A Very Long Disengagement from Israel

By Adam Weissmann / May 26, 2005

Things seem to have quieted down in the Arab-Israeli conflict in the last few months. Nonetheless, a storm is brewing. Laura Bush’s visit to the region earlier this week and the throng of protesters who followed her every step attest to this. In a move conceived of during the frustrating final months of Yasser Arafat’s...

Calling all pre-pubescent celebrities

By Leila Sales / May 26, 2005

I am deeply concerned about the current state of child actors. As best I can tell, our society has only one—Dakota Fanning. She has to play every role from snobbish Manhattan prep school girl in Uptown Girls to potentially delusional schizoid in Hide and Seek. She appears on the red carpet nearly every weekend, sporting...

Respecting Art and Others

By Maroon Editorial Staff / May 23, 2005

This past weekend concluded the annual Festival of the Arts (FOTA). Our campus experienced a tornado of art exhibits—25 physical displays and 25 performances—presented to the University community in numerous locations, indoors and out. While most of those exhibits enjoyed a week of respectful attention, a handful were vandalized and destroyed. FOTA is a unique...

Frist is too cavalier with his party’s power

By Patrick Burke / May 23, 2005

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is just getting angrier and angrier. This Wednesday he brought his coercive campaign to an entirely new level, seeking to impress upon Senate Democrats that the plans for the enactment of his infamous “nuclear option” have been set in motion. Although Frist deeply resents the term “nuclear option” for his...

Debunking the myths about the filibuster

By Laura Hamilton / May 23, 2005

After two years of the Democrats’ zealous obstructionism, their flimsy justification has been thoroughly rhetorically dismantled. However, I am continually shocked by the campus’s utter ignorance on the history and nature of one of our Senate’s most integral traditions. I’ve encountered more overeducated students than I care to count who could name the capital of...

Phoenix rising: Why the U of C works well

By Joshua Steinman / May 23, 2005

A recent Wall Street Journal article gets it right: the U of C “produces more heat.” The University is an academic hegemon, producing the ideas that are molding the social, political, scientific and economic culture of America. And yet, in a recent response in this section, one of my fellow columnists attributed the success of...

Keeping Waste Away

By Maroon Editorial Staff / May 19, 2005

The U of C is home to many research facilities and laboratories, and accidents are bound to occur on campus. A problem arises, however, when the accidents are recurring and unresolved over an extended period of time. The Maroon commends the University for its quick and thorough response to the problematic state of waste disposal,...

The Newsweek incident proves that responsibility is out of fashion

By Barney Keller / May 19, 2005

If George Washington founded this country with the sense of moral obligation (“I cannot tell a lie”) in his heart, then he must be rolling in his grave right now. In a May 9 Newsweek article, the magazine alleged that United States soldiers in Guantanamo Bay had desecrated the Koran, the holy book of the...

Uzbekistan: A Green or Purple Revolution?

By Adam Weissmann / May 19, 2005

President Bush praised the people of Georgia last week for the “Rose Revolution” of late 2003, which overthrew former Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze, as the precursor to the flurry of democratic uprisings across Eurasia in the past year. The “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine (in late 2004), the “Cedar Revolution” in Lebanon (this past February), and...

Losing (or stealing) Native American trust

By Emily Alpert / May 19, 2005

For over a century, the Individual Indian Money (IIM) trust has snatched American Indians’ rightful profits by pinching funds from destitute Native nations. An eight-year lawsuit, Cobell v. Norton, aims to make the government pay what they rightfully owe, but, surprise, surprise, the feds can’t even account for the missing funds, and are dragging their...

How to help the homeless

By Maroon Editorial Staff / May 16, 2005

On our urban campus, we cannot escape the face of homelessness on a daily basis. Walking down 57th Street, we are repeatedly asked for spare change. While some have well-thought out responses to these pleas, most of us don’t know what to do and are left feeling uncomfortable. We wonder what our role in facing...

Suicide bombing misses the point

By Patrick Burke / May 16, 2005

In the wake of yet another tragic suicide bombing in Iraq this Wednesday, it is more than appropriate to question the nature of the psychology behind this particular form of terrorism. Regarding the study of suicide bombing, there seem to be essentially two camps. On one side of the debate are those who view suicide...