Tag Archives: news

Northwestern Will Survive Without the Keg (Or: Actions Have Consequences)

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[Snark Warning]

The Northwestern community is abuzz this week with the news that the Keg, Evanston’s trashiest, craziest, collegiest bar, has had its liquor license revoked for continually allowing underage drinking. The loss of the license means that the Keg can no longer sell alcohol, meaning that its demise is probably imminent.

Naturally, Northwestern students (many of whom admit to never even having visited the Keg) are enraged. They see the license revocation not only as the end of a place they like to frequent (“like” being used only in the vaguest sense here), but as yet another tyrannical attempt by the city government to disrupt the Northwestern way of life.

I must admit that if my life revolved around drinking, I might see some sense in that view. But then again, I might not, given how many bars, frats, and off-campus apartments there are around me–and the latter two usually don’t even charge, let alone card.

In a perfect world, the Keg wouldn’t be closing. Why? Because the legal drinking age would be 18, just like the age of consent, enfranchisement, and conscription. In that perfect world, our culture would pay enough attention to mental health that people wouldn’t need alcohol to relax or socialize, meaning that binge drinking would be much less common.

But, clearly, we don’t live in that world yet, and for now, as in the future, we are obligated to follow the laws created by our elected government. The Keg’s ownership has proven over and over that it does not take the issue of underage drinking seriously, and it should not be permitted to flagrantly violate the law as it currently stands.

In one of the very few intelligent responses to this news that I have seen from NU students, my fellow columnist at the Daily Northwestern points out that closing the Keg will not stop underage drinking. That is correct. Nothing can stop underage drinking among college students aside from lowering the drinking age.

However, not revoking the Keg’s liquor license despite its violations of federal law send the message that we value profit and fun over law enforcement. Nowhere in the Constitution are we guaranteed the right to drink alcohol without any reasonable limits. What we are guaranteed, however, is a government with the power to make and enforce laws.

(My friend and fellow blogger Michael also writes about why revoking the Keg’s liquor license is not the evil tyrannical anti-capitalist move that some students seem to think it is.)

Furthermore, while closing the Keg will not prevent underage drinking, neither will ticketing speeders prevent speeding, or cleaning up litter prevent littering. yet both must be done for the sake of a fair and orderly society.

Many NU students, of course, don’t look at it this way and have no desire to. They react like a toddler reaching for her fifth piece of candy and having it taken away. In fact, they reacted by creating a fake Twitter account for Evanston mayor Elizabeth Tisdahl. Read it and weep.

(The fake Twitter account is partially a nod to the fact that the Keg’s “unofficial” Twitter was, according to students, the reason for its untimely demise, as Tisdahl pointed out the references to underage drinking in the satirical tweets. However, students who pretend that the Keg is closing due to a fake Twitter account are creating a straw man. It’s closing because of constant, documented violations of the law.)

Anyway, one of the writers over at the blog Sherman Ave responds to the attacks on Tisdahl with much more punch than I could ever muster:

Also, if you are attacking Mayor Tisdahl you are an idiot. You may not think you are an idiot, but you are. I’m sorry, but anyone who scapegoats an elected official for enforcing the law deserves the title of idiot. And that’s that.

For what it’s worth, I applaud Tisdahl for doing something “uncool,” since that’s something that many Northwestern students are apparently incapable of.

I’ve also seen a lot of comments from other students bemoaning the fact that the Keg’s closing means that their social lives are, for all intents and purposes, dead. I don’t know how many of these are “ironic” as opposed to genuine, but I do know that “irony” is a defense frequently trotted out by people who have been caught saying something idiotic.

If any of those comments do have any truth to them, I have only this to say–if your entire social life consists of getting wasted in a grimy bar, that is really sad.

Finally, and perhaps most irritatingly, many students are reacting to the closure of the Keg as though some irrevocable, unique part of Northwestern culture is gone. An article to this effect was even published at North by Northwestern.

People. Seriously. Seedy bars where you can get piss-drunk are a dime a dozen. Go to any college town in the country and you’ll see that.

For people like me, who observe what most call “college life” only from the sidelines, the Keg’s imminent closure is both a cause of celebration and, well, of consternation. The former for obvious reasons, and the latter because it’s quite disappointing to see one’s fellow students ranting and raving over the closing of some dumb bar as though they’ve just gotten rejected from their favorite country club or something.

For now, though, I’ll leave you with this hilarious take on the Keg’s closure from Sherman Ave. Don’t watch if you’re easily offended.

Islamophobia Does Not “Cause” Riots

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So I was reading the current issue of Utne Reader (great magazine, by the way) and came across an article about Islamophobia, reprinted from Intelligence Report.

At was a good article, at least up until the third paragraph. There, I saw something that made my eyes want to pop out of my head, migrate to the author’s place of residence, and slap him in the face:

Recent news reports strongly suggest a spike in anti-Muslim hate crimes. In May 2010, for example, a bomb exploded at an Islamic center in Jacksonville, Florida. In August, a man slashed the neck and face of a New York taxi driver after finding out he was a Muslim. Four days later, someone set fire to construction equipment at the future site of an Islamic center in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. In March 2011, a radical Christian pastor burned a Koran in Gainesville, Florida, leading to deadly riots in Afghanistan that left at least 20 people dead. [emphasis mine]

No. No no no. First of all, unlike the first three incidents, burning a Koran is not an “anti-Muslim hate crime.” Last I checked, in America that counts as free speech, heinous as it may be. Second, Islamophobia may have caused the first three incidents, but it did not cause the fourth one. That one was caused by morons who chose to respond to a provocation in a violent way.

One of my biggest issues with liberal discourse on societal problems is its proclivity to diminish or erase entirely the concept of human agency. (Some) liberals talk as though society just makes people do things without them actually processing information and deciding how to act on it.

(Among more radical liberals, this lends itself to the belief that violent response to injustice is not only inevitable, but morally justified, even if innocent people are injured or killed in the process. See: Hamas apologists.)

Leaving aside the morality of the rioters’ actions, it nevertheless takes quite a few conceptual steps to get from American Islamophobia to Muslims killing people in Afghanistan. While one could reasonably assume that Islamophobia (along with a number of other factors, such as having a violent disposition) caused people to do things like bomb mosques, stab Muslim taxi drivers, and burn Korans, one cannot then jump from that to “Islamophobia causes people in Afghanistan to riot and kill people.” Just, no.

I should hope that it’s quite clear that moderating variables must be at play here. (Case in point: Jews have been subject to as much [if not more] racism and discrimination throughout history as Muslims have, but if we rioted and killed each other every time somebody did something anti-Semitic, there’d be none of us left. Do a Google search on “burning Israeli flag” and you’ll see how common this is, and don’t tell me nobody ever burns Bibles, either.) For whatever reason, the rioters in question chose not to respond to this incident by starting an initiative to educate Westerners about Islam, by simply ranting about it to family and friends, or by shrugging and moving on.

Instead, they chose to respond to a no-name dipshit burning a Koran thousands of miles away by killing 20 innocent people.

Clearly, the vast, vast majority of Muslims in the world did not react this way, just like most teenagers who happen to come into possession of a loaded gun do not immediately go shoot up a school. The few who do go shoot up schools have serious issues that go way beyond the fact that they have access to a gun.

Islamophobia is a serious problem and should not be swept under the rug. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. All humans have agency, and we should assign the same level of responsibility to the Muslims who rioted as to the Americans who provoked them.

Let Them Eat Snacks

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Next up on the syllabus: snacks.

In what might be the best argument for the abolition of the tenure system that I have personally heard of, a professor at Cal State Sacramento has walked out of his own class to protest the fact that some students didn’t bring snacks.

To elaborate, the professor, George Parrott, has had the following “snack policy” since shortly after he began teaching in 1969: students must “work in teams” to provide a homemade snack for each class, or else he’ll refuse to teach it. Apparently this helps promote teamwork and teach students about the consequences of unreliability.

Well, recently Parrott was forced to follow through on his threat because some students failed to bring snacks to class, and now university administrators are investigating the matter. (I don’t really know what there is to investigate. Dude’s been doing this since the 70s, so I’m sure it’s not news to them.)

Two things disappoint me most about this occurrence. The first is that the aforementioned wingnut is a member of his school’s psychology department. It always seems like it’s us psychologists who fuck everything up. Forcing people to electrocute each other, turning them malicious by pretending they’re in prison, having live sex demonstrations on stage…and now this. Seriously, academic psychology can’t seem to catch a break.

The second disappointing factor is that one of my favorite magazines/blogs, GOOD, has come out with an article in support of this inane policy. GOOD is all about alternative education, which doesn’t surprise me since its education section is “in partnership with University of Phoenix,” which might be the biggest baloney of a “university” I’ve ever heard of.

Anyway, the article claims, among other things, the following:

It’s well established that students who have close relationships with their peers or professors are less likely to drop out. At a time when only 30 percent of adults over 25 have a degree and only 56 percent of college students earn a degree in six years, colleges are looking for ways to ensure that students feel like they belong on campus.

Leaving aside the fact that canceling a class doesn’t seem like the best way to facilitate close relationships, I have this to say about Parrott’s methods: he clearly hasn’t studied his own field very well. The technique Parrott is using when he denies a lecture to the entire class because of one student’s mistake is a grade-school staple called collective punishment. It’s something I’ve fervently opposed ever since I was old enough to understand what it was (which, for me, was pretty damn young). Collective punishment is based on the premise that if one person causes negative consequences for the rest of the group, the other group members will convince bully that person into changing their behavior. What a great way to make students “feel like they belong on campus.”

Of course, there’s lots more wrong with this situation than just the dubious use of social psychology to manipulate people. First of all, if you poll random college students about why they’re in college, things like getting a degree and acquiring knowledge in their chosen field are likely to be higher on the list than learning about teamwork. Is teamwork important? Sure. But that’s not what we’re paying thousands of dollars for.

If he were that passionate about students learning how to work together, the professor could’ve taught a class about teamwork and petitioned to have it made mandatory. Or he could’ve had the class work in groups to carry out research projects or make short presentations at the beginning of each class. Or any number of things that are less stupid than forcing people to make their own snacks on their own time and money.

Some might defend this, saying that many of his students like the policy and that it’s not that hard to make snacks and whatnot. But I would argue that, when it comes to education, it’s the principle of the thing. Nobody should be picking classes based on whether or not they have time to bake cookies. Nobody should be denied a class because some random idiot forgot to.

Civil Disobedience Gone Horribly Wrong

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Anyone who’s been at an airport lately probably agrees that those new TSA bodyscans/patdowns suck. One woman, however, apparently reserves some very special wrath for this procedure, because it infuriated her so much that she assaulted a female TSA officer. Not in the usual shoving/punching way, though:

TSA staff said Mihamae refused to be go through passenger screening and became argumentative before she squeezed and twisted the agent’s breast with both hands. Police said Mihamae admitted to the crime and was arrested on a felony count of sexual abuse.

Just in case this isn’t bad enough, there is now some sort of movement to keep Miyamae (that’s the actual spelling of her name; the media outlets got it wrong) from being prosecuted to the full extent of the law. It’s a Facebook page called “Acquit Yukari Mihamae” and it has currently been liked by 4,694 (and rapidly counting) people.

That’s a lot of people who think that physically assaulting someone is a fair response to a policy they dislike.

Here are some of the comments I found on the page:

“I love the story about this those disgusting TSA pigs need a taste of their own putrid medicine. I hope everything goes well I will offer all the support possible. NO PARA-MILITARY a.k.a TSA”

“GOOD JOB!!!! you should have twisted those bad boys right off!!!! show them punk asses a case of trading places… they think this is bad wait till they push us so far into a corner that the only option left for us is to revolt!!!!!!!!!!!”

“THANK YOU, Yukari for standing up to the TSA and for doing what I have always wanted to do!! You are a true hero and you show that resistance ios NOT futile!! I hope everyone will learn from your example and resist the senseless groping. Thank you, thank you, thank you for your courage and bravery!!”

“Thank you Yukari for your courage. You are the modern day Rosa Parks”

“Well, if somebody doesn’t stands up as Yukari did ,the world will be destroyed already… kudos for you!”

“TSA is to the United States as The Gestapo was to Nazi Germany!!”

“I live in Australia and was thinking of vacationing in the US. Until TSA follows the Inquisition and the Stasi into the dumpster of History, I’ll go elsewhere.”

“Keep twisting Yukari-san.”

Perhaps nothing disturbs me more than the comparisons of Miyamae to Rosa Parks and of the TSA to the Gestapo, the Stasi, and the Inquisition.

As for the suggestion that what Miyamae did is somehow equivalent to what the TSA does, that’s preposterous. Whether or not you agree with the actual method, the TSA has been charged with keeping airline flights safe. They’re not scanning/patting people down in order to make them uncomfortable, molest them, or embarrass them. They’re doing it because they’re trying to stop potential terrorists.

Furthermore, last I checked, we don’t do “an eye for an eye” here in America. We don’t rob convicted burglars, we don’t rape convicted rapists, we don’t punch kids that we catch fighting with classmates.

It seems that people have, as usual, fallen victim to black-and-white thinking. To them, the TSA’s screenings are “bad.” Therefore, anyone who resists them in any way must be “good.” Even if that resistance takes the form of an assault on someone’s body.

The supporters of Miyamae, particularly the ones who compare her to Rosa Parks, also seem to neglect the fact that real civil disobedience is powerful precisely because it harms no one. The image of Rosa Parks quietly sitting on the bus and refusing to stand is completely different from that of Miyamae forcefully grabbing and twisting the breast of another woman, a woman who is simply doing her job and trying to make a living.