If you’re one of those people for whom any or all of the above casts a cloud over your ability to make it through the day, help is at hand. Your worst nightmares may soon be over. And all we had to do was sit back and let the Chinese embrace yet another Western cultural institution—the Business School.Twenty years ago, when China started making a significant dent in the global economy that continues to go from strength to strength, virtually no one attended business school or received an MBA—largely because no school in China actually offered an MBA until 1991. Now, according to the FT, applications within the business school community in China are growing at a 20% clip (and 25% this past year), and this year will see 90,000 young Chinese entrepreneurs and potential business leaders apply to Chinese business schools. And this doesn’t even count the number of Chinese who decide to go somewhere else—like the US or Europe—to get an MBA. International enrollment accounts for about 34% of US business school enrollment, according to Business Week, and China is one of the top three countries providing international students. Chinese enrollment at US business schools also happens to be up 20% this past year. (It’s not just business schools, of course—US graduate schools in general saw a 23% increase in Chinese enrollment this past year as well.)

China, as in so many other things, is looming increasingly large here. According to an outfit called the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (headquartered in Tampa and Singapore, which should also tell you something), there are over 1000 educational institutions in China offering business degrees. Of course, there are 1600 in India, 1600 in the United States, and 1000 in Mexico, so it’s hard to assess how meaningful this statistic is, other than it’s a lot, especially since Sweden, home to some of the world’s most successful multinational corporations, has 25, Norway has 34 and Denmark has, um, 11. The really scary statistic is that, globally, over 13,000 institutions offer business degrees.

And how does that 90,000 applicants last year number stack up? Well, hard to say—statistics are kind of hard to track down, although I imagine they’re out there. There are two ways to look at that. First, what are actual enrollments? Considering Chinese schools didn’t even offer an MBA before 1991, the programs have gotten pretty large. INSEAD estimated that there are about 25,000 people enrolled in Chinese business schools in 2009, and this number is virtually certain to escalate. Since there are 250 schools (at least) in China that now grant MBA, that works out to be about 100 per school—that sounds about right. (My own BS experience was at NYU, which was huge, but in part because it had a great part-time program.) The increase in enrollments in Chinese business schools mostly comes from women applicants, by the way—women made up 43% of the enrollments at China’s top B-schools in 2010, a considerably higher percentage than found in western business schools.

Second, how many MBAs get produced every year? Well, at last count (2007-2008), according to the AACSB, over 150,000 globally (although there may be more recent data that I haven’t found). And it’s been growing—way back in 2000, it was 111,000. This is nearly as scary to contemplate as Tom Paxton’s old song lyric, “In ten more years there’ll be one million lawyers.” (Actually, it’s an old song, and we passed that point a long time ago.) And it will only get worse. The curriculum here is pretty boilerplate, actually, and can be easily replicated—accounting, economics, finance, marketing, organizational behavior, some statistics, that’s pretty much it. And how hard can it be to get one, considering how many people have MBAs now? Of course, there are a whole lot of lawyers too, so maybe that argument doesn’t work.

So why does this matter? Hah, look around. The US economy continues to suffer, and will for years, the ravages of a financial lottery designed and implemented by MBAs as taught in business schools. The notion that “shareholder value” should trump everything else came out of some business school. “Corporations as persons” is the business school wet dream. Business schools hate government regulation—particularly those that relate to, say, worker health and safety—which should, if recent evidence is anything to go by, have some appeal in China. You will virtually never find the notion of economic “externalities” in the course offerings of most business schools. The havoc wreaked on the US economy over the past several decades was coined and minted at US business schools—a model that China seems more than happy to adopt. If MBAs can do to the Chinese economy what they’ve done to the US economy, maybe the playing field will even up a bit.

Had the last few months not happened we’d now be anointing JoePa for sainthood. As you’ve been told so many times before, and are now hearing all over again, he was all that was good and true in collegiate athletics, a man who did things the right way, etc. The thing is, that’s a woefully simplistic commentary on Paterno and how he did business. Also, the last few months did happen. So we now find ourselves needing to address Paterno’s legacy in two parts. Let’s do the ugly bit first.

1: Paterno and the Sandusky Scandal

There is no pretending it didn’t happen. There is no excusing Paterno’s failure to make an end of it. And in my book, there is no forgiving it. Paterno, for whatever reason, abetted the actions of a serial pedophile and rapist. These are the facts of the matter.

That said, we’re dealing with human behaviors here, which means unimaginable complexity. In a comment on Brian’s post the other day, my friend and colleague Marti Smith offered some thoughts toward perhaps explaining why Paterno didn’t do anything and everything necessary to end Jerry Sandusky’s victimization of children. Her remarks were, I think, insightful and helpful, and it’s always important to understand that explaining and excusing are different things. Nobody here is excusing (except the occasional dimwit commenter or PSU alum).

Paterno’s own remarks, toward the end, illustrate the conflict he must have felt. On the one hand, what he was being told was no doubt unspeakable for a man of his generation and upbringing. On the other, men of his generation and upbringing were organizational men, and one behaved according to the rules of the system when it was transgressed. This would have been a basic assumption for Paterno, I imagine.

When that system failed, I imagine he might have reacted as I would if, sometime this afternoon, the law of gravity were to suddenly stop working. This doesn’t make it okay, though. I’d be obliged to improvise, grabbing something and hanging on, lest I float into space. And when the system failed in the Sandusky affair, Paterno was likewise obliged to improvise. He had all the power one would have ever needed.

His failure to do so resulted in what I believe is probably the second greatest fall from grace in the history of American sports culture (behind OJ – and we might well argue that Paterno’s crash was the worse of the two). He paid for his crime with his reputation and his death last night assures that he will have no chance to repair it.

2: The Saint in the Swamp: Joe Paterno and College Football

Joe Paterno won more games than any coach in college football history. And for all those decades of victorious Saturday afternoons and national titles (and should-have-been national titles) there was never even the slightest whiff of impropriety. Well, mostly. He recruited clean and brooked very little nonsense from his players (up until some off-field issues in recent years, anyhow). By the standards of big-money intercollegiate athletics Joe Paterno was Mother Teresa.

The problem with that, and accordingly the problem I have with attempts to canonize any college athletics figure, is that the system itself is corrupt to the core. I can spend quite a bit of time delineating a long list of specific indictments, but in the end it all boils down to one simple fact: revenue-generating university sports are, in every way, the antithesis of what a university should be. Universities are about cultivating minds and spirits in ways that enrich the society, that advance the store of human knowledge, that exalt the potential of the intellect to accelerate the evolution of the species.

University sports, though, breed an apartness between the star athlete and the mere student, insisting that intellectual genius bow down to the primacy of the jock. Said jock may be a genuine scholar-athlete but is in too many cases a challenge that the athletic department has to sneak through the side corridors and and back alleys of NCAA eligibility requirements. Big-money sports add literally nothing to the legitimate mission of a university and ethically they have as much place on campus as a Provost-administered prostitution ring.

None of this is terribly easy for me to think about because I love sports. I lament the state of my Wake Forest basketball team and cautiously hope that things are on the way up for my Buff football team. I watch March Madness with as much excitement as the next guy and bitch to no end about the charade that is the BCS. All three of the universities that have awarded me degrees are in major conferences (ACC, Big 12, Pac 12) and two more where I have served as a professor play D-1 in some sports. So there’s a part of me that feels like a hypocrite, and that’s a feeling I don’t care for.

But at least I recognize my inconsistencies. I’ll always remember a letter to the editor in the Des Moines Register one Sunday in the late ’80s. I was an MA student at Iowa State and the Big Peach was a ritual during my two years there. The University of Iowa had, as I recall, brought in a new president and said president was proposing some big, if not radical reforms to its athletic programs, all aimed at better integrating its NCAA sports into a proper understanding of the purpose of a university.

Reaction was swift and predictable. One Hawkeye fan wrote something to the effect of “if we aren’t careful we might end up like Northwestern.” Yes. The gods forbid that Iowa City turn out to be like those yutzes up in Evanston, who are, you know, one of America’s premier academic institutions. I do not recall any subsequent letters to the editor calling that writer out for being an anti-intellectual jock sniffer, which only added to my disappointment.

That, friends, is the context in which all eulogies for the late Coach Paterno exist. The Sandusky scandal notwithstanding for a moment, perhaps the thing that can be said for JoePa is that he was the best a profoundly corrupt system can possibly hope for. This is not mild praise, mind you, because corrupt systems corrupt those that exist within them. Still, given what I said above, it’s also like being acclaimed as the most compassionate pimp in the entire slum.

Of course, all the comment on the life and times of Joe Paterno emerge from another context, and this one is equally important. Here in America, Hollywood has crafted four boxes into which all human beings can be neatly dumped: heroes, villains, victims and pawns. You’re great, you’re evil, you’re an unfortunate plot hook or you really, honestly, do not matter. We are not comfortable with figures who cross these boundaries. Take another great, but flawed college coaching icon, Bob Knight. He is unquestionably one of the greatest basketball minds in NCAA history. He is also, unquestionably, one of the biggest bullies and most arrogant douchebags in NCAA history. Is he a genius or is he an asshole? Well, yes. Yes he is.

In the Paterno movie Jerry Sandusky is clearly a villain. For a lot of people, so are the members of the Board of Trustees. The kids Sandusky raped – victims. The university’s faculty? Its world-renowned scholars? The students who were back in the dorms studying instead out destroying things as the story unfolded? Pawns. If you’re nodding and agreeing with me, you’re one, too.

What we’ll be seeing as the mourning period for Paterno unfolds is less about a clear-minded assessment of the facts and more about crafting a narrative. Think of it as hundreds and thousands of people subconsciously collaborating on a Hollywood script for a blockbuster about the coach’s life. In order to sell it to the studio, though, we have to make sure it speaks to the deep psychological tropes by which the masses make meaning out of life. In other words, this isn’t an investigation, it’s a ritual. The audience won’t be comfortable putting a man they felt so positively about for so many decades, the grandfatherly icon meeting with students on his lawn, in the villain box. The pawn box is right out. Which leaves us with hero box and the victim box. As you read what people have to say today and in the coming days, think about this.

In the end, it’s nearly impossible to be a saint in a swamp. Too many Americans seek to iconize those who come closest, but others of us have a better solution: drain the goddamned swamp.

The five are fired football coach Joe Paterno, former president Graham Spanier (who remains a tenured faculty member, as does Paterno), assistant coach Mike McQueary (who is on paid leave), former vice president for finance Gary Schultz (who resigned), and former athletic director Tim Curley (who is also on leave). The latter two are facing criminal charges of perjury and failure to report alleged sexual abuse. Penn State is reportedly paying for their legal defense, as well.

Pennsylvania’s freshly minted public records law, which was revamped and updated in 2008 and took effect January 1, 2009, does not mandate the disclosure of all public employee salaries. Michigan, to its credit, does, as it should. In fact, Michigan’s freedom of information law specifically states that public universities, school districts and community colleges “shall upon request make available to the public the salary records of an employee or other official of the institution of higher education, school district, intermediate school district, or community college.” Taxpayers fund, at least partially, state located public universities. And what these employees are being paid should be available to the public.

The four “state related institutions” listed in Pennsylvania’s statute are Penn State, Temple, the University of Pittsburgh and Lincoln University. (The University of Pennsylvania – aka Penn – is a private university founded by Ben Franklin).

The law requires that by May 30 every year these four universities have to report their IRS Form 990s, the salaries of the officers and directors, and the highest 25 salaries paid to employees of the institution who were not included in the list of officers and directors. Spanier made $813,855 in 2009. Paterno’s pay was more than $1 million, which is not unusual for football and basketball coaches at schools like Penn State. What the others made is anybody’s guess.

What is unusual, or at least unconscionable, is Penn State’s refusal to release salary information. Penn State is a public university supported, at least in part, by its tuition-paying students and the taxpayers of Pennsylvania. It should reconsider its stand on this and opt for transparency. The school will be in the crosshairs as a defendant in a whole lot of civil lawsuits as the alleged victims and their families  sue for millions in damages. Penn State is more collectable than Jerry Sandusky.

Several key officials apparently kept a dirty little secret for years. Transparency now is a small step in a positive direction.

Government buildings are closed, the post office is closed, most K-12 schools are closed and many universities cancel classes for the day.

The idea behind the holiday was so people could focus on the good works of Dr. King.

Years ago, when I was a faculty member at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, students had protested the fact that campus remained open and classes, except for two hours midday, met, as usual. Top level administrators responding to student pressure decided to change the calendar and cancel classes. The only one objecting was then-Vice President Wilma Ray Bledsoe, the only African American (and, I believe, woman) on the cabinet at that time.

Wilma Ray objected because she believed students on campus would turn the day off into a three day weekend rather than join the campus in marches and other ceremonies of remembrances and study of the life of Dr. King.

She was right. MLK Day for most college and K-12 students now is just that – a three day holiday from studies. The local ski resorts, thankfully covered in the white stuff now, are having their best day of the season so far. The malls are busier, too. Many other students are sleeping in today or enjoying the pleasure of being home.

There are marches on campuses, the media has covered the holiday, but I have to wonder.

A mother I know asked her 12 year-old son who Dr. King was. He had no idea. He was miffed because his school wasn’t closed today. His cousins had the day off. None of them knew who Dr. King was either.

On Nov. 8, the [student] newspaper published a full-frontal photo of a streaker who ran onto the field during that weekend’s home football game. The decision prompted outcry from some readers and from university administrators who said it was “in very poor taste.”

If this photo was so controversial and in “very poor taste,” why did the university require two months to decide to give Isom four hours to clean out his office and get outta Dodge?

No doubt lawyers were consulted. After the photo was published, the university’s vice chancellor for student affairs, Virginia Hardy, presaged what would come to pass:

We will be having conversations with those who were involved in this decision in an effort to make it a learning experience. The goal will be to further the students’ understanding that with the freedom of the press comes a certain level of responsibility about what is appropriate and effective in order to get their message across.

Learning experience my ass. The goal of the lesson being taught here is to warn student journalists and their advisers to not cross the university when it comes to maligning its image.

First Amendment be damned; protect the good name of the university — and its abilities to maintain a flack-polished, positive public image so that it can recruit and retain students and faculty and continue to raise money for the university’s endowment and other needs.

I wonder what Sandra Mims-Rowe, retired editor of The Daily Oregonian and a six-time Pulitzer Prize receipient; Dan Neil of The Los Angeles Times, another Pulitzer Prize recipient; Margaret O’Connor, former photo editor of The New York Times and two-time Pulitzer Prize recipient, and Rick Atkinson, journalist, author and three-time Pulitzer recipient, think about canning the adviser. These distinguished journalists are graduates of East Carolina University touted on the university’s website.

The university’s blunt message to student reporters and editors (and future student media advisers) is obvious: Journalism is about maintaining others’ standards of taste rather than their own editorial judgments on how to depict reality. In other words, protect the university’s image.

The university is wrong here: Publishing photos of a person who streaked nude across Bagwell Field at Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium in a game against the University of Southern Mississippi is news occurring in a public forum. Security staffers tackled the man at the 50-yard line. The photos depicted that. Thus the photos provided a visual account of how security staffers handled themselves in a difficult situation. That’s what newspapers do: Hold government (in this case, the university) accountable for its actions.

The editor, Cailtin Hale, defended the newspaper’s decision:

This decision was made because we felt that our audience, which is primarily the ECU student body, should have access to unedited and factual photos of the streaking incident at last Saturday’s ECU football game. While the photos may be seen as offensive to some, the photos were not meant to be seen as sexually suggestive or insulting, but instead an accurate account of Saturday’s events. [emphasis added]

But the newspaper’s editors did not stop with merely publishing controversial photos. This is a cops and courts story: The paper followed the court case, covering the arrest of the person accused of being the streaker, and doing a follow-up on the court appearance in which the accused was given back his clothes and allowed to apologize to the court.

But all this doesn’t hand Isom, the student media adviser since 2008, his job back.

Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center, said firing a man who has advised student publications professionally since 1994 raises First Amendment concerns. From a center press release:

“There’s no camouflaging what this is, which is retaliation for an editorial judgment made by the students that was completely within the students’ authority to make,” LoMonte said. “They’re clearly punishing the adviser for something he not only didn’t control, but legally couldn’t control.”

Isom said he has no problem fighting his termination, and isn’t ruling out legal action against the university.

“If I was not willing to stand up for a First Amendment issue, then I wouldn’t have been advising them the way that I was advising them,” he said. “I would have told them, ‘Yeah, don’t run any controversial pictures, don’t make anybody mad.’”

In my teaching career, I have advised three collegiate newspapers. Students occasionally err in judgment. Such errors in student judgment are the cost universities must bear if they offer journalism programs and encourage independent student newspapers. But not all decisions universities find appalling are errors in student judgments.

This ECU case was not an error in judgment by editor Hale and her staff. They captured a reality that occurred in full view of fans sitting in a 50,000-person stadium. I would have been disappointed in a judgment to not run photos of an event with so many witnesses.

Isom should sue. He did nothing that warranted the university stripping him of his job and his reputation. The university should save itself the cost of defending against the lawsuit and hire him back. Immediately.

Then again, this is the university that graduated Vince and Linda McMahon, founders and chief executives of World Wrestling Entertainment. Maybe the university prefers to wrestle in the mud of public opinion.

by Robert Becker

Is “Higgs boson” a creative particle or energy field? Can we thus infer an “anti-God particle,” as anti-matter opposes matter, or dark energy battles gravity?

Any covenant with Godhead, in my book, comes down to Creation. Genesis, the source of time, space, and being; in short, existence. Especially our piddling existence. Without creation as we know it, we’d be deficient in mass, not even rocks; or with multiverse speculations, we could also be someone else, who knows where, gabbing with utter aliens. Because we esteem existence (over all the sorry alternatives), let us greet the New Year by honoring the force that could well have made something real out of, well, something not. The “God Particle.” Hallelujah!

If this particle is a particle. Could be more an energy or force field, but let’s not quibble yet about what stabilizes mass, from atoms to black holes. Hark, this herald angel sings, glory to the brand-new king, the Higgs boson “God particle,” as the media (and some scientists) sing forth. And good news, too, for all of our enlightened defiance against the noxious rearguard, a.k.a. Biblical literalism — folks “born-again” looking backwards, stuck in an outdated 2000 year-old, flat earth-centered time warp.

Without creation, what sort of enduring covenant could exist between the consciousness that dies, in short us, and something greater, higher, farther out? And more permanent we hope than rocks. Science is “tantalizingly close” to explaining man’s ultimate free-lunch quandary — what makes something from nothing (or chaos)? Fundamentalists, beware — here’s an ever-present catalyst that refudiates that humanized, Old Testament figure notorious for bad temper, non-negotiable demands, and playing favorites. On the line, if physics identifies the source of creation, boom goes the creditability for our most famous creation myth, part of our cultural, moralistic dogma to make tribes pray, shamans honored, and offspring obedient.

Outside is inside

Happily, the God Particle evokes no impatient, abstract father figure but the very catalyst that facilitates mass, as the glue-like Higgs boson, per one scientist, “surrounds us and penetrates us, binding the galaxy together.” Does not reality depend wholly on something that gives mass to the otherwise massless? Not Darwin, Freud nor Einstein introduced this ultimate root of the root, delivering a big-time, dope-smack to outdated Bronze Age creation fables.

Alas, even this breakthrough will not free fundamentalists from their most onerous fallacy. How can one tribe’s assemblage of texts, inscribed by fallen men as specified by the Eden story, be declared inerrant because they say so? How can anyone take on faith alone what every century since 1500 has progressively discredited as fable? Not only is the earth not fixed, flat nor immobile, we’re not the center of anything (except human ego); further, there’s no “up there” there for heaven, no species (with or without souls) that was created perfect and immutable, and DNA stamps our link to all other life. We are, in defiance of zealotry, the offspring of this earth, linked by proteins (and atoms, thus Higgs) to everything, and especially to everything that reproduces. All else is noise.

What rational being proposes a humanoid first mover who “in the beginning” out of the void “created the heavens and the earth”? That’s just so Old Testament, signaling the true “void” was human knowledge, lacking the technology, mindsets, and hard-won evidence that conveys orderly creation. We don’t look to the Bible for medical cures, shape of the earth, structure/motion of our solar system, genealogical precision, geographic accuracy, nor historical veracity. Why then swallow its take on creation hook, line and sinker?

Epic Battle: Knowledge vs. Ignorance

First breakthrough insight from the God particle: truth is not “out there, up there or far away,” but inside our elemental core, every atom, and every process that ultimately defines what human means. We exist only because quantum stuff, like quarks, got ordered into the push-pull of strong and weak forces in universal play. We think because something like the God Particle (or its cousins) organized energy (or fields) into mass, starting the pinball game of life, its own “ineluctable modality of the visible,” in James Joyce’s phrase.

The Bible isn’t only wrongheaded about the origin and structure of the universe, for me it presents an intellectual dead end. If some humanoid simply created everything — as a gift to his self-regard — then creation becomes an effect without an engaging, revelatory cause. Science now suggests “creation” is far older, and far more bewitching, than today’s novelty, that 19th C. marvel called Creationism. In the epic, unending battle between knowledge and ignorance — the only battle truly worth fighting for — science now takes on Creationists and the Rapture. The real, adult intellectual and spiritual action is not fixating Genesis, but distinguishing reality from delusional, solipsistic leaps of faith.

Confirmation of the Higgs boson (or related forces) complicates creation in all the right ways, without demolishing what we already know. Further, the Higgs, by informing mass, advances the great, remaining mystery — what causes gravity — allowing tantalizing peeks inside the inside. For those mystic-minded, the God particle reinforces notions of supersymmetry, proposing every known type of particle has an undiscovered twin. That helps physicists explain how elemental forces behaved when the universe was young. We’re not talking 5000 years ago either, but when stuff tussled across primordial, contending battlegrounds — some forces favoring connectedness (the order of the cosmos) and some “darker,” expansive, more entropic backing random movement.

Science the Great Unifier

This discovery so transcends Genesis we could have a whole new narrative bridging science with philosophy, even religion, for we embrace the architecture of order itself, with mass, direction, even implied values called meaning. Intriguingly enough, finding this God particle answers to predictions from the 1960s, just like anti-matter, predicted in 1928, was confirmed by 1932. Of course, attributing god-like attributes to quanta doesn’t disprove the existence of an ultimate power (a galactic force field) but we happily leave behind that paternalistic master of ceremonies evoking light and day and night as if a stage director with an infinite budget.

I have for years made noises that Godhead relates to electro-magnetism and atomic valance, for I come from an industry (high end audio) that applies electricity, electron flows, and shifting energy fields. Loudspeakers, for example, translate tiny electric pulses into the physical motion of sound waves re-created in your very room. Now we explore well beyond to ponder special catalysts, without any big guy in the sky, but how sub-atomic smithereens became you and me — and even those rigid fundamentalists down the street. Now that’s a unifying, reassuring winter solstice miracle that gets my blood flowing and my head reassured we may be more than just chemicals colliding. We are insightful creators ourselves.

So I was thinking the other day about the number of times I thought about buying a plane ticket home. I would say it probably happened once every 2 weeks or so. As I was thinking about each of those instances I realized how happy I am that I didn’t actually follow through. I’m down to only 5 days left in Rwanda until I board a plane home, and for the first time, I can’t actually believe I’m going back. It seems really surreal.

There have been a lot of really rough times on this trip. The memorials were really emotionally trying, but on the flip side they’re what brought our group together because we were able to help each other through it. The homestay was not an easy adjustment either, but it was probably one of the best learning experiences I’ve even had. Being stared at no matter where I went and knowing that everyone perceived me as a foreigner was really trying. But now I know what it’s like to be an outsider and how to cope with that.

I feel like I’ve changed a lot on this trip, no matter how generic that sounds. And I know I haven’t become a new person entirely because I’m still me at my core. But I feel like I’m me with some new bells and whistles. I think after this trip I will be more honest in my day to day life, especially with all of those around me. And most importantly I think I’m going to be honest with myself. Rwanda has helped me to understand my limits, but also recognize that I can push my limit- both physically and emotionally.

And I haven’t even mentioned the incredible people that I’ve met here. I consider every single person on this trip one of my best friends, and I’ve told them all 8,000 times that they are all pre-invited to my wedding (in approximately 15 years, of course). They have been the ones to push me and also to inspire me. It has been so incredible to hear everyone’s stories and watch them all grow. And I can’t even begin to think about what my life will be life without them because basically that just makes me cry a lot. I’m really afraid of going back to the states and not having this support system all the time. Who is going to ask me how I’m feeling on a scale of negative 3 to 11? But seriously, I’m so grateful for having gotten the opportunity to get to know some truly incredible people. And I’m so excited to see what our futures are like together. Even when I’m not just two bus rides and a moto away from all of them.

My brain is so scattered right now. I’m excited and terrified and sad an angry and elated and nervous and tired and just overwhelmed. But I think this is all normal even if it isn’t really fun. It’s time for me to go home, but I don’t really know ho to say good bye just yet.

But on a happy note, I’m freaking going to see GORILLAS on Monday!! I’m not anticipating blogging again (for my final blog) until I return to the U.S. so I won’t be able to report on gorillas until then. But on Sunday we’ll be traveling to Musanze in the north and then going to the Volcano National Park, and we will be doing a gorilla trek. Basically there are three separate trails, each of which are varied levels of difficulty. We’re hoping to do a more challenging one so we get more time to see gorillas. We will see. But this is truly a once in a lifetime opportunity and I can’t even express how excited I am. Tarzan’s got nothing on me.

Tilikum, a massive 22.5-foot-long orca whale living in captivity at Sea World Orlando, has been involved in three fatal incidents. The most notorious of these, the death of 40-year-old trainer Dawn Brancheau, occurred on Feb. 24, 2010.

Brancheau’s death garnered copious amounts of media attention and sparked numerous debates about the humanity of keeping killer whales captive.

Humans began capturing and putting orcas on display in the 1960s. In 1985 a female named Kalina became the first captive-born orca to survive more than a few days.

Tilikum, captured at the age of 2, off the coast of Iceland, has been living in captivity since November 1983. But since Brancheau’s death, Tilikum has been kept in almost total isolation from the other killer whales captive at Sea World Orlando, according to its representatives.

Killer whales are social animals. In the wild, killer whales move in pods, traveling up to 100 miles a day, sleeping and hunting together.

In captivity, killer whales lack the stimulation and space available in the wild. Tilikum spends most of his time in a pool 100 feet by 50 feet and 35 feet deep, according to Sea World representatives. That’s an unfortunate change from the oceans that cover 70 percent of the planet he once called home.

Many of the whales’ pools, including Tilikum’s, lack the shade and depth needed to protect them from the blaring Orlando sun.

In March 2011 Tilikum returned to performing in Sea World’s killer whale shows. He typically performs four or five times a day in the 35-minute shows. He spends the rest of his time floating listlessly in his pool with no toys and limited human contact.

In captivity, whales forget how to forage for their food and ward off predators. They forget how to be wild animals. Thus, Tilikum, now 30 years old, is doomed to live out the rest of his life in captivity because he will not survive if integrated back into the wild. Although, with the reduced life expectancies of killer whales in captivity, it is likely Tilikum won’t live much longer.

There has never been a recorded killing of a human by killer whales in the wild.

Most of the knowledge scientists have about killer whales comes from studying them in the wild. No useful information can come from studying an animal removed from its habitat, its family and its normal hunting grounds.

The stress of captivity harms the whales’ psyche. No good can come from keeping such large, wild animals pent up in unnatural habitats.

Society needs to stop using these creatures for entertainment and allow them to live freely in the wild without human interference.

Melissa Wood is a junior journalism and mass communication major at St. Bonavenure University.

Props, yo. (And thanks to Wendy Redal for passing it along….)

They’ve both blown an excellent opportunity for the protection of both free speech and the community’s rights. Here’s why:

Basically, though parks are part of the streets, parks and sidewalks that have been traditionally protected as free speech public forums, the government has a well-established right to regulate the time, manner, and place of the speech.

So, scratch the right to be in the park making your point after closing hours. And there’s even no right to pitch a tent, if the regulations say you cannot.

End of considerations. And all those Occupy people who complain about it are just a bunch of whiners.

Actually, here at the end is where it gets interesting, and possibly lengthier than we had thought at the beginning when we compressed a good century’s worth of free speech principles into a short paragraph.

Odds are that the shutdown’s going to be upheld in most courts if the Occupy movement challenges the city’s right to act.

But now, let’s take a novel look at all this. First, is the camping something we might consider a speech act? Like a march through town?

Well, demonstrations and marches are actions that have held the protection of free speech for decades. Some people don’t like it. Tough. The way in which speech is acted/spoken is often a determinant of its meaning and impact. A march through town of 1,000 people dressed in blue uniforms has a lot more impact and a different meaning from those same 1,000 police officers standing around in a lot next to the cop shop for a couple hours.

The manner of the speech matters.

Camping as a process of Occupation might be seen as a speech act. But, in this case, occupation is the speech and that is what should be recognized as protected. Camping and pitching tents are not protected; they are not necessary parts of occupying space. They make it more pleasant, but are not necessary for occupying space.

But … perhaps those tents are analogous to the police marching through town. People just standing around in a city park will not have the same impact.

Okay, then. Camping is a speech act as much as marching through a town. But there’s no permit to camp (an accepted regulation), and the city has the right to shut the camps, just as they would have the right to stop a march without permits.

Okay. But now the sticky wicket of one right over another finally raises its ugly head here.

The mayor and police chief claim they will act to protect the public safety. They have cited instances of drug overdose (one requiring CPR) and assault as some of the legitimizing reasons for closing the tent towns. The implication is that the lawlessness will spread into the general community. [Their arguments are more complex than this alone, but this is enough to illustrate our following point.]

Continuance of the camps is being posed as a choice between saving more lives and property versus making a speech point.

Yikes. It looks like speech is losing on this angle, also. It’s the end. Finito.

But this ending brings up another opportunity in the law.

One of the principles that drives free speech regulation in advertising, where restrictions on speech are considered acceptable as contrasted to political speech, is the principle that government must limit its control of speech to the least amount necessary to achieve the government’s goal (or address its concerns). For example, the government has a legitimate interest in the health and well-being of its citizens. However, a state’s attempt to ban the speech of advertising of the prices of booze at liquor stores to reach that health and well-being goal is considered overreaching.

There are other ways the government could achieve its goal of helping people maintain their health in place of the blanket restriction of free speech advertising by the liquor stores. The government could support rehab efforts by nonprofits, it could support programs designed to teach children not to drink, it could adjust sentencing for drunk-related offenses to include mandatory training in the evils of The Drink, etc.

We can take this same lesson in “the least restrictive measure to achieve the government’s goals” and apply it to the Occupy movement.

In place of blanket banning of the speech and camping, the government could, in concert with true Occupy members:

• Develop a program pairing a police officer and a true Occupy member in making rounds through the camps to protect against violence and drug use/sales.

• Develop a program to ferret out drugs, including a method by which people holding drugs may be identified by others in the camp in an anonymous way. Though this may not be enough to obtain a search warrant for a tent or person’s body/belonging outside the tent, it may be helpful in the paired patrolling process.

• Develop a way to physically separate true Occupy members from the homeless and those who may be considered liable to cause violence or other socially unacceptable actions.

• This last may provide legitimate grounds for closing the tents of the non-speech members of the tent community, if so voted by the true Occupy speech group. [Yeah, this may be controversial, but it’s a damned good possible action.]

There is a wealth of opportunities for city and Occupy to work together.

This will, of course, require the Occupy members in Portland to organize themselves to some degree.

If that is too much for their sensitivities, tough. The right to free speech is earned, as the service, wounding, and deaths of our veterans show us, if we take the time to think about it.

Occupy cannot shy from its responsibility to organize and take responsibility for the speech of its members. Yes, they have the innate right to speak out. But one can lose the right to anything by abuse. It is Occupy’s responsibility to work to keep that right.

Personally, I believe the closure will precipitate violence, likely caused by non-Occupy elements. This would play into the hands of the authorities and provide them with a, “See, I told you so,” post-closure rationale for their actions. As a closing note, I’m hating how predictable this has been and continues to be. And I am disappointed in how useless an un-organization really has shown itself to be. At least at this point.

[Note: I am not a lawyer, but have some training in the field. However, it has been 15 years since I last looked at it carefully, so please take those legal points with some caution. The greater point to be taken here is the apparent lack of any comprehensive, reasonable attempt for the two sides to try to work together in a significant manner.]

So the Penn State sex abuse scandal, which last night claimed the jobs of university president Graham Spanier and head football coach Joe Paterno, at some level feels like more of the same. Sure, it involves a school that has historically run a clean athletics program (as far as we know). And the most visible player in the drama is hardly a fly-by-night with a suitcase full of cash. Unless you’re at least in your 70s, you have no real memory of a Nittany Lion football game without Joe Paterno on the sidelines. We toss terms like “epic” and “icon”around pretty casually these days, but JoePa is, by any definition, a legitimate sports icon. When you hear an outraged student being interviewed on ESPN saying that Paterno is Penn State football, that student is right. He or she may be wrong about a great many other things, of course…

In 2003, the St. Bonaventure University community was rocked by what OnlineColleges.net ranks as the seventh worst scandal in American collegiate sports history. I joined the faculty of that university the following year, after the school had cleaned house. I hadn’t paid much attention to the uproar when it happened. I knew about the Bonnies’ proud history, but a scandal at a small school in the A-10? Eh.

I arrived on campus, though, and began to meet people. The subject came up – invariably. I had a PhD from the University of Colorado, which was just above SBU at #6 on that list, providing a nice topic for polite conversation. I quickly came to understand that what had happened the previous year was more than just a little dustup in the hoops program. I realized that it had taken a serious emotional toll on the entire community, and you didn’t have to be a basketball freak to be affected. It was so bad that the chairman of the SBU board of trustees had taken his own life.

In short, the members of that community were in mourning. A couple of stupid people, trusted leaders who should have known better, decided to play fast and loose with a university’s reputation (and in that community, Bonas is the absolute center of the community’s life). When things blew up, people who prided themselves on character and integrity felt humiliated in front of the nation.

What happened in Olean, New York in 2003, of course, wasn’t a fraction as bad as what the Penn State community has to confront, though. It’s sort of like dealing with the loss of your beloved grandfather, except that your grandfather probably wasn’t complicit in covering for a pedophile.

I know a lot of people with Penn State ties (including my close friend Brian Angliss, one of the co-founders here at S&R). Some are obviously hurting, others are enraged, but all are stunned. All feel betrayed, and I don’t think any of them can quite believe that the institution they have always been so proud of is now a 24/7 media spectacle because one of its coaches is alleged to have been the lowest of the low and that the men entrusted with the integrity of the school’s most visible arm chose, at most, to live up only to their basic legal obligations.

I don’t think PSU is an outstanding institution because of its football program or because of the legacy of Joe Paterno. I think it because of the quality of the human beings that the school has produced. And because of that, I know this community will bounce back better than ever. Yes, St. Bonaventure and the University of Colorado, along with the Duke lacrosse team and the Georgia basketball team and the SMU football program, which was the first to receive the NCAA’s “death penalty,” and the other five schools on that list of infamy will all be moving down a notch, because what Jerry Sandusky allegedly did and what his superiors allegedly enabled is hands-down worse, by far, than any other scandal in American sports history. But the university will redeem itself.

In the meantime, I offer my condolences to all the men and women of character and integrity who are or have been associated with Penn State. I know you’re suffering in ways that most people around you don’t fully understand. And I know most of you are further bewildered by the behavior of some of the students last night.

But we don’t judge the school according to a few bad examples. All schools have those. We judge the school, instead, by you, and by that standard you should feel tremendous pride.

“In the immediate aftermath of the Twenty-sixth Amendment’s passage, nearly eleven million new voters joined the general electorate. More than 50% of eligible voters between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four participated in the 1972 presidential election.” (Troy 596). Since then voter participation on the part of young people has dropped precipitously. There are a lot of easier answers floating around to try to explain the maddening phenomena of why young people, whom so many hoped (and continue to hope) would inject energy and vitality into the political system fail so consistently to do so. However, the answer to why young people do not vote in comparable numbers to the rest of society cannot be neatly summed up and indeed, there is no one explanation.

Researchers have advanced a number of demographic and systemic variables that could account for the low overall turnout and the decline since the 1960s. Most of this research follows Anthony Downs’ (1957) conceptualization of voting as a rational decision-making process: when benefits, either instrumental or expressive, outweigh the costs of voting (e.g., registration, learning about candidates, going to the polls), individuals are more likely to vote. This logic helps to explain the higher voting rates of more highly educated individuals (who have lower marginal costs of political information) and the negative impact of strict registration laws (which increase the time costs of voting). Yet, as the following discussion will show, this cost-benefit analysis obscures as much as it illuminates as a number of recent findings challenge the predicted patterns (Roksa 4).

The solution is equally nebulous and, much to the chagrin of political scientists and economists alike, seems to defy concrete measurement. In reality, young people’s unwillingness to vote is a murky combination of institutional barriers, lack of educational resources, psychological and sociological elements. For better or worse, today’s young person needs to feel empowered to exercise their decision-making muscle, at least at first and if youth participation is considered to be a desirable outcome than many people and institutions will have to coalesce to provide that empowerment. In the past, discourse on this topic has been rife with easy, atavistic explanations that only obscure the matter. The data seems to show that pointing our collective finger at the individual citizens that make up each passing generation of youth have not achieved any desirable result. The experts quoted in this paper advocate a new model: “Empowerment efforts seek to enhance wellness, build upon strengths, and identify sociopolitical influences on quality of . An empowerment orientation, however, differs from positive youth development by placing more emphasis on the connection between the individual, micro- and macro-social structures. Empowerment, for example, assumes that many social and health problems can be attributed to unequal access to resources” (Wong 40). Removing barriers to voting legal, institutional and societal, wherever possible is the only conceivable way to increase young voter turnout.

Myths and Easy Answers

Exploring the type of easy-answer theories they have been posited in the past and subsequently revealed to be on shaky empirical ground (or outright disproven) will be instructional as we will be able to observe what misconceptions they led to and how we can avoid them in the future. One theory that seems logical enough on its face is posited in The American Voter Revisited. Lewis-Beck states that younger voters have lesser roots; that the pedantic fineries of politics may be of little interest to young people since the policies enacted don’t effect them directly:

It takes some time for the salience of politics to increase for young adults. Perhaps they are drawn into groups and associations that have a political connection, or become integrated in a community through holding a steady job or buying a home, raising a family and getting involved in local issues. All these steps would make young adults more aware of their own political interests, the impact of political decisions on these interests and the central role of political parties in the processes of governance (Lewis-Beck 149).

This theory is testable from a scientific perspective since there are some young people who are married, hold down full-time jobs, have children, mortgages, etc. Based on studies conducted of younger voters, these citizens are quite a bit less likely to vote. “[P]atterns of young adults, being married decreases the likelihood of being registered, while being in school increases it. The presence of children and hours working do not seem relevant. Thus, the hypothesis that young adults increase their political participation as they acquire adult roles is not supported” (Roksa 14).

Another hypothesis, posed by Martin Wattenberg and many others, is that for various reasons – apathy, cynicism, laziness – young people are less politically knowledgeable than they were decades ago. “Today when it comes to political news stories, one could reasonably say, ‘Dont ask anyone under 30,’ as chances are good that he or she won’t have heard of these stories. Young adults today can hardly challenge the establishment if they don’t have a basic grasp of what is going on in the political world” (Wattenberg 61). This line of reasoning is not only reductive, it suffers from a serious chicken-egg problem. Mr. Wattenberg fails to elucidate whether or not lack of political knowledge led to lower turn-outs or the other way around. What Mr. Wattenberg does state is that for the few that still do vote, their comparative lack of knowledge leads them to be ineffective voters: “[W]e will examine data on whether people of different age groups say they have followed major political events. This is important in and of itself, because if younger people aren’t following what’s going on in politics, they are at a sharp disadvantage in being able to direct how politicians deal with the issues of the day” (Wattenberg 62). I question the veracity of such a statement. Is there an additional box to check on the ballot that says ‘please don’t read too much into my vote I don’t know what I’m talking about’? The author is making an enormous intellectual leap.  He ascribes a mandated message behind one’s vote that politicians are somehow supposed to suss out and convert into actionable policy. Irrespective of the individual voters reasoning – which could be well or poorly thought out – it is still one of many hundreds or thousands and cannot be counted as a directive to the politician voter in any but the loosest sense of the word.

In fact, one could take umbrage with Mr. Wattenberg’s very line of inquiry. His data set, which seeks to prove that young people are less well-informed doesn’t stand up to even basic skepticism. Claiming that in the halcyon days of the New Deal and Great Society, young people were well engaged with the hot-button stories and legislation of the day like the Taft-Hartley Act (1948) and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. However, when presented with data that shows contemporary young people were engaged in similarly important questions he cooks up this pithy dismissal: “Although the 9/ 11 Commission hearings and the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib were political stories, each had sensationalistic aspects to them that could be spun so as to provide entertainment” (Wattenberg 72).

This is selective data at its worst. The author has basically said that the fact that young people were just as tuned in to the Abu Ghraib prison scandal as older folks doesn’t count because it had an entertainment value as well. Apparently the discussions of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1948 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 were, in the author’s estimation, absolutely sober and rational debates with no sensationalistic aspects at all. Images of strikes, riots, dogs attacking protestors and police turning fire hoses on black Americans must have been totally ignored by young people in what was surely a very serious political debate with no emotions or prurient interest whatever. If one must parse the data in such a baldly arbitrary way, then there is quite likely a problem with conclusion drawn. It’s easier to say young people are too busy watching Snooki cross our arms, cluck our tongues and yearn for the days of the past. Arguments about video games, entertainment and lamentations of the passing of the newspaper serve as a neat obfuscation of the type of institutional problems that disengage people from the political process at a young age. “The more than thirty year struggle of college students seeking the right to vote in college towns is a direct contradiction to the frequently accepted description of eighteen- to twenty-four-year-olds as an apathetic demographic. Quite apart from this notion of college students as politically disinterested” (Troy 612).

Another theory, less circular but perhaps equally specious is the idea that young voters are cynical and as such refuse to participate in a corrupt system.

Just what has impaired the development of a sense of duty to vote on the part of this generation of young Canadians is unclear, but it may well have something to do with the fact that they were reaching adulthood at a time when disaffection with politics was growing. This disaffection had a number of sources: the rise of a neo-conservative outlook that advocated a smaller role for the state, a perception that governments were relatively powerless in the face of global economic forces, and a series of constitutional crises and failed accords. All of these factors could have combined to produce a disengaged generation that often tunes out politics altogether. But these circumstances are changing. (Gidengil)

Indeed, it’s difficult to reconcile the image of the naïve idealist young person with this other image of the angry, cynical young person who, as a result, refuses to participate in the process. The fact of the matter is, disaffection and cynicism are not at all the exclusive purview of the young (Gidengil) although it has had its moments where it was a common theme of a young generation: “Political disaffection peaked in the mid-1990s and seems to be waning. Meanwhile, security concerns at home and abroad have highlighted the role of the state. One result may be a renewed sense that politics does indeed matter.”

A third theory additionally states that the youth vote suffers from the very same cost-benefit problem that suppresses voting across the board:

“[T]he notorious incentive problem commonly labeled as the paradox of voting. Democracy requires that, at least at some critical junctures, many can participate in political decisions. But if many participate, the impact of a single vote on the outcome is negligible. Hence, the specifically political benefit of voting becomes unable to motivate citizens’ participation, since the cost of voting—albeit tiny—easily exceeds it. Therefore, electoral participation, at least partially, is driven by other factors than the intensity of preferences regarding election outcomes. The most likely motives seem to be a sense of citizen duty, and various pleasures that may stem from the act of voting itself.8 Thus, whatever social mechanisms generate a sense of citizen duty or entertainment value from electoral participation, the groups that appreciate them best are bound to have an advantage over the others in the electoral arena” (Toka 6).

A young person, like anyone else, is very likely to take stock of their voting possibilities, realize the infinitesimal likelihood that they can really affect the outcome of an election and decide to stay home. To wit: “One interesting finding is that only about 73% believe their vote counts. When asked to identify the most important reasons for voting for a specific candidate, agreeing with candidates 28% on issues was the most frequently identified as ‘most important.’ This was more important than leadership, experience, and character” (Carlos, et al. 27-28). Refutation of this theory is difficult but the reason one must place this on the “easy answer” category for the purposes of this paper is that this explanation is in no way unique to young voters. Absent a particularized hypothesis of why the costs would be higher or the benefits lower to young people in particular, there’s no way to support the idea that the rational choice incentive problem particularly effects young people. As such, it is not actionable as an explanation for why young people in particular tend not to vote.

Resultant Misconceptions

As a result of the relatively low turnout of young voters, it is easy to treat it as a bloc of voters that thinks about things roughly the same way. In fact, if one were successful in increasing the “youth vote” one would likely find it growing ever more disparate, wherein other demographic factors may act as better predictors.

“Of course, anyone can invent neat theories about how a particular set of attitudes can systematically influence political involvement and, at least occasionally, vote choice, too. Suppose that the weakness of integration in the political community is an important determinant of vote choices, and, at the same time, a major cause of young people showing below average political knowledge. Then, even if the relatively ignorant young voters were to become more knowledgeable, they may not vote the same way as the currently more involved, young people do. They will still remain different from the latter with respect to an attitudinal determinant of vote choice” (Toka 23).

This truism seems logical enough, but it’s worth mentioning because if we are to establish that there is no one cause for the depression of youth voting, it will very likely follow that there isn’t one solution. In fact the reason why it is important to not view the youth vote as a single bloc with a single reasoning methodology behind it will help us to understand the solution to the problem and perhaps why any solution has eluded popular political science in the first place. Often, academic and popular articles (including this one) will refer to the “youth vote” as an easy shorthand which is fine enough as long as there is the accompanying acknowledgement that there is no one “youth vote” in real terms.

The second misconception is that young people are equally unlikely to vote across-the-board. This is totally untrue and this fact is very informative for our discussion later on. “[I]t is a serious misconception to suppose that it is the highly educated young who are failing to turn up at the polls. On the contrary, the more education young people have, the more likely they are to vote. Education remains one of the best predictors of turnout because it provides the cognitive skills needed to cope with the complexities of politics and because it seems to foster norms of civic engagement” (Gidengil, Jamieson). Additionally, it is important to note that this is not a purely American phenomenon. Youth voting is low in every country not just the United States. “Young people in the United States are far from unique in not following public affairs and possessing relatively less knowledge of politics compared to older people. These same patterns can be found throughout the established democratic world in recent years” (Wattenberg 80).

“A misconception is that young [people] are being “turned off” by traditional electoral politics” (Gidengil). Young people are not any more turned off to the political system than anyone else. Which is to say that they are quite turned off to the system indeed.

“They are certainly dissatisfied with politics and politicians. Three in five believe that the government does not care what people like them think and two in five believe that political parties hardly ever keep their election promises. However, they are no more dissatisfied than older Canadians. In fact, they are, if anything, a little less disillusioned with politics than their parents and their grandparents are. In any case, political discontent is not a particularly good predictor when it comes to staying away from the polls. Many people who are disaffected with politics choose to vent that frustration by voting against the incumbent” (Gidengil, et al.)

About one-third of the American adult population can be characterized as politically apathetic or passive(Milbrath). The distinction of cynicism belongs to all voters in nearly equal measure. It is a gross misconception to apply disaffection with the system to young people more than any other group.

The easiest nuts and bolts answer to why young people don’t vote is there are bureaucratic obstacles to getting registered and then getting to the polling place and voting. “The results show that 18-22 year olds are interested in the democratic process and in voting, but they lack information on absentee voting requirements and candidate issue stance. Further, results support the literature that suggests candidates do not target their campaign messages to this age group and are therefore missing an important and substantial voting audience” (Carlos, et al 1). In addition to the normal legal wrangling required to get a registration form, fill it out correctly, send it in by the deadline and do all of that without the type of experience with bureaucracy most older folks, many students go away to school and cannot vote in the district in which they reside during the school year (i.e. voting day). “Complicating matters for those students who do choose to vote by absentee ballot are the varied requirements that accompany this choice. Elections laws differ greatly from state to state with respect to procedures for applying for, and utilizing, absentee ballots. Some states allow a lengthy window in which voters may apply for an absentee ballot, while other states restrict this period to just a few weeks” (Troy 610). The fact of the matter is, the registration process is reasonably arduous and serves as an obvious barrier of entry into the voting arena. However, it is a barrier one need cross only once, so while some young people may be doggedly determined to cut through the red tape the first time out it would seem that some aren’t able to do so until they are well into their 20s, 30s or later. “[I]ndividuals in the US do not vote because the political system tends to isolate them, through both registration laws and political party arrangements. A number of other authors have pointed to registration laws as one of the main culprits for low voting turnout and the socioeconomic gap in voting” (Roksa 8).

Since there are barriers to becoming a first time voter, a young person will not always know what to expect when trying to get involved in their political process.  For multiple time voters, they know where there polling place is.  They know roughly how long they can expect to wait in line, what the people are going to be like, what the smells are like, etc.  It may sound silly but the unknown, even for something as benign as voting can be intimidating and young people haven’t developed the voting “habit.” “Instilling voting habits in young adults would likely increase their voting turnout over the lifespan and therefore increase voting rates overall.  Furthermore, existing research on young adults usually places all young adults into one category without explaining observed variation between those who do and do not vote and/or does not account for unobserved heterogeneity among young adult” (Roksa 3).  In addition to not having actually experienced voting before many young voters have no experienced their first passionate political moment.  Since most young people’s politics are some scrambled version of their handed-down parents politics (Lewis-Beck 140), a lot of people have not had the opportunity to develop their own partisanship or ideology.  “Voting also tends to strengthen a voter’s partisan attachment… The failure of young adults to turn out in large numbers may be largely due to a deficiency of such factors.  As these factors develop, so will the propensity to vote, which in turn will boost those factors as well, until participation in elections is all but automatic for individuals of established age” (Lewis-Black 103).  Increasing ones attachment to a certain ideology increases greatly ones likelihood to vote and while some create that attachment at an early age, for others, it takes time.  Additionally, college students may face hostilities voting near their school from the local residents: “[C]ollege students often face human obstacles as well. Frequently, college students—as a whole—represent a different demographic than their surrounding neighbors. In many cases, community members feel that students are a more politically liberal group and that their interests are contrary to the community’s well-being.

A third and very difficult problem to overcome is the already calcified two-way street of ignorance that already runs between young people and politicians. “Citizens’ equality is, of course, a central component of the notion of democracy. Ordinary citizens may often mistake simple majority rule for democracy—but majority rule itself derives its powerful normative appeal from the fact that it allows each voter to have an equal influence on the outcome” (Toka 2). There is a pre-existing voter inequality problem that exists for young people. Candidates, based on past returns, cannot afford to reach out on a substantively level to the youth vote because the youth vote has been so historically underwhelming. “The present evidence suggests that the socially unequal distribution of turnout and political knowledge does introduce a systematic bias into the electoral arena. If turnout and information-level among citizens were both higher and more equal, systematically different election results may obtain—presumably forcing political parties to adjust their offering to the behavior of a different electorate” (Toka 42). There is, of course, the equally problematic counter-narrative of young people rightfully believing that their interests are not being properly represented by candidates that rarely campaign to them and are almost always at least a generation or two older. Put simply, young people have gotten the democracies they paid for with their lack of political efficacy and turning back the clock on that is going to take multiple elections:

“Suppose that there is a party advocating permissive positions on a range of moral issues, and it appeals to young people in particular. Young people, as we just saw, vote less frequently and know less than their elders. One likely consequence is that the morally permissive party ends up with a lower percentage of the vote than it would have if turnout were 100 percent and all voters equally and fully informed. The wide-ranging political consequences of this percentage difference are the price that the potential electorate of this party—i.e., those who would vote for the party if turnout were 100 percent and all voters perfectly informed—pays for voter inequality. (Toka 10)

Undoing what is now decades of nearly nonexistent conversation between candidates and young voters will take time and commitment from both. “Even people who to recognize that they have a voice and that they have the right to use it will remain disempowered if they do not know how to use it or are prevented from using their voice in such a way as to be heard and to make preferences and demands known.” (Breton 180).

What Can Be Done?

It’s important to realize from the outset that there is a ceiling to getting out the youth vote in America unless something drastic were implemented like mandatory voting or a change in the voting day. As such reforms seem, to put it mildly, unlikely, we will not consider them a realistic possibility. In the surge of support and civic duty that followed the passage of the 26th amendment, 48% of 18-21 year olds turned out to vote in 1972, along with 51% of 21-24 year olds. It should be understood that the solutions contained on the following pages are mild reforms and are unlikely to eclipse those 1972 numbers if implemented. That having been said, the solution to increasing voter turnout appears to be two-pronged with some small subsidiary solutions to supplement. “A substantial body of literature examines the role of socioeconomic status in voter turnout. This research reveals that individuals of higher SES, regardless whether it is measured in terms of education, income, or occupation, are more likely to vote, with education being the strongest predictor of turnout” (Roksa 5). The name of the game is simple to understand and very difficult to execute: greater education and greater empowerment of voters.

Let’s begin with the smaller, subsidiary solutions. As we mentioned earlier, candidates have been burned over-reaching out to youth voters so one cannot blame candidates for being gun-shy to do so again. In fact, the politicians themselves are likely the least culpable party as candidates with broad appeal among youth voters like Howard Dean and Ron Paul are often running at a high-risk with little political reward. It would seem that the solution must be more holistic than a pithy “the candidates need to reach out.” However, were candidates to make a systematic attempt to reach out to young people by discussing their issue in addition to jumping on to pop culture ephemera like social media, then the youth vote would certainly turn out in greater numbers. “One very tangible form of interest is to have a campaign worker or even a candidate turn up at the door: people who reported being contacted by any of the parties during the 2000 campaign were more likely to vote” (Gidengil, et al.). However, this is not unique to or even particularly true of young voters. Any citizen who has direct contact with a candidate is far more likely to turn out to vote than one who hasn’t (Hellman). However, while the risks are well documented, there is a school of political thought that says an effective get-out-the-vote campaign directed at young people conducted by the candidates themselves could be an enormous tactical boon to the right campaign:

Furthermore, changes in the legal structure of voting may affect candidate campaign strategy, election dynamics, and the nature of public policy. For instance, the findings in this report indicate that political candidates, parties, and organizations would be wise to mobilize young citizens in states where voting reforms exist, particularly in states with election day registration. Moreover, those seeking youth electoral support would likely benefit by boosting voter registration rates among young people in states with convenient voting procedures (Fitzgerald 15).

“[C]ampaigns could affect the electorate in many other ways. Recent scholarship offers evidence that presidential campaigns mobilize turnout, alter issue preferences and priorities, change perceptions of candidates, and inform voters” (Shaw 346).

A relatively simple but powerful step would be to remove, wherever possible, any administrative boundaries that would prevent young people from exercising their franchise. “An important explanation that has been largely ignored… ever-changing obstacles—including voter intimidation, restrictive residency requirements, and unduly harsh absentee voter regulations—have at least as much, if not more, to do with keeping students from the polls” (Troy 592). College students, especially are being hit with a lot of bureaucratic red-tape. Easing or eliminating burdensome registration procedures as well as centralizing requirements would go a long way towards encouraging new voters. The problem of low voter turnout in the eighteen- to twenty-four year-old demographic is two-fold. “First, students remain largely uneducated about the requirements for voter registration and participation. Even those students that are aware of the basic legal requirements often get confused by the varying ways in which those requirements are enforced across states. Second, college students will continue to face obstacles and harassment at the polls as long as reasonable accommodations are not made to aid their participation” (Troy 612). As illustrated in the chart above less restrictive balloting including, but not limited to, mail balloting could be the single greatest boon to youth voting.

Beyond the more concrete ideas of changes in the way campaigning is done and legislating looser institutional restrictions lies the twin components to an entire universe of new voters: empowerment and education. The two can be discussed separately. Simply encouraging young people that they have the means at their disposal to make good civic decisions is meaningless without giving them the knowledge of the political system. Conversely, educating people on the manner in which our government works is a fool’s errand unless we empower them with desire to want to exercise their right. We will presuppose that part of the reason young people do not vote is that they don’t feel empowered or confident enough to do so (we will explore this idea in greater detail shortly.) Therefore “the first step in the process of empowerment involves one or more activists bringing together in a mutual-aid or self-help group or organization, people who share particular situation of disempowerment” (Breton 181). Indeed, the organization that should be in charge of this “mutual aid” must be the schools as no other institution will have the captive audience, space or manpower to convey the message to young people while they are old enough to understand but still young enough to receive it on a mass scale. Just as schools are supposed to prepare children and young adults for careers and higher education, so too should it be the schools responsibilities to turn out good citizens:

[W]e can assume that more knowledge facilitates a better use of the vote by citizens—the meaning of “better” being defined here by the democratic ideal that elected officials should be responsive and accountable to citizens’ preferences. Similarly, voting for a particular party or candidate will normally carry more information about a voter’s preferences than nonvoting, and thus give more political influence to a given citizen. Hence, the possible conflict between the democratic ideal on the one hand, and social inequalities in the distribution of turnout and political knowledge on the other” (Toka 4-5).

The key to encouraging young people to participate in politics is to get them to “’tune in.’ Political engagement presupposes political interest. If young Canadians are not interested in politics, they are not going to spend much time or energy keeping up with public affairs, and still less participating actively in the country’s democratic life (Gidengil).

Empowering young people to feel as though they can have a hand in their own future by exercising their franchise represents a sociological and attitudinal shift. Less nebulously, what can be done from a policy perspective; are there concrete actions that can accomplish the goal of getting more young people out to vote? “[T]he single most important step would be to find ways to keep more young people in school. The more education young people have, the more interested they are in politics and the more likely they are to vote, to join groups working for change and to be active in their communities” (Gidengil, et al.). Just as was the case with the other offered solutions, critics say that education has not been enough to encourage young voters:

More access to higher education has provided recent generations with the ability to learn more about politics than their grandparents were able to. But just because the potential is there doesn’t mean that someone will use it. Without reading a daily newspaper, watching the TV news, or otherwise following current events, even the best- educated people will probably not pick up much knowledge about the political world. A lack of basic educational skills might make it difficult for someone to absorb political information, but even the most advanced educational skills will not help if one is not exposed to current affairs through the news (Wittenberg 72)

However, I believe this criticism to be a gross over-simplification and argue that greater education of our civic processes must be the fulcrum of any program to increase voter participation amongst young people.

As we have observed, the youth themselves are often blamed for their own disengagement in politics, More people are attending school, the argument goes, so the kids themselves or parents or entertainment must be to blame for the detachment. This assumes that attending school in and of itself would provide cause people to vote – I argue however, that school is not what gives people the confidence to vote, not even education per se but the feeling of being educated; and that feeling is not being properly conveyed to students. Absolutely more youth are attending college today in real terms but sociologically it would seem that the societal emblem of “educated” is being commensurately withheld, measured not against some inert idea of what makes one “educated” or “informed” but against the totality of the rest of the population (Martin 98). As undergraduate enrollment becomes more and more the norm, increasing as it has by 67 percent between 1985 and 2007 (NCES.gov), students with an undergraduate education are being denied the confidence in their own judgment by a society and political process that states as its mantra education is the silver bullet on the one hand but shouts down the notion that even one an undergraduate education or degree one could be considered informed enough to participate in the political system.

Since it seems to be axiomatically accepted and supported by the facts that the more educated a person is, young or not, then the more likely they are to vote. However, if we stratify the data a little more we see that to not exactly be true. This type of data breakdown has not been specifically studied much in American politics (though it is tangentially referenced often.) There is, however, a Canadian study available that should be similar enough to be usable as a reflection on the American political system. Whereas, in Canada, graduate student voting rates have remained nearly level, if not increased slightly, undergrads and high school graduates have dropped precipitously and surprisingly, at about the same rate. “Another study conducted by the same authors breaks up groups by lesser, middle, and better educated, and predicts likelihood of voting. Turnout for lesser educated youth at age 20 is predicted to be 29 per cent. For the middle educated it is 43 percent, and for the better educated at age 20, it is 58 per cent, which is comparable to total voter turnout for the general population” (Jerema).

It would appear that there is a confidence threshold achieved either by way of education (as represented by the graph) or by way of generalized life experience (where irrespective of education, voting rates increase in the 30s and 40s, when one usually is head of their household and possesses some authority in their professional field) when a citizen no longer feels paralyzed to act as a voter in their political system. In other words, just because people are, from an empirically observed point of view, more educated than they were decades ago doesn’t mean that they necessarily feel more educated (Martin). I must note here that this hypothesis is not necessarily one supported by academic study at this moment. It is, however, based on my admittedly limited experience, the best attitudinal explanation for the ever-diminishing returns on the youth vote. Younger voters, less sure of themselves and their opinions, fearful they might make a mistake or don’t deserve to participate due to lack of knowledge are bowing to the ever mounting societal pressure that they aren’t equipped or prepared to vote even if the law says they are (Wong 80). This type of attitudinal disconnect could be used to explain how our society, absent laws or other binding institutional ways to suppress youth, minority votes, etc. may have found a way to give some voters subtle cues that their input is not welcome: “Across a wide range of democracies, young and old, people whose income or education is low, women, racial minorities and some occupational groups tend to participate less in elections and know less about politics than other citizens” (Toka 6).

So what action does this information say we should take from a policy perspective? It says that empowerment and education must go hand-in-hand from elementary school up through high school civics if we are to agree that participation of young people is a desirable outcome.

The lower social status of youth can be partially justified by their stage of development and legal status. This justification may be warranted from a developmental perspective, as a person’s ability to grasp abstract and complex cognitions is formed in mid- to late adolescence. Legally, young people are not afforded the same rights as adults. Age requirements, for example, determine when a person can lawfully engage in certain activities such as holding a job, voting, driving, and consuming alcohol. As 81 such, young people are not able to fully participate in society in the same manner as adults and have less power to control their own lives as a result. Moreover, this age bias may also create a culture that inhibits adults’ interest in or consciousness to provide meaningful roles for youth involvement in the decisions that affect their lives, and in developing solutions for social problems that affect us all (Wong 80).

Young people are not necessarily encouraged to be decision-makers or complicit in their own destiny in the early years of life. Therefore, it seems unlikely that the first November after their 18th birthday that they would suddenly flip a switch and feel empowered to take on mantle of participatory government. Even when one’s vote is one of only thousands or millions it can still feel like a big responsibility and under that auspice, it would very well seem that the conclusion most people have come to is to simply not exercise their franchise. “As education is strongly correlated with individuals’ political participation, one could argue that young adults have low turnout rates at least partly because they have relatively low levels of education” (Roksa 16).

Conclusion

It’s tempting to believe that current trends will continue on inexorably, but the fact of the matter is, the demographic trend of lesser involvement on the part of young people is a rather recent phenomenon. According to Wattenberg, as recently as 60 years ago, young people were more plugged in to political knowledge than senior citizens. Especially given the well established lack of knowledge or workable theories to explain it, the phenomenon could just as easily turn around in future elections. “[R]esearchers and practitioners that use [empowerment] aim to increase the capacity of individuals, organizations, and communities by focusing on assets rather than problems, and searching for environmental influences rather than blaming individuals. Establishing critical consciousness is a way to achieve this aim” (Wong 40). The rush to blame the citizens of a generation for paying too much attention to things of no consequence and not enough on items of political import is a sirens call that must be ignored because it obscures underlying societal and institutional problems that may be to blame. Surely, the citizens of my generation spent far too much mental energy remembering Homer Simpson’s home town rather than which two women have been appointed to the Supreme Court in the past 5 years. However, if one could take a time machine back to 1948, it seems a sure bet that a lot more 22 year old would be able to recognize Betty Grable than Hattie Wyatt Caraway. When people stop participating in democracy then that is an institutional failure, not a failure of the citizens. Assuming otherwise leads us down a slippery slope to elitism and nothing could be more anathema to the American Republic.

Works Cited

Bartels, Larry. “Uninformed Votes: Information Effects in Preisdential Elections.” American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 40, No. 1. Feb, 1996. pp. 194-230.

Breton, Albert; Breton, Margot. “Democracy and Empowerment.” Understanding democracy: economic and political perspectives. ed. Albert Breton. Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Carlos, Ray; DeMaria, Diane; Hamilton, Derrick; Huckabee, Debbie, et al. “Youth Voting Behavior” 5 April 2004.

Fitzgerald, Mary. “Easier Voting Turnout Methods Boost Youth Turnout.” 2003: Circle Working Paper 1.

Gans. “Turnout Tribulations. The Journal of State Government.” 65(1), 12-14, 1992.

Gidengil, Elisabeth; Blais, Andre; Nevitee, Neil; Nadeau, Richard. “Youth Participation in Politics.” Electoral Insight, July 2003.

Gross, Peter. “Youth voting numbers low throughout history.” , 16 December 2010.

Hellman, Emily. “Outside Contact and Young Voter Responsiveness: An Analysis of Voter Mobilization Techniques and Youth.

Jamieson et al. “U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Dept of Commerce, Voting and Registration in the Election of November 11, 2000.”

Jerema, Carson. “But university students do vote: Just because voter turnout is low for ‘youth’ doesn’t mean it is low for all youth.”11 February 2011.

Keys, Spencer. “The youth vote is about more than just students.” 29 April 2011.

Lewis-Beck, Michael. The American Voter Revisited. University of Michigan Press, 2008.

Martin, Jane Roland. “The Ideal of the Educated Person.” Educational Theory. Spring 1981, Vol. 31, NO.2.

Milbrath, Lester. Political Participation. US: Rand McNally & Co. 2nd ed., April 1977.

Roksa, Josipa; Conley, Dalton. “Youth Nonvoting: Age, Class, or Institutional Constraints?” New York University Press.

Shaw, Daron. “The Effect of TV Ads and Candidate Appearances on Statewide Presidential Votes, 1988-96.” The American Political Science Review, Vol. 93, No. 2. Jun., 1999. pp. 345-361.

Toka, Gabor. “Voter Inequality, Turnout and Information Effects in a Cross-National Perspective.” Budapest, Hungary: Central European University Press.

Troy, Patrick, “No Place to Call Home: A Current Perspective on the Troubling Disenfranchisement of College Voter” Journal of Law & Policy, Vol 22:59, 2007.

Verba, Sidney; Nie, Norman. Participation In America: Political Democracy And Social Equality. University of Chicago Press, 1972.

Wattenberg, Martin. Is voting for young people? : with a postscript on citizen engagement. Pearson Education Inc., 2008.

Wong, Naima. “A Participatory Youth Empowerment Model and Qualitative Analysis of Student voices on Power and Violence Prevention.” University of Michigan, 2008.

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Matthew Record is a public policy and Constitutional law student at Stony Brook University. He’s the drummer and driving force behind the indie pop sextet Fortune & Spirits. He is an editor for musicemissions.com and a staff writer for RazzberrySync, Inc. He’s also the sole contributor to his own blog.

Matthew is from Long Island, NY and hates when people from the Island root for the Rangers. We have one team and it’s the Islanders. Support them.

Since my return from Uganda, I’ve had some time to reflect upon a lot about my travels here in Africa. I was thinking it might be useful if I came up with a sort of “advice column” blog just this once in case anyone is hoping to travel to East Africa at any point in the future.

First, I call this “My list of practical things that you should bring.”

1. Mosquito nets are a must-have. If you think you will not be bitten while you are asleep you are terribly mistaken, no matter how much mosquito repellent you use. And on that note, do take malaria pills. I recommend Malerone because I haven’t had any issues with it thus far, and some of the other ones come with concerns such as making people psychotic and causing crazy dreams. Even if you plan to sleep under a net still take the pills because the mosquitoes will find you! I have slept under a net in a bed coated with bug spray with all of the windows closed and I still woke up with bites.
2. Related to that, bring anti-itch cream. And bring the good stuff because the generic brands probably will not suffice. Actually, bring two. God, I hate mosquitos.
3. If you are a woman I recommend bringing tampons. You can’t buy them here. And related to that, if you know what a go-girl is then invest in one! I don’t have one but they’re awesome because they allow you to pee like men, which is rather useful in those icky squatting toilets with bugs all buzzing around.
4. Wear comfortable shoes. But don’t bring shoes that you don’t want to get dirty or wet. I brought a pair of Keen sandals that have been super useful for me. You do a lot of walking here, so comfort is more important than style! (I know I say that and don’t always adhere to it…but it’s the thought that counts, right?)
5. I suggest bringing snacks such as power bars or granola bars. I personally did not do this, but a few people in my group did and they have been very useful. People eat meals at different times here so a quick American snack is nice every once in a while. Also, comfort food is never overrated. I spend more money on chocolate than I probably should. If you like chocolate, bring plenty.
6. Make sure you have more than one adaptor! You will probably lose one if you plan to stay for a while. Also, some are better than others so it’s never bad to have options.
7. Make sure you have hand sanitizer!! Random children WILL come up and grab your hands. And babies put their mouths all over the seats in the public buses, so make sure you sanitize often.
8. Have extra hair ties and hair pins if you have long hair. It’s Africa; it’s hot. You will not want hair in your face. If you don’t mind shaving your head, that’s not a bad idea either. That way you don’t have to pack as much shampoo! Win-win. Actually, that’s a really good idea. Go bald to Africa- way easier.
9. A rain coat and an umbrella are necessary, especially if you will be visiting during the rainy season. And travel with both on you at all times, because it will always rain on the day you don’t have your raincoat. This is a proven fact.

Next, I call this list “The stupid stuff that I brought and definitely didn’t need.”

1. My hair dryer and hair straightener. Who the hell does their hair in Africa? Why would you straighten your hair when the heat will make it curly in an hour? And you’ll likely blow out a fuse if you use a hair dryer with an adaptor. Stupid idea. Waste of weight and space.
2. I brought a lot of nail polish to Rwanda. While I don’t entirely regret this, bringing five different options probably wasn’t really necessary. Two would have been sufficient. For normal people, none is probably plenty.
3. I brought iodine drops for water in case I needed it. While this isn’t a terrible idea, I still haven’t used it at all. I think buying bottled water is safer all around and it’s very easy and cheap to get. Definitely a better option.

Here’s my final list. I like to call this the “Stuff that everyone told me was stupid but were actually awesome ideas” list.

1. MY SNUGGIE WAS THE SINGLE GREATEST THING I PACKED. No lie. I use it every night and it is perfect for the nighttime weather here. If nothing else, it will spark up a really interesting conversation with the Africans you meet about American stupidity and materialism. And they will have a good laugh when you show them how to wear it. (“No, I swear it’s not a robe! Don’t you see? You wear it the other way!”)
2. Thirty pairs of underwear. No one likes washing clothes by hand. So why not wait a month to do it? Okay…yeah, I see the flaw in this argument…but it works for me.

Now for some basic advice:

• When a child comes up to you and forcefully says “give me money,” you really shouldn’t give them money. They are likely asking for one of two reasons. 1) It’s the only phrase they know in English and they don’t actually need money at all. 2) They are actually begging for money, but any money you give them will not go to the right place. If you have food or stickers or something that will be fun for them that is a far better option.
• Do NOT be alarmed when giant swarms of children chase after you shouting “ABAZUNGU!!!!!!!!” They’re just excited. In all likelihood they do not intend to attack you.
• If you walk past a pack of people and you hear the word “mzungu” and/or people start laughing, it’s true – they are definitely laughing and talking about you. Don’t be offended. You’re white and likely confused. It’s funny.
• Try your best not to look confused. If you look confused, everyone will notice, and they will try harder to rip you off. I once had the money collector on the bus try to rip me off by 200 rwf because I looked like I didn’t know where I was going, and those are supposed to be fixed prices.
• You better like rice and bananas. Because that is all you will eat here.
• If your bag is overweight you probably don’t need half the crap you packed. You don’t need to learn that the hard way because I already did for you.

I suppose that’s it for advice. If anyone plans on traveling here I assure you this information is useful even though it sounds ridiculous. I would have laughed at anyone that told me half of these things before coming here, but you’ve got to trust me on this one. Seriously, bring a snuggie. You’ll thank me. Don’t own one? Get one.

Shortly after finishing his three-month, 3,312-mile run from the coast of Oregon to the Rhode Island shore, Glenn Caffery visited his physician and complained that his feet were numb.

“What’d you expect?” the doctor replied.

Caffery, a 49-year-old data management teacher at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, lives in Leyden, a small town in the Connecticut River Valley that borders Vermont. His cross-country pilgrimage was to raise awareness about the Alzheimer’s disease that killed his father at age 68.

“He was diagnosed at 55,” said Caffery, “but it was symptomatic at least two years prior to that.”

On May 19, Caffery stuck his foot into the Pacific Ocean and began his long, arduous journey across Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, South Dakota, and Minnesota on toward the Northeast and into New England. On Aug. 17, surrounded by friends and family, he splashed into the Atlantic Ocean at Misquamicut Beach in Rhode Island.

Along the way he had jogged through towns named Mud Butte and Faith and avoided roads with rumble strips that rattled the three-wheeled stroller he kept packed with supplies and camping gear. “It was kind of comfortable to have it with me. I never gave it a name. I’m glad it never came to that.”

His wife, Colleen, shipped Asics DS running shoes and multivitamins to designated truck stops every 350 miles. Truckers learned of his cause and gave him leeway on the highway. Railroad engineers leaned on train whistles for encouragement.

South Dakota was the most grueling part of the journey, a daunting 560-mile trek in 100-degree weather through desolate territory where the state mammal is the coyote.

“It got discouraging,” said Caffery. “There was no shelter. There were no trees. I was by myself and totally dependent on the people around me.”

He was grateful for people like the owners of the Ace Motel in Belle Fourche, South Dakota, who gave him a roof over his head and a fresh bar of soap in the shower stall. “Ceramic tile, toilet, shower … Compared to sleeping on the side of the highway, it couldn’t have been better.”

A nasty case of shin splints set him back a week, but his arthritic hip never barked and he was able to average 50 miles a day while burning 600 calories an hour.

“I was amazed with my body’s ability to bounce back every morning,” he said. “My left hip was pain free and my right arm wasn’t sore from pushing the stroller, but my left shoulder bothered me. It did nothing, but a person’s body responds to work.”

Most weight-conscious people try to maintain a caloric intake under 2,000, but Caffery needed 7,000 calories day to keep up his energy level.

“Food was the single hardest part of the trip,” he said. “The problem was, I had no appetite and the stuff I ate was high calorie and not particularly healthy. Mostly I got sick of things. They had really gross ice cream (in South Dakota) called Blue Bunny, and another problem was I was a vegetarian in one thousand miles of beef country. But I did eat a lot of eggs and drink a lot of chocolate milk.”

Jogging on thoroughfares built for fast-moving vehicles provided a shocking, near slow-motion perspective of death on the highway.

“Dead things were horrible, so many dead things in the road,” he said. “The stench was a constant companion. Cars are so disruptive, and I saw so much killing…. Two Canada geese crossing the road with their offspring and I thought how beautiful, and a car went smashing through them, just a swirl of feathers. The car never slowed. That was hard.”

At night in the West, snakes came to bask on the warm roads.

“I had to be careful. The really big snakes were the bull snakes and they camouflaged well on the road,” said Caffery. “When I saw my first prairie rattler I knew I had to keep getting fresh batteries for my head lamp.”

In Ohio his father-in-law died. He rented a car and drove to the memorial service in Easton, Pa., then returned to where he’d left off.

“It made me wonder whether my run was truly separate from my life or really just the same,” he said. “I don’t think it was as separate as it seemed.”

The country’s diverse geography didn’t affect him so much as the people he met.

“They have forever changed me,” he said. “I feel really blessed they brought me into their world. I came to learn that the U.S. is a big community and I’d never thought of it that way. I was given two flags along the way. I’ve never had a flag in front of my house but I cherish these two flags.”

Life has returned to normal for Caffery. He’s back teaching at UMass and on Oct. 18 he spoke at an Alzheimer’s symposium in Boston. Although he’s raised $25,000, he said, “Alzheimer’s been a part of my life but I don’t consider myself an activist, surprising as that sounds.”

His feet still hurt and his weight is down and he’s quick to admit, “I’m in pretty bad shape right now.”

Yet he’ll recover physically and keep the memory.

“It was the classic step-a-time and big things happen,” he said. “It’s changed my attitude about life and adversity, and I’m a better person for having done this.”

Monies raised by Caffery’s effort go to the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund in Wellesley, Mass. “They’re a lean and mean operation and have the top Alzheimer’s scientists,” said Caffery. “Every dollar goes to research and it’s a very efficient operation with a very deliberate roadmap. They redirect every single dollar. If they donate $100,000 to a university researcher, they won’t allow the university to take any overhead.”

Contributors can donate by going to alzrun.org or curealz.org or by calling the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund at 781-237-3800.

Photos from Glenn Caffery’s website, http://alzrun.org/.

Editor’s Note: The author is a junior at Gettysburg College. This semester she is studying abroad in Kigali, Rwanda and has agreed to share some of her experiences and insights (as well as her frustrations) with the Scholars & Rogues community. 

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Recently I’ve found myself very frustrated in Rwanda. And mostly when I get frustrated it’s because of discussions I’ve had with Rwandans.

Mainly, I’ve been really irritated with perceptions of America that you encounter here. Perhaps it’s my American pessimism getting the best of me, but I find myself getting irrationally angry at the idealistic assumptions Rwandans make about America. And I get angriest when Rwandan men tell me that more than anything they want a white wife.

For starters, many Rwandans seem to believe there’s no poverty in America. I’ve tried time and time again to explain that there is, but when I do I’m usually asked, “if everyone can have a job, why would anyone choose to be poor?” It’s really not that simple. And since they assume that everyone has access to jobs, many Rwandans also assume that if they were to make it to America they would have a comfortable sum of money.

But how do you explain that minimum wage is not living wage? Because as soon as I go that direction they ask why such a strong government like America’s would be so dumb as to make minimum wage too low to live on. It’s simply not possible that they would design such a thing.

That’s a really good point.

The next conclusion that some jump to is that perhaps the issue is race, and in America we do not like black people. Another difficult issue to tackle. One of my host siblings asked me what people would call him, as a black man, in the United States. I told him honestly, yes, there are racists in America. But the vast majority of racism is institutional. When asked to explain what I meant, I realized that the situation in the US is frighteningly reminiscent of the lead up to 1994 in Rwanda. Not as extreme, certainly, but still similar. There are certain ways of thinking that have been etched into the minds and memories of Americans that allow us to perceive different races in different ways, just as over time the Rwandan people were coerced into believing certain lies about Tutsis. No matter how hard individuals might try to avoid racism, it still occurs up because it has been so strongly institutionalized. Thankfully, America has thankfully never experienced an atrocity like the Rwandan genocide, but prejudice is still something we should fear and continuously fight.

But since so many Americans are in denial about its existence, it’s impossible to have a productive dialogue about it.

I’ve also been asked this question by several Rwandan men: “Would you ever be able to love a black man like me?” Even when the question is less about race than romance, it still catches me off guard. I always explain that yes, of course, if I found a black man that I truly loved and respected, of course I could love him. However, at this moment I am committed to someone else, so no, I will not marry you.

Many men I have spoken with talk about how they want to marry white women more than anything else. When I ask them why I get a variety of answers. Some say that white people are wealthy, so it is smart to marry wealthy. Others say it’s because they believe the children will be beautiful (and don’t even get me started on how they assume that all women want to bear dozens of children….) One man said that the white women he has met all seemed as though they would be kind and “disciplined,” whereas that is not what he expects of Rwandan women. (How I address the “disciplined” matter is a whole other discussion entirely.)

I wonder how much of this obsession with white women is related to the assumption that everything is perfect and beautiful in America, and that it would be so easy to live happily and successfully for the rest of your life if you could just marry an American. I honestly don’t know which answer is the correct one, but I find the whole issue frustrating. Perhaps it’s because I personally can’t understand how you’d decide on something as serious as love based on the color of one’s skin and nothing else.

I have so much trouble explaining how it works in America. How can you tell someone that this land that they’ve dreamed of is a fictional media creation? How do you explain that even if you get to America, chances are a white man will get a job before you will? How do you explain that even if you get a low-paying job, you probably won’t be making enough to afford housing and food? And how do you explain that in America, your neighbors will most likely not open their doors for you if something goes wrong? In America, many believe that it’s every individual for his or her self. It’s up to you to be successful. How many people slip through the cracks when all they wanted was a taste of the American dream?

We learned about something really valuable when we visited a Reconciliation Village a few weeks ago. They told us that every month, every individual contributes 500rwf (less than $1) to a community fund. They hold onto this money and only use it when someone in the community is in need. They could go months before tapping into the funds, but just in case someone loses a job or a spouse, this fund is there as a safety net.

Did I mention that in a Reconciliation Village survivors and perpetrators are living together? So chances are if you are a survivor, your money could potentially go to someone who had a hand in killing your family. But they are your neighbors so you help them regardless.

I don’t believe this could happen in America. Here, we’d pat them on the back, say “I’m sorry” and then offer them advice as to how they could help themselves. Because if you don’t do it yourself, then it’s not real success.

I apologize for my pessimism. Living in a new culture makes me question my own, which is healthy, I suppose. But it’s also definitely a downer.

I just wish that America lived up to what non-Americans believe it to be. I really wish it were a true land of opportunity. But right now, I just don’t think it is.

Editor’s Note: Earlier this year, S&R ran a five-part series on Lord John Reith, the iconic architect of modern broadcasting in the UK. The series, authored by the University of Colorado’s Dr. Michael Tracey, one of the world’s most distinguished media critics and analysts, explored the complex and controversial Reith, who managed to be at once a visionary, progressive champion of the common Englander and a difficult, even despicable individual in his personal life.

While these essays nominally address a history that’s decades old, the issues raised are startlingly contemporary, as here in the US the same kinds of battles are being waged across the same class lines today.

Some of our readers will perhaps appreciate the following, as this series has now been collected in one place and formatted for printing or download.

PREFACE

It is not difficult to find arguments about the problems facing public service broadcasting in the digital age, of how, over the past two decades, an institution which had previously been relatively stable has been buffeted by new technologies, new politics and new economics which taken together present an existential threat…

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by Hannah Frantz

We returned from Butare yesterday. Butare, located in the South of Rwanada, is anything but Kigali. I’ve never been much of a city girl, so it was a welcomed change for me.

On our way to Butare we made a stop at Murambi, another genocide memorial, that exists at a place where over 50,000 people were killed. The interesting thing about Murambi is that while unearthing the mass graves, they discovered that the bodies at the very bottom had been well preserved. They then removed these bodies and preserved them further so that visitors could come and see exactly what death in the genocide looked like. It was a really surreal experience for me because the Murambi memorial sits in one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s impossible for me to describe the range of emotions associated with walking through rooms filled with the contorted bodies of dead children and then stepping out and looking onto the lush, hilly landscape. I can’t do the Murambi memorial justice with words because you can’t understand the emotional severity without experiencing it.

We moved on from Murambi into Butare, a small college town nestled into the forests of Rwanda. The students we met with in Butare welcomed us onto their campus with open arms. I met with a few journalism students, which was very exciting for me as an English major because I hadn’t yet found anyone that wasn’t majoring in either business or management. I also met with the Vice Dean of Faculty at the National University of Rwanda and talked with him about how I intend to research the teaching of English in Rwandan schools. He was enthralled with my idea and said he believes that I should open up a university in Rwanda with a focus on languages and literature because he believes that that is the missing gap in education here. I’m not quite so confident that I can actually open up another university while I’m here, so maybe I’ll start with a university book club and go from there. I suppose there’s no harm in dreaming big.

We also met with a few rescuers from the genocide who shared their stories with us. I believe that all of the rescuers we met with were Hutus who chose embrace their humanity and save their neighbors during the genocide. It was incredible to hear their stories and finally get an uplifting account related to the genocide. Sometimes I have trouble finding hope here while surrounded by so much sorrow. One of the rescuers, Amina, has a restaurant in Butare, and we ate there with her on two occasions. There was a 20 year-old girl working for her who is fairly certain I’m marrying her 35 year-old brother. We’ll see how that goes. I’m starting to learn that by wearing a ring on my wedding finger I tend to avoid awkward situations.

I fell in love with Butare while I was there, mostly because of its beauty, but also because of the town’s charm. I intend to live there for my independent study month in November, hopefully in an apartment with a few of my classmates. Kigali has a lot to offer, and I definitely like it here, but to me, Butare felt like home.

I reject the idea that asking a hedge fund manager to pay the same tax rate as a plumber or a teacher is class warfare…

And today, over at the Great Orange Satan, msblucow has an interesting poll up aimed at gauging how likely voters are to support Obama’s reelection bid in 2012. More to the point, why they are likely to vote for him (or not)? If you click through to the poll, there’s a series of questions that asks if the president’s actions on a series of issues make you more likely to vote for him, less likely, undecided, or do his actions and policies have no effect.

For instance:

• President Obama’s recent push for job creation makes me more/less likely to vote/volunteer/donate in 2012
• President Obama’s proposal to make millionaires pay more taxes makes me more/less likely to vote/volunteer/donate in 2012
• President Obama’s handling of the mortgage crisis makes me more/less likely to vote/volunteer/donate in 2012

On most of these questions I put “no effect.” That may seem odd, given how important I feel some of these issues are. At the bottom, in the comments field, I explained why.

I said that Obama’s pronouncements on things like jobs and taxation don’t make me more likely to vote for him not because I don’t agree with those policies. I do – wholeheartedly. But I simply don’t believe he means it and I expect these proposals to come to nothing. I don’t see these as actual moves by a president, I see them as campaign messaging, and I think we learned last time that he’s great at promising and horrible at delivering. If he actually delivers progressive results by the election, I might reconsider. Otherwise I’m voting Green.

Which is sort of like the comment I left on my friend’s FB entry:

I wish I shared your enthusiasm. This isn’t Obama being president, it’s Obama campaigning for a second term. Campaigning always brings out the pretty words in him.

So yeah, I’m skeptical. Over the past four or five years Mr. Obama has proven a few things fairly conclusively:

• When campaigning, he talks a compelling progressive game.
• Once elected, he reverts to right/centrist corporatism and makes sure he doesn’t upset rich white people.
• His fetishization of bipartisanship is nearly pathological, revealing a deep-seated need not only to be loved by everyone, but specifically to be loved by those who hate him the worst, even if it means alienating those who actually support him.
• He has bargaining skills the world hasn’t seen since the last time Mr. Haney went nose-to-nose with Lisa Douglas.

Which adds up to a very simple proposition: Mr. Obama has demonstrated that the words he says mean absolutely nothing. Whether he believes them or not, we cannot count on them generating results. As such, only a rube would pay any attention to anything the man says between now and Election Day.

I always try to teach my students that, in writing, it’s important to illustrate and evidence instead of simply asserting things. My advice to them is the same as I have now for Candidate Obama: show, don’t tell.