverage of the Kaepernick protest saga has only served to dilute the true ideas at play. In the name of provoking argument and pandering to the polarized, our nation’s collective journalism-industrial complex has managed to legitimize ridiculous ideas and effectively mask those that are genuinely worthy of discussion. In some senses, the Kaepernick saga has served as a microcosm of the general direction journalism has taken since the proliferation of social media (hint: It’s not a good one). Athlete-activists have a cause worth discussing, and regardless of whether or not you agree with it, we collectively owe them the small favor of confronting these ideas head-on.

 

Contact Harrison Hohman at hhohman ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Keeping political dissent productive https://stanforddaily.com/2017/05/25/keeping-political-dissent-productive/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/05/25/keeping-political-dissent-productive/#respond Thu, 25 May 2017 07:21:28 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1128034 For the record, I personally think that our president is very, very far from an ideal, or even competent leader. But to group him alongside a man who killed 30 million people is both naive and downright counterproductive.

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Since the humble beginnings of the modern activist movement some 50 years ago, White Plaza has long been the beating heart of our own campus’s protest scene. Last week, it once again served as an incubator for student dissent when an anonymous undergraduate used its main space to plaster a particular canvas. The piece featured four panels, which from right to left portrayed Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler and Donald Trump. The juxtaposition of our very own president lined up with some of history’s most repulsive villains certainly intended to provoke, and provoke it did. Passing visitors and students alike ogled at the piece before it was unceremoniously removed by University officials.

Normally, I would feel inclined to applaud the artist in question. Taking the time and resources to design, print and place any art in the name of a political cause is an admirable endeavor and one that merits praise. In many respects, art is a civil yet powerful form of political expression. But in this particular case, I can’t help but hesitate before commending the effort. To be frank, this type of hyper-polarizing art does far more damage than good and amounts to little more than a desperate attempt to aggravate and aggrandize.

Comparing Trump to Hitler and other former despots isn’t a terribly novel concept. Everyone from credible news outlets like MSNBC, to B-list celebrities (Spike Lee and Ashley Judd, among others) along with countless sit-at-home internet commentators have compared our president to a man who is quite probably the most despised figure in human history.  

But let’s get one thing clear. Regardless of whether this analogy is made on cable news or our own campus, it’s still an incorrect and outright dangerous one. For the record, I personally think that our president is very, very far from an ideal, or even competent leader. But to group him alongside a man who killed 30 million people is both naive and downright counterproductive.

Perhaps the most obvious flaw with this type of comparison is that it simply hasn’t worked. Since long before the election, the Hitler comparison has been a mainstay of howling liberal rhetoric. But despite the ubiquity and rather extreme nature of those statements, Trump won the election and remains our president. Continuing to compare the two only serves to further degrade legitimate discourse and widen the chasm between Trump’s supporters and the rest of the populace.

As Bill Ozanick, writer for The Hill, stated before the Nov. 8 election, “Comparing Trump to Hitler says a lot more about the accuser than the accused. If you truly want to convince someone else to not vote for Trump, while maintaining your intellectual honesty and ostensible acumen, you really need to stop comparing Trump to Hitler.”

A further issue with correlating Trump and Hitler is that doing so implies that Trump’s supporters are proverbial Nazis. Following the events of Nov. 8, a countless number of words and ink were spilled in the name of un-demonizing those who voted for our 45th president. Much better writers than myself can explain to you why voting for Trump doesn’t inherently make someone a bad person.

But by giving their leader the title of Führer, the White Plaza artist and many others are equating millions of good people with members of the Nazi party, a sad and telling indication of how wide our nation’s political and cultural gap has grown. Simply put, Trump supporters aren’t Nazis. They are, by and large, good people whose legislative priorities differ from our own. This exact point highlights just why modern political discourse has become so futile.  

The sect of the social justice crowd that propagates this type of nonsense is so desperate to “fight the good fight” and stand up for some greater cause that they go to downright drastic reaches to do so. Every politically conscientious student on this campus should want to engage in productive discussion. but the “art” in White Plaza was very far from that ideal. Rather than asking the important questions or pointing out the many and varied flaws with Trump’s policies, this type of expression only seeks to call names and scream insults. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but I can’t recall ever hearing a time when insulting someone changed their mind on anything.

College is a time to learn from mistakes. And while students may feel like they have accomplished something by comparing our nation’s leader to some of history’s worst figures, it’s my hope that they’ll come to realize more productive ways of political expression before they sully the real world with this mindless wailing. If we as Stanford students are to make any real change in the world, it won’t be done through mud-slinging or defamation. As members of one of the most influential and academically blessed institutions on earth, we have the resources and potential to make a true impact on the politics of our world. We simply have to find better vehicles of expression.

 

Contact Harrison Hohman at hhohman ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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In defense of gun rights https://stanforddaily.com/2017/05/12/in-defense-of-gun-rights/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/05/12/in-defense-of-gun-rights/#respond Fri, 12 May 2017 07:11:52 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1127382 But what bothers me even more about this debate than my personal inability to establish a position is the monolithic group thought that dominates this campus’ collective opinion – the widespread belief that there is only one right answer and that any degree of informed dissent is downright blasphemy.

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I’m willing to bet that most Stanford students think AR-15s should be illegal. Something about the school’s progressive ideals, Bay Area location and liberal leaning students makes it the perfect incubator for anti-gun sentiments. After all, it’s rare to hear anybody on this campus lobbying for guns in the same way that students do for, say, sanctuary status or fossil fuel divestment. More specifically, being in favor of semi-assault rifles (such as the oft-derided AR-15 and similar models) is almost a fringe opinion, limited only to the farthest-right reaches of our campus’ political spectrum.

For better or worse, the AR-15 debate is one that rarely rears its head until the occurrence of yet another terrible shooting. But because this issue’s prevalence is so dependent on news events and tragedies, its discourse tends to be dominated by the emotional appeals of liberals in the aftermath of tragedy and the equally obtuse reaction from the right. Little positive discussion ever occurs. But that is why now is perhaps a better time than ever to discuss the always-controversial question of AR-15 ownership.

For the record, I don’t know what I think about the issue. It’s an especially tough one in a time when few political conflicts have good resolutions. But what bothers me even more about this debate than my personal inability to establish a position is the monolithic group thought that dominates this campus’ collective opinion — the widespread belief that there is only one right answer and that any degree of informed dissent is downright blasphemy. I’d like to contradict that all-consuming pseudo-logic, even if I myself don’t fully buy into the pro-gun argument. There are valid reasons for the private ownership of the AR-15 and similar weapons. Even if the argument is not convincing enough as a whole, even the small acknowledgement that all pro-gun people aren’t just mindless hicks and NRA puppets would be a success, especially on this particular campus.

It’s somewhat understandable that Stanford’s more progressive students are so opposed to the ownership of this weapon. After all, many of them do hail from left-leaning coastal states where exposure to rifle ownership is a rare occurrence. Generally speaking, it’s rather difficult to appreciate something if you’ve never truly experienced it.

One of the most common questions in this discussion is, “What’s the point of owning such a gun?” On paper, it does seem a little silly for anyone to need a weapon with such destructive capabilities. But an oft-forgotten point is that the true pleasures of gun ownership aren’t exclusively pragmatic ones.

Holding a weapon in your own hands and using it in a controlled manner is a near-religious experience. No matter how many times you’ve held a gun, there is always an instant recognition of power when you pick one up again. It may just be a hunk of metal, but without fail, there is always a sort of unspeakable gravity to it. A gun radiates power. It is, in a word, thrilling. And the bigger the gun, the greater the thrill. Now, I only mention all this because the traditional argument against AR-15s is that the pleasure they provide their users doesn’t match their potential for harm. I would certainly posit that the vast majority of people who make this argument have never used or appreciated how incredible a semi-automatic rifle really is.

Pleasure alone is not reason enough to justify the ownership of a tool that’s perceived to be so dangerous. When we really look at the numbers though, that stigma may be a bit of a misconception. As of 2016, there are some 5 million privately owned AR-15s in the United States. In the year before that, the FBI reported that 248 people were killed by that weapon and similar models. This is clearly far too many, but all pleasures in life pose risks. Perhaps a comparable example is alcohol, another dangerous tool, but one for which society has collectively decided that the benefits outweigh the risks. Figures from the latest national survey indicate that 52.7 percent of Americans 12 and older (roughly 140 million people) claim to have consumed alcohol in the last month. The year of that report, alcohol-related homicides numbered at 88,000 people. Now, liquor and firearms are impossibly different entities but, in a blind test with these figures, anybody could tell you that alcohol poses the far greater societal risk. Nonetheless, politicians and activists don’t jump to demonize liquor in the same way that they do with weapons.  

Numbers aside, there are additionally some clear ethical problems with illegalizing this type of gun. For one, a total ban would disproportionately affect people from middle America, who have traditionally been the largest consumers of these firearms.

A blanket AR-15 prohibition would almost entirely affect innocent, responsible people. Take for example, my own cousin. He’s currently 20 years old, much like many of the students on this very campus. He hails from a 5,000-person town in a flyover state. He also owns an AR-15. On merit alone, I don’t think this makes him a bad person. Like the vast majority of gun owners, he practices great caution. He supports “extensive background checks and mental illness evaluations” and only even takes the weapon out “a couple of times a year.” But in a town where there’s so little to do, firearms provide a relatively safe outlet for time and energy that could easily be spent pursuing much more hazardous endeavors. If he wants to take a specialized gun out and use it on occasion, who are we to tell him he can’t? Stanford, and more broadly the coasts, have profited so much from economic globalization, largely at the expense of the same rural communities that my cousin and millions more come from. Taking away one of their remaining pleasures is no more than rubbing salt in an open wound.

All this talk of liberal elitism, raw pleasure and hard data fails to account for the more practical realities of gun ownership. There are many utilitarian reasons for buying such a gun, some of which are more valid than others. Now, debating whether something like, say, personal protection is a reasonable argument for AR-15 ownership is a whole other discussion in and of itself. The Second amendment, utilitarian gun usage and the notion of personal liberty also serve to further muddle this already-impossible argument.

All of this may not have convinced you that AR-15s should be legal weapons in this country, and that’s fine. What’s far more important is that we collectively acknowledge that not all of the pro-gun coalition’s points are invalid. All AR-15 owners can’t be reduced to hicks and members of the tin-foil hat brigade. This has been a way of life for many, many people for decades and for outsiders to come in and tell them they can no longer live as such is both morally questionable and terribly patronizing.

AR-15s are certainly dangerous. They pose uncommon risks and raise difficult questions. But a flat-out rejection of any discourse regarding their legality is both counterproductive and demeaning. Agreeing with the pro-gun coalition is understandably a stretch for many. But acknowledging that their opinion is just as valid as any other is certainly a positive step.

 

Contact Harrison Hohman at hhohman ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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‘Disrupting Whiteness’ and weaponizing race https://stanforddaily.com/2017/04/26/disrupting-whiteness-and-weaponizing-race/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/04/26/disrupting-whiteness-and-weaponizing-race/#respond Wed, 26 Apr 2017 07:30:42 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1126469 Unfortunately, however, the group’s integrity is compromised by the wording of their argument. Trying to claim that I and all other white students, “weaponize (our race) so well for our own ends” is an unfortunately naïve claim.

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The politics of race are tricky. If you’re white, your opinion doesn’t matter; if you’re a person of color, you’re whining; if you dare to comment on any of these issues, you run the risk of alienating half of the general populace. Race is, in a word, polarizing. You’re all smart; I don’t need to tell you this. But one thing that is worth saying is that efforts to further divide the already inseparably split sides on these topics are simply counterproductive. In these trying times for our campus’ and nation’s collective consciences, we must examine which of our efforts to mend racial relations are effective, and which only serve to widen this terrible chasm.

I’ve recently received a number of emails from a campus group called “Disrupting Whiteness.” Now, on principle, I probably agree with much of what the group is trying to express. This nation does have systemic injustices that skew the scales of social mobility squarely in favor of some more advantaged groups. My problem, then, is not the content of Disrupting Whiteness’ message (and that of similar groups), but rather, its way of expressing it.

The opening line on the group’s Facebook page states:

“I challenge you, white people. I challenge you to use that whiteness that you weaponize so well for your own ends … for good. Not for getting your kids into a better school, getting a better table at a restaurant or getting preferential treatment at work. When are you going to use your whiteness to fight for marginalized people?”

It must be acknowledged that their message certainly has its merits. The fundamental issues that Disrupting Whiteness brings up may be controversial, but they are indicative of a larger societal problem. Unfortunately, however, the group’s integrity is compromised by the wording of their argument. Trying to claim that I and all other white students, “weaponize (our race) so well for our own ends” is an unfortunately naïve claim.

The problem with characterizing whiteness as a commodity that can be weaponized is that this phrasing is a direct escalation of emotions in our increasingly contentious political spectrum. Per Merriam Webster, a weapon is “something (as a club, knife, or gun) used to injure, defeat or destroy.” At its essence, categorizing race as a weapon is making the claim that whites are intentionally and knowingly using the color of their skin to deliberately “injure” or “destroy” those who don’t look like them.

Although whites have committed many sins against their fellow humans, it’s unfair and simply ridiculous to believe that a non-negligible amount of white people are trying to “defeat” the other races. This phrasing therefore serves to do little other than further anger the people it seeks to address.

I’ll put it to you this way. When has attacking people for things they didn’t choose ever helped to convince them of something? Groups like Disrupting Whiteness, which use these direct affronts to further their own means, are little better than the blatant racists who also seek to group and discriminate in a more traditional sense.

The vast (read: 99.9 percent) majority of white people don’t wake up every morning and ask themselves “how can I wield my whiteness to oppress people today?” Saying anything to the contrary is a legitimate insult, and is really no different than the sweeping generalizations that the social justice warrior crowd seeks to end.

Whites in America do yield an unmerited advantage over many other people in this country. But to group a poor white guy from West Virginia and a wealthy Caucasian banker from Connecticut into a single bucket, and to then claim that everyone in that bucket “weaponizes” their skin color is a gross oversimplification that fails to acknowledge the socioeconomic subtleties that permeate every race in America and beyond.

There are, in fact, better ways to express these sentiments. Take, for example, Black Lives Matter. Now, all politics aside, “BLM” is a beautiful statement. It is simple, yet telling. It doesn’t seek to attack or exclude, but only to affirm the livelihoods of black Americans. It’s a stark contrast from “I challenge you to use that whiteness that you weaponize so well for your own ends … ” This latter phrase implies that whites have some sort of collective agenda – one that includes every person with a certain melanin threshold and that seeks to oppress everyone that doesn’t. This is both childish and a dangerous game to play in these most polarizing times.

I genuinely do believe that the intentions of these groups are good ones. They want to make change that our world does truly need, but they are using the wrong tools to do so. When a group’s identity is so tied to provocative language and indignant sentiments, the only logical result is further polarization and misunderstanding. No path to a better America can be built upon such a contentious foundation.

 

Contact Harrison Hohman at hhohman ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Syria and the fickleness of the American voter https://stanforddaily.com/2017/04/13/syria-and-the-fickleness-of-the-american-voter/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/04/13/syria-and-the-fickleness-of-the-american-voter/#respond Thu, 13 Apr 2017 07:02:49 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1125827 The media’s coverage of the attack reveals much about both the fickleness that permeates our society and the state of modern political discourse.

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Really, the last thing that the world needs right now is one more reason to worry about Syria. But unfortunately, following last week’s developments, we have yet another talking point in this seemingly endless conflict.

As almost every informed citizen knows by now, President Trump recently ordered the bombing of an active Syrian airfield that was under the control of the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad, following chemical attacks on Syrian citizens last week. The move was the United States’ first direct attack on any pro-government forces in a bloody war that has lasted over six years and sparked a wave of journalistic animation the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the initial election of President Trump.

Although the actual event was certainly important, the media’s coverage of the attack reveals much about both the fickleness that permeates our society and the state of modern political discourse. The implications of its coverage and the reactions to it tell us even more about where American media and politics stand today.

Reporting on the bombing dominated the 24-hour cable news cycle and journalists on both sides of the aisle had a field day reporting their various takes on the president’s actions. It is unsurprising, then, given the “polarizing” nature of Trump’s presidency, that opinions on the airstrikes were split.

Perhaps the most surprising result of the media’s coverage of the attack was that it managed to pull something off that nearly no other geopolitical event had in past months: It blurred party lines. People who had never had a single good thing to say about President Trump lauded his actions, while some of his most fervent supporters took a less forgiving tone, in some cases even abandoning their support for the president altogether.

Traditionally staunch anti-Trump outlets like Vanity Fair, MSNBC and the New York Times were nearly tripping over each other to praise the president’s actions, and many his former detractors like John McCain and Nancy Pelosi conceded that the decision was a good one.

Even Hillary Clinton, the comic-book villain to Trump and his supporters, was firmly in favor of the airstrikes, stating, “I really believe that we should take out [Assad’s] airfields” only hours before the attack.

Two weeks ago, the thought of Hillary Clinton, the New York Times and John McCain all uniting in support of a Trump decision would have been nearly inconceivable. Morals-based warmongering, however, tends to have that effect. Even more interesting has been seeing those formerly in favor of Trump who have ditched their support for the president based on this single action.  

Right-leaning populists largely criticized Trump for the attack, including high-profile condemnations from politicians like as Rand Paul and Marine Le Pen, both of whom hold the common populist sentiment that the U.S. needn’t unnecessarily involve itself in foreign conflicts.

More damningly, many fringe members of these movements have sworn off Trump entirely.

Posts like, “I guess Trump wasn’t ‘Putin’s puppet’ after all, he was just another deep state/Neo-Con puppet. I’m officially OFF the Trump train”; “I am deeply disappointed in Donald Trump. I’m shocked, and I’m angry. And I am ready to condemn Donald Trump”; and “The #AltRight is now totally independent of Trump, and this anti-West, pro-terrorist foreign policy,” are only a small smattering of the unabashed flip-flopping that many former Trump supporters have undergone in past days.

As an isolated incident, these reactions are not all that problematic. It is natural for people’s opinions to change with time and new developments. Unfortunately, it is largely indicative of a much more pervasive and disturbing trend.

The event has served as the perfect encapsulation of the “quick to adopt, quick to abandon” mentality of modern politics. The fickleness of 21st century political discourse has grown for decades but exploded since the advent of social media and the “information age.” Only 30 years ago, there simply wasn’t enough coverage and transparency to allow every decision to be analyzed and deciphered to the extent of today. Now, any decision, no matter how major or minor, is grounds to alienate an entire support base.

In the 21st century, the spread of unlimited information, regardless of its validity, has turned every Facebook commenter and Twitter troll into a wannabe political analyst, capable of stirring up their (usually) small numbers of followers into fits of protest, rage and God knows what else. And although the vast majority of these internet pundits don’t have the slightest clue about modern political realities or the followings needed to really spread their opinions, a critical mass of these people has enabled this new brand of political discourse in which a single small action is enough to upset the balance of millions.

This is an unequivocally unhealthy development for American and world politics. Its end result is the cementing of hard-line stances and mindless devotion to uninformed pundits and improper sources.

Simply put, no politicians can reasonably appeal to every whim of their support bases. Even within political parties, all voters have their own priorities and sensibilities, making it simply impossible for a candidate to fulfill every constituent’s expectations. The simple way out of this (and, worryingly, the more common trend) is for candidates to adopt the exact stances of their party, further cementing the political polarization and agglomeration that has led us to our current Republican-Democrat deadlock.   

As voters, it’s absolutely essential that we accept the fact that politicians are inherently imperfect. There will, in all likelihood, never be a candidate who checks all of our boxes, and that’s simply the way that it should be. Rather than swearing off entire candidates and parties for a single action, we need to reconsider the way that we evaluate politicians.

Choosing to intervene in the Middle East is undoubtedly a major decision that deserves scrutiny. However, given the small scale and highly tactical nature of the attacks, it’s silly for people to largely change their opinions of Trump based on this single choice.

This is not to say that we need to hold hands and play political kumbaya. If there is a part of a candidate’s identity that someone is truly diametrically opposed to, then by all means, we should not feel the need to support them. But with that being said, political whimsicality is something our nation can no longer afford, especially in these high-stakes times.

Individual voters need to think for themselves and vote for the greater good, rather than listen to party rhetoric or a post on social media. In this day and age, real, unbiased information is ever more difficult to come by. But that just makes it all the more important that we stick to our convictions and not listen to the endless stream of hot takes, quickly formed opinions and outright idiocy that plagues contemporary politics.

Now, more than ever, our nation could heed the advice.

 

Contact Harrison Hohman at hhohman ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Has tech gone too far? https://stanforddaily.com/2017/03/19/has-tech-gone-too-far/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/03/19/has-tech-gone-too-far/#respond Sun, 19 Mar 2017 07:28:43 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1124875 It’s generally assumed that technology is a good thing. The word itself brings up images of unprecedented inventions, medical breakthroughs and a more streamlined life. But do those images truly reflect the impact technology has had on our lives? The answer is a more complicated one than some may think.

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It’s generally assumed that technology is a good thing. The word itself brings up images of unprecedented inventions, medical breakthroughs and a more streamlined life. But do those images truly reflect the impact technology has had on our lives? The answer is a lot more complicated than some may think.

The entire notion of technology being a force for good is based on a two-fold premise. First: the almost-universally held assumption that technology makes our lives easier. Second: It is widely understood that tech raises the standard of living for all.

Generally speaking, these things are taken for granted. Given, however, the current attitudes toward Silicon Valley and the tech industry at large, these are statements that are worth examining. Because while we often choose to focus on the material consumption or ever-increasing length of life, we rarely consider what it means to have a fulfilling life. In more ways than one, technological advancements fail in this regard.

Questioning the benefits of technology is downright sacrilegious in Silicon Valley, a region more defined by its relationship with tech than any other on Earth. This is a place where technology has fundamentally changed the human experience. In under 30 years, the Bay Area’s identity has shifted from one of diversity, creativity and industrialism to one dominated by a single, plugged-in industry. Given the all-encompassing nature of technology here, doubts and questions are not encouraged – they’re essential.

It is indisputable that the tech sector has improved many aspects of the human experience. Information is more accessible than ever, education is more equitable, data is easier to obtain and analyze and the burdens of past generations have largely been eased by new developments. And in that same vein, only a true sadist could ever really believe that much of the last human innovation over the last 200,000 years has been negative. After all, without these advancements we’d all still be hunting and gathering – or worse. But despite those truisms, it’s worth asking if – and more importantly, when – technology has gone too far.

It is nearly impossible to define when we’ve innovated too much. After all, if tech is a good thing, we can never really get too much of it, right? Metrics would suggest, though, that that’s not entirely true. Studies consistently show that people are less happy now than they were in the past, be that five, 30 or 100 years ago. Reasons cited include the deterioration of relationships and increased working hours, both direct consequences of tech’s proliferation.

Additionally, psychologists consistently contend that the key to happiness is not more but less. Simplicity, rather than materialism, seems to be the key. Technology flies right in the face of this premise.

And if that is still not enough, then what explains the clinically tested fact that the elderly are happier than any other age demographic? Those same 60- and 70-year-olds who can’t operate a television remote are much more content than their ever-plugged-in grandchildren. Is it perhaps because their perspective enables them to see what’s really important in life, and to recognize that what we have is pretty good? There’s no real way to prove this, but the list of plausible explanations is a short one.   

What is the point of innovation? In 2017, does technology still make us happier? Does the relentless pursuit for more truly improve our lives? Do I need my washing machine to connect to Wi-Fi? Most people can agree that at a certain point, automating and streamlining every aspect of our lives is unnecessary. But when do we, and have we already, hit that point?

Almost all of these questions are too complex to truly elicit good answers. But nonetheless, it’s a healthy mental exercise to truly consider what we need more of in life. Personally, I’m not convinced that technology is the answer.

Since the dawn of the industrial revolution, technology has raised our expectations for happiness. It has limited the depths of our relationships and created a society where individualism thrives while the collective suffers. As technology has become more commonplace, wealth inequality has proliferated and happiness has declined. All of this is not to say that tech is evil. It’s just that we need to reconsider our constant lust for more.

The onslaught of technology has given us a lot. It’s taken a great deal away as well. At some point, though, we have to ask: When have the costs become too great? Words alone will not stop the relentless forward march of progress. It’s quite probable that nothing will. But given that eventuality, there may come a day in the future when we will look at all that we have and realize that it’s too much. If, or rather, when that day comes, we will yearn for days gone by. But by then, it will be too late.
Contact Harrison Hohman at hhohman ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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The hypocrisy of Bay Area disparity https://stanforddaily.com/2017/03/02/1124146/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/03/02/1124146/#respond Thu, 02 Mar 2017 08:16:08 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1124146 Stanford students should not neglect poverty next door when organizing on global issues.

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It goes nearly without saying that Silicon Valley is rife with hypocrisy, but perhaps the greatest example of this is the area’s blatant wealth disparity. While the Bay’s business titans in glittering towers plot to innovate and code their way to an early retirement, millions exist on the fringe of that gold-tinted society. It is, in essence, a new Gilded Age. For an area that so consistently votes liberal and claims to be doing so much good, the amount of poverty on display is truly appalling.

Stanford students who take the Caltrain to the San Francisco station can’t walk around in the SOMA neighborhood for more than a few minutes before stumbling upon entire settlements of tents, filled by the city’s pariahs. Closer to campus, a single freeway is the dividing line between Palo Alto, one of America’s most expensive suburbs, and East Palo Alto, where the per capita income is some $50,000 lower.

This hypocrisy is heightened by the Bay Area’s façade of altruism. Despite the blatant poverty, CEO’s build massive corporations on the false notion of social consciousness while residents gladly spend eight dollars on a cup of “free trade” coffee. San Francisco has even been labeled the best city in America for activists by the real estate site mynewplace.com, but despite its litany of anti-Trump, pro-LGBTQ and anti-tech causes, the city does relatively little to combat its obvious crisis of wealth disparity and poverty.

Sadly, numbers only reinforce these images. San Francisco has, by varying metrics, anywhere between the eighth and first highest percentage of homeless residents in the nation, while San Jose generally also falls in the top 10. Under normal circumstances, this would perhaps be understandable. However, San Francisco is, tellingly, the secondrichest large city in America, based on Gross Metropolitan Product per resident. San Jose is first.

In 2016, it was reported that the city of San Francisco has only 1,339 shelter beds for a homeless population that numbers well over 10,000. Even more appalling is the situation for the city’s children – roughly one in 25 school-age youth are homeless, and in some inner city districts (SOMA and Tenderloin chief among them), that number rises to as high as one in five. Despite the economic boom that the region as a whole has experienced, those numbers have nearly tripled since 2009.

Government intervention has not answered this problem. San Francisco spends some $200 million annually to combat homelessness, to little effect. Meanwhile, San Francisco and Berkeley are ranked first and second on the list of America’s most liberal-leaning cities. But despite that critical mass of progressive voters and the plethora of municipal initiatives, few legislative acts have proved to be successful in combating poverty.

The solution, then, lies only with private individuals and their charitable habits. After all, it’s not as though the region has a shortage of capital. Just last year, Stanford’s own Santa Clara county experienced the nation’s highest job growth rate at over 5.4 percent. Nonetheless, 800,000 people in the Bay are still living under the poverty line.

Additionally, the Bay Area is home to as many ultra-wealthy people as anywhere on Earth. Combined, San Francisco and Silicon Valley have more billionaires than any other city, barring New York. More locally, Palo Alto has been labeled America’s wealthiest city with at least 65,000 residents.

Although much of this moral burden rests on the shoulders of the industries and businesses that dot the Bay landscape, Stanford and its students have an obligation to fulfill as well. All too often, our student body wants to change the big picture issues – and for good reason. By focusing on the macro-level, however, students dismiss the painfully obvious plight of the Bay Area’s less fortunate.

Earlier this month, Stanford Dance Marathon raised some $110,000 for the Lucile Packard Children’s hospital. This is an amazing accomplishment and one that, in the grand scheme of things, should not in itself be criticized.

But with that being said, we have to look at the facts. The beneficiary hospital was originally built on a $110 million donation. It is also currently in the midst of a $1.2 billion injection and remodeling.

To be fair, DM’s donations were not going directly to the hospital, but rather to a fund for families that cannot afford treatment. However, given the massive war chest with which Stanford medicine operates, the burden falls on them as well to fund these sorts of charitable ventures. $110,000 is about 1/10,000th of their current building budget; it’s not a stretch to suggest that our medical school could use its own funding for these purposes and allow DM to put its proceeds to greater use.

The scope of these numbers makes Dance Marathon’s donation so small as to be nearly pointless. Under nearly any other circumstances, the money Dance Marathon raised would be an enormous amount. But by donating it to an operation that is so flushed with resources already, the group fails to maximize their potential for relieving the less fortunate.

More egregiously, the past four years saw 100 percent of the funds raised by Dance Marathon go to Rwanda. Now, I would never want to take away or detract from any well-intentioned charitable endeavor, but it is worth repeating that as members of the greater Bay Area community, we have an obligation to worry about our neighbors first. Yes, Rwanda needs and deserves international support, but more pressingly, there are people in our own backyards whose very existences are threatened by the pitfalls of poverty.

How would it feel personally if you, a minimum wage-earning nighttime janitor, slaved away to maintain the campus sheen while students danced to send money across an ocean? The juxtaposition of it all is morally unacceptable.

And while the example of Dance Marathon is certainly poignant, it’s far from the only one of its kind. Dozens of different groups and organizations on this campus try to solve the world’s problems before focusing on those of their own community. While their intentions may be noble, we all need to reconsider where we direct our charitable efforts. The resources exist, both at Stanford and throughout the Bay, to help our neighbors out – it’s only a question of choice.

 

Contact Harrison Hohman at hhohman ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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On the splitting of 1047 https://stanforddaily.com/2017/02/17/on-the-splitting-of-1047/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/02/17/on-the-splitting-of-1047/#respond Fri, 17 Feb 2017 08:32:30 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1123205 It is not out of the range of possibility that the university may eventually require all Greek houses to conglomerate with other dissimilar organizations, effectively eviscerating their unique identities.

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Stanford recently announced that the campus residence 1047 has been officially awarded to three Greek organizations: Sigma Phi Epsilon (Sig Ep) fraternity, Sigma Psi Zeta (SYZ) sorority and Sigma Theta Psi (STP) sorority. The arrangement is a somewhat unusual one, and Stanford has labeled it a “two-year experiment.” But as a concerned student and participant in Greek life, I can’t help but wonder if this is the beginning of a much more alarming trend.

For years now, there has been a widely held opinion that Stanford is attempting to dampen or even eviscerate Greek presence on campus. The incidents to back up that claim are far too many and complicated to be discussed here. However, what is not up for debate is that the decision to split the old Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) house into three new organizations is a strange choice. In these trying times for Stanford Greek life, every university decision seems especially dubious.

The University will justify this decision as an attempt to give multiple organizations the chance to experience residential Greek life. At best, this is a half-hearted attempt at accomplishing its stated goals. At worst, it’s a perverse maneuver to adulterate and cheapen housed Greek life.

No matter how “kumbayah” Stanford believes this new living situation will be, the reality is that these organizations are different entities with very different purposes. Sigma Theta Psi and Sigma Psi Zeta are, respectively, multicultural and Asian-interest sororities. These groups fill an important niche on campus and deserve all the consideration of any other organization that wants to be housed. But in their own words, they are not traditional sororities.

This is an odd juxtaposition, given that their soon-to-be neighbor is Sigma Phi Epsilon, an Interfraternity Council (read: traditional frat) member. Between these three wildly varying organizations, conflicts and awkward arrangements will undoubtedly arise.

How is the house going to allocate public space? “Oh, you take the lounge on Wednesday, and we’ll get the dining room? You guys can throw a party in half of the house on Saturday, but we get the other half for an alumni meet-and-greet?” It’s a truly absurd notion that the University expects multiple organizations to be able to operate to their fullest capacity when in a shared space. Attempting to mix two multicultural-interest sororities with an IFC-sanctioned fraternity is not only unusual, it’s downright unfair.

One important caveat to this situation is that Sig Ep and the two multicultural sororities willingly wrote up a joint application to share the 1047 house. At face value, this single fact is damaging to my argument. However, I find it very hard to believe that any of the three parties considered this an ideal situation. And judging by the fact that at least one other unhoused sorority (and possibly more) attempted this same play of a joint application with the exact same two multicultural sororities, I’m inclined to think that the University somehow hinted that a joint application would give them the best odds of getting a house. Although these two groups made their own decisions, it was not entirely on their own accord.

I strongly believe that this contentious configuration is an intentional one. The University figures that by creating this strange living situation, it can mitigate the perceived liabilities and issues that come with granting a Greek organization a fully autonomous space. This is deeply troubling. It is not out of the range of possibility that the university may eventually require all Greek houses to conglomerate with other dissimilar organizations, effectively eviscerating their unique identities.

Undoubtedly, Stanford will argue that the three organizations will be able to enjoy the “housed” experience to the fullest. But as a member of an organization with its own place on campus, I’m here to say that that’s simply untrue. I love my house because it’s our space. Yes, it’s only a dorm, but the memories and emotions tied into it make it so much more than a simple place of residence.

I can attest that my fraternity brothers are at their most vulnerable and open when with one another in our own house, comfortable with the knowledge that no one there is a stranger. This is a relationship that can’t be artificially induced. It’s an organic process and one that requires a certain degree of autonomy in order to occur.

Each organization, housed or unhoused, relies upon these bonds in order to forge their own identities. Having a house has been perhaps the fundamental factor in my own Greek life experience. I want other organizations to have this same opportunity, but not in the diluted form that the university is attempting to impose.

Splitting the 1047 residence between three Greek organizations is an almost laughable attempt by the university to sanitize what it views as a poisonous culture. We can only hope that this is a one-off experiments and not a part of a growing trend.

 

Contact Harrison Hohman at hhohman ‘at’ stanford.edu.

 

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Office fails victims and accused alike https://stanforddaily.com/2017/02/02/office-fails-victims-and-accused-alike/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/02/02/office-fails-victims-and-accused-alike/#respond Thu, 02 Feb 2017 08:48:13 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1122328 Rather than continuing to question every decision the Title IX office makes, we instead should be asking why the office gets to make these decisions at all.

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In 1972, President Nixon signed into law Title IX, a bill stating that “educational opportunities may not be denied on the basis of sex.” Eight years later, Alexander v. Yale determined that “a school’s failure to adequately remedy sexual harassment could constitute sex discrimination prohibited by Title IX.”

Due to this particular interpretation of the law, the case set a legal precedent that is followed to this day. On college campuses across the nation, Title IX offices gained the authority to preside over sexual assault cases, entirely independent from the court of law.

Now, while the reasons for this ruling are too many and varied to be explained here, the legal mess that has resulted is not. In short, it catalyzed the creation of the heaviest handed institute in American university life.

Recently a number of questionable decisions made by the Stanford Title IX office have turned public opinion decidedly against it. In order to see the wreckage created by this legal quagmire, one need not look far. High-profile incidents such as those of Brock Turner, the Stanford marching band and recent Jane Doe cases accused by the New York Times have collectively garnered Stanford a previously unfathomable amount of negative public attention.

But frankly, these controversial decisions have been discussed ad nauseam elsewhere. Rather than continuing to question every decision the Title IX office makes, we instead should be asking why the office gets to make these decisions at all.

Now to be fair, there is no crime that exists in legal limbo more than that of sexual assault. In many cases, the traditional judicial system is inadequate to handle the intricacies of this type crime. But with that being said, the University Title IX office is not the better alternative and frequently fails all parties involved.

The central issue with tasking an arm of university administration with preventing sexual assault is that this office was not originally designed to take on such a monumental task. It is therefore unequipped to handle the rigors of criminal investigations and the legal procedures that follow.

As previously stated, the Title IX office was originally responsible for maintaining equal school and extracurricular opportunities for students regardless of gender. Unfortunately, the explosion of sexual assault reports in recent years has left these offices overwhelmed and unable to handle even the most straightforward of cases. The office’s consistently dubious track record may even actively discourage sexual assault victims from coming forward, thus perpetuating rape culture even further.

The heart of the Title IX office’s problems lies with the flawed nature of its procedures. Nearly every step of its protocol has problems that range from “imperfect in nature” to “a betrayal of the legal process.”

For example, one would think that, at the very least, there would be a set of guidelines that campuses nationwide could follow in conducting these investigations. And, while these “guidelines” exist in name, they could not possibly be made more vague.

The federal statement on this includes lines such as the following: “The investigation will vary depending on the nature of the allegation, age of the students involved, size and administrative structure of the school, state or local legal requirements, and what it has learned from past legal experiences.”

This total lack of concrete details essentially gives schools carte blanche to decide how they investigate sexual assault. Perhaps the scariest part of this is that, due to the lack of public records in these cases, no one really knows how most investigations are conducted or resolved. Title IX investigations almost always leave more questions than answers.

The few details that we do have regarding the process used by Title IX offices don’t paint a rosier picture. In many cases, the accused are denied due process or are assumed guilty from the start.

Additionally, Title IX investigations require a lower standard of evidence than cases in a real legal process. This low bar leads to more errors and puts the proceedings on legal par with a kangaroo court.

This combined with the inability of most colleges to pay for even the most basic of investigative procedures, such as forensic units in the case of rape, means that there is almost no concrete evidence that schools can use when making these life-changing decisions.

Most damningly, Title IX requires colleges to take action if an attacker is presumed guilty, without specifying what those actions should be. By ordering every college to take action in sexual assault cases or risk having their federal funding revoked, schools are always inclined to overreact or ignore victims entirely.

It was this particular phenomenon that led to Stanford eviscerating Full Moon On The Quad and the band. Because these two entities had the potential to violate Title IX regulations, the University was forced to dole out inordinate punishments or risk its all-valuable federal funding. Considering that Stanford receives some $700 billion from the Fed annually, any concerns regarding Title IX compliance will always take priority.

On the other end of the spectrum, universities can also choose to hand out diminutive (or nonexistent) punishments to perpetrators of this crime. This disgusting attempt to avoid scrutiny from federal Title IX officials led Stanford to hand a slap on the wrist to a student accused of at least four different sexual assaults. That student went on to graduate.

Regardless of Title IX’s original intentions, change must occur. The statistics of the current office are unflinching. In 2016, Stanford was the home of the most sexual assault cases under review of any college in America. That fact alone, added to the qualitative horror of recent events on campus, provides all the evidence necessary in a case that even the Title IX office should be able to interpret.

Simply put, the current system of sexual assault investigation and prevention doesn’t work, both on this campus and in the nation at large. Both Stanford and America must collectively question the goals, motivations and procedures of the Title IX office. By avoiding this task, we are doing a grave disservice to the victims and those wrongly accused of sexual assault. Although they undoubtedly have a difficult job, Title IX officials must reform their office or be stripped of what remaining confidence we hold in them.

 

Contact Harrison Hohman at hhohman ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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