Opinion
Perspectives on graffiti: Not worth the walls it's painted onn
I used to love graffiti. I would wander through the painted alleys of my college town and keep my eyes to the ground, hoping to spot another anti-consumerist stencil or one of the memorials to a suicidal friend. In high school, I was a small fish in a large and scary pond, which is what made graffiti so appealing. More than anything else, it was a way of controlling some part of my environment. Leaving a mark that says, "I was here." But I grew up, and I moved away. I became more confident in myself and found an environment where I didn't have to struggle for recognition in the same way. I put graffiti behind me, and its time other Hampshire students did the same. Read More
Perspectives on graffiti: Better than the buildings it's written on
What good does a blank wall do us? None, as far as I can tell. There is no defense for keeping our sidewalks silent. There is a stencil that recently appeared on the side of Emily Dickinson Hall that reads, "The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression" as said by W.E.B. DuBois. This statement epitomizes my argument. Whatever negative side effects might occur from graffiti are nothing compared to the negative side effects of repressing it. Read More
Unpopular views catch flack at liberal universities
Hold your breaths while I generalize for a moment. The university has become a notorious bastion of liberal rhetoric. Who other than idealist-cum-cynical leftist intellectuals-ahem, esteemed professors-would settle for barely-making-it wages until the tenure-in-the-sky descends upon them? By the time they emerge from grad school in their early 30s, well behind the career arcs of many of their peers, they've got to be pretty sure they're in the right politics. Consequently, in my experience, professors are not too concerned with sprinkling portions of their finally attained classroom forums with conservative perspective. The general sentiment is that the rest of the world will be varied, so let academia remain pure, even homogeneous. Read More