How common is your surname?

Go here to find out.

It only ranks the top 5,000.

The right to what?

From Politico:

Two-thirds say they'll do it for a year's tuition. And for a few, even an iPod touch will do.

That's what NYU students said they'd take in exchange for their right to vote in the next presidential election, a recent survey by an NYU journalism class found.

Only 20 percent said they'd exchange their vote for an iPod touch.

But 66 percent said they'd forfeit their vote for a free ride to NYU. And half said they'd give up the right to vote forever for $1 million.

What use is a right if one does not use it, blah blah blah.... this one's a little played out. The first couple of commenters got it right: It's really easy to not see a point in voting.

It's still important.

Almost Reasonable

I just read Hering's editorial on the Albany City Council, and I have to say I'm almost impressed with how sane it is. Almost.

Two things: First, ultimately, he is not charitable in his argument - he does not consider that there may be valid reasons for all the things he deplores. This is actually a really common mistake in writing that I've noticed.

Second - and this really, really annoying - there was this quote:

"There is not an argument in the world that cannot be made in three minutes."

That is profoundly anti-intellectual. Am I surprised? No. Am I annoyed and disappointed? Yes.

Actually, I'd argue that most arguments worth making take more than three minutes. If Hering had limited himself to the context of a City Council meeting, then I might be more inclined to agree. But beyond that, it's pretty obviously a case of obnoxious oversimplification.

Feminism is Not Your Expectation

Feminism is Not Your Expectation.

Brilliant Post.

The Blog Readability Test

Daily Show writer explains strike, makes Viacom CEO look like idiot

Bizarro World

Hasso Hering, in an editorial that I assume was printed in an actual newspaper:

There must be more effective ways to protect children from illegal drugs than to post this arbitrary distance. When you think about it, selling drugs to children ought to be a capital offense. Drug dealers who do this ought to be shot — with due process, of course — regardless of the distance from school. (hh)

Um, yeah. So when I asked how crazy Hasso had to be to get a response from his corporate overlords, I didn't mean it as a challenge...

Just to be as clear as possible, this is incredibly offensive - and the next time Hering complains that other people are not civil enough, I hope someone has the good sense to remind him that he's now advocated for punishment that has been deemed unconstitutional (cruel and unusual, 8th Amendment) in a public forum & on the record.

Interesting LTE in the Baro

Side Note: I guess the Baro is printing more stuff on the blackface issue after all...

I had to stop and think about the last letter on the page, the one from Marcus Hibdon.

I think he's right - the generally abysmal failure rate and failure to recruit Black non-athletes as students is a big problem.

However, I don't think we need to make a choice between noticing that and working against ignorant displays like blackface or leftover nooses. They are two different things: The latter are signs of uninformed individuals (though such ignorance is certainly the result of institutional factors), while the former is a sign of an institutional problem.

But I do think that Hibdon brings a great point to the table: Let's not forget to pay attention to structural disparities.

An Observation

Many, many of the folks who have commented on the recent use of black facepaint at OSU football games have claimed that race or racism have nothing to do with the real issue at hand, which is "just football."

As if the intersection of American football and race means nothing.

Say hello to everyone's good friend white privilege.

In this case, that means the privilege of never having to think about race and football.

The Daily Barometer: WTF?

I'm seriously starting to wonder what's going on over there.

First the Barometer has to subcontract the story about Saturday's protest at Reser to a professional reporter - what's that all about?

Second, I just read this thing which I think is supposed to be an editorial... but I'm confused. Even editorials are supposed to be checked before they are published, and this is so incoherent and self-serving I am having trouble believing no one raised any objections as it went through the editing process.

Either that or the Barometer is taking too many clues from Tim Russert.

In any case, it's not pretty:

The Barometer, though it works to facilitate discussion on campus, is not a public forum. The Barometer remains independent of the university and is able to deny publication of any material submitted.

This is the opening line of the editorial. Not only is it wrong*, but starting out with this is a big 'fuck you' to just about everyone: "We'll provide lip service towards serving the community, but you can't make us do anything. Neener neener neener!"

[*While the Barometer does not take student fee dollars, it does receive plenty of financial compensation from the university in the form of free rent and utilities and the salaries of at least three professional faculty members, including Frank Ragulsky, the Director of Student Media and the primary Barometer staff adviser.]

Next, the editorial mischaracterizes the debate:

There are two sides of this debate. There are community members who have been offended by the Barometer's coverage of the "Blackout Reser" event and there are community members who are offended that their school spirit has been called into question.

I have an aversion to claiming there are two sides to an issue. There are almost always more, and I really don't like seeing the Barometer reinforce the she said/he said model of journalism, where every conflict is placed into a neat, preexisting narrative that never has more than two sides and is almost always unrealistic.

But more importantly, I'm not sure anyone is calling anyone's 'school spirit' into question. More like we are calling into question folks' refusal to listen to and learn from people of color, or to take seriously any claim that might require either introspection or a change in behavior.

Furthermore, I'm not sure "coverage" is the right word - it's more like the lack thereof combined with a set of responses from the editorial staff that seem transparently self-serving.

Material submitted by those not affiliated with the Barometer must be less than 300 words, submitted as a letter to the editor and deemed fit for publication.

Uh, unless this is a previously unannounced change in policy, the Barometer has previously run op-eds that are well over 300 words in length by students, staff and faculty alike. Either this is new or a lie - and I'd like to know which.

Some consistency here would be nice - I have long had the sense that the Barometer wants to have their cake and eat it too by claiming independence from the university community while still claiming to be the source of campus news. Frankly, it's not possible to do both - either the Barometer is a member of the campus community, meaning that it genuinely responds to community concerns, or it's not**, in which case it should stop claiming such status.

We are doing our best to continue the discussion respectfully.

Because opening an online forum in which all comments are a priori approved is the height of taking responsibility for creating a respectful space. From what I've seen, there's no communication going on there whatsoever, just extended rants that don't address each other. I believe it would be possible to create a moderated forum in which respectful, constructive discussion could take place. The Barometer has not done that.

If you, as a member of the community that we cover, feel offended or hurt by any material in The Daily Barometer, we urge you to first contact us.

We cannot represent students unless they first represent themselves to us. As of yet, we have not been asked to respond.

I don't want to discount the possibility that this will work, but I am highly skeptical. Perhaps it's because every time something like this happens, the Barometer asks people to come to the mountain, rather than actually reach out and make an effort to listen - and when people do attempt to reach the Barometer staff, they find it closed off, cliquish and unwilling to really listen (I am speaking from both personal and second-hand experience). It smacks of a sense of privilege about their place in the community, privilege that I think is increasingly assumed and not earned.

And of course there is the obligatory plug, the one that accentuates just how much the Barometer wants to be independent of any responsibility to the community and yet have the community rely on them:

As students, as student editors and those who continue to strive toward the goals of being a well-read, relevant publication, we hope that you would come to us first.

**If the Barometer is not a member of the campus community, if it is not the campus paper, then it should be truly independent of the university, which means it needs to handle its own accounting (which is currently done someone who is paid at least partly by student fee money), it needs to pay rent for use of the on-campus space, it needs to pay its own utilities, and it needs to pay the salaries of its advisers if it wants to keep them. The Daily Emerald down at the University of Oregon does all those things and is, therefore, truly independent of the university. The Barometer is not, and should not be allowed to claim that status.

I've been waiting for years for that conversation to happen.

***Final note: Another way to look at this is that the staff really has no idea of how the public views the paper. If I were the newspaper, I would start a campaign to educate the campus community on the basics of journalism. It might serve to soften the response because all too often, it seems like the staff is doing what they think is right based on journalism standards - standards the larger community is unaware of.