We Got A Genius

By Maroon Editorial Staff / March 31, 2006

The Maroon demanded a genius from the Board of Trustees in this year’s Orientation issue. The nomination of Robert Zimmer to the University presidency meets this challenge, and it ensures that the key criteria for our next president are met. We are comforted that, having taught here for 25 years, Zimmer clearly understands the U...

Building walls will not lead to progress

By Andrew Hammond / March 31, 2006

The issue of immigration has consumed the month of March with a ferocity no one expected. One hundred thousand people marched in Chicago. Five times that marched in Los Angeles. In states as dissimilar as Iowa and Mississippi, there have been demonstrations and counterdemonstrations. The United States Senate has stopped all other business in order...

Writing a B.A. is an endless battle of wills

By Patrick Hogan / March 31, 2006

“In this sense the Dionysian man resembles Hamlet: both have once looked truly into the essence of things, they have gained knowledge, and nausea inhibits action; for their action could not change anything in the eternal nature of things; they feel it to be ridiculous or humiliating that they should be asked to set right...

You’re not allowed to say that about Israel

By Alec Brandon / March 31, 2006

After a long spell of deep interest in Middle Eastern politics, I have grown weary of even thinking about the region, let alone discussing it with the ardent Zionists with whom I used to love arguing. Perhaps best exemplifying this feeling of futility is the irrational outrage over John Mearsheimer’s recent paper (co-authored with Stephen...

Speak up, but law trumps

By Maroon Editorial Staff / March 7, 2006

Yesterday’s unanimous Supreme Court decision confirming the constitutionality of the Solomon Amendment was completely justified. The opposing argument, that allowing recruiters on campus violates the First Amendment, was tenuous at best. But that does not mean we should be happy about their presence. The University should never make campus recruiting easy for any organization that...

It has truly been an honor

By George Anesi / March 7, 2006

It is always difficult to sum up in a few hundred words what an important experience has meant to you, especially when that experience has been something you have been so invested in for so long. I would much prefer to point everyone to our archives, and the more than 150 Maroon issues I have...

Lady Justice brutalized by rape verdict

By Patrick Hogan / March 7, 2006

This week, the O’Smiley Factor’s not feeling entirely smiley. Quite the contrary, in fact. One might even go so far as to say that, at the time of this writing, things are rather in O’Freakin’ Furious Factor mode. Why, you ask? Because this week the assholes won. I’m sorry if my vocabulary let anyone down...

Summers coup is a failure for all

By Alec Brandon / March 7, 2006

Many U of C students loath Harvard. It is consistently ranked as one of the top colleges in the nation and universities in the world. It attracts some of the brightest faculty and students. Its endowment is nearly as large as Yale and Stanford’s combined. But the past year has shown that there is trouble...

Florida, soon to be hacker-central

By Laura Hamilton / March 7, 2006

Florida has never made good decisions. It gained notoreity in 2000 with the butterfly ballots, pregnant chads, and general inability to reach conclusions during the presidential election. But that wasn’t an isolated episode of incompetence; the state has generally been fairly befuddled and bizarre, always doddering a few golf balls short of a pail. Apparently,...

We must educate ourselves about the current state of abortion rights

By Meredith Garry and Anna Snoeye / March 7, 2006

In light of recent legislation prohibiting abortion in certain states, our generation finds itself in a position of having to make up its mind about an issue that many of us have always taken as a given. For the last 33 years, Roe v. Wade (whether we like it or not) has stood as the...

Sound and Fury

By Maroon Editorial Staff / March 3, 2006

Thoughts, ideas, and discussions: These are things that consume the life of a typical U of C student. The university ought to be a haven where those ideas can be afforded the necessary protection for them to flourish. But this can go awry when people use this protection to drown out everyone else’s ideas, especially...

Protesters aren’t martyrs, they’re misguided

By Ryan Vass / March 3, 2006

For those who were unclear or in denial, here is a simple, indisputable truth: The University of Chicago campus is not a free speech zone. It aspires to be one, for sure, but no constitutional mandate precludes repression of free speech on this campus. It is your choice to come to this university, your choice...