Opinion – Page 14 – The Transcript

The worst is yet to come

The other day my friends and I were trying to recall the most embarrassing concert we had ever attended. Performers such as Lil’ Kim and the Jo Bros were mentioned before it donned on us: the most embarrassing was yet to come – Drake Bell, courtesy of the Campus Programming Board’s (CPB) Bishop Bash.

This begs the question: why Drake Bell? What has Bell done besides singing the theme song for Drake and Josh and tweet about how much he hates Justin Bieber?

Seniors may vaguely recall the Hellogoodbye debacle of the spring of 2012. The event was so poorly attended the school decided to stop bringing in “big name” performers for a while; well, until now. Until Drake Bell.

When similar small schools have concerts featuring artists like Hoddie Allen, Chiddy Bang, T-Pain and Chance the Rapper, it’s pretty obvious why a Nickelodeon has-been doesn’t bring the excitement. The thing is, some of those artists and others like them are well within our price range. Obviously Delaware, Ohio, isn’t a sought after tour destination – but hey, for $20,000 one would probably be willing to make the trip.

According to The Huffington Post, in February of last year Bell filed for bankruptcy, with his debts totaling over $500,000. In 2013, Bell made only $14,099. We are paying him $20,000, which is more than his income for all of 2013. You are welcome Drake Bell.

CPB’s treasurer Paige Springhetti, a sophomore, said the remaining $30,000 in the club’s concert fund went toward the opening act – Liberty Deep Down – and production and advertising costs.

This $50,000—granted to CPB by WCSA—is coming from the $260 each student pays per year as an “activity fee.” If you do the math, each student is paying around $28 for Bishop Bash, not including the $10 one must pay for a ticket.

It will be interesting to see if attendance is high enough to make this Bishop Bash an annual event, but if 2012 is any indication, I wouldn’t say I’m optimistic.

The students who planned Bishop Bash are passionate and committed – that is obvious if you talk to any member of CPB about the event. I just wish their choice of artist was someone our campus could support without having to channel our 12-year-old selves, especially because we are the ones paying for him.

Finding a Friend

By: Campbell Scribner

I recently reread an essay by a friend of mine, a teacher and pastor, with whom I have kept in touch since college. Actually, not a teacher or a pastor: he quit both jobs a long time ago. They felt fake, he said, rote and repetitive and hollow. So he became a freelance writer.

He wrote the essay, and I first read it, in a climate of fear and uncertainty. The United States was engaged in irresponsible, possibly illegal military actions, and we had mutual friends getting involved (a little over their heads) with the peace movement. Corporate scandals led to a series of financial shocks, one of which cost my father his job. The liberal circles in which we moved were becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the conditions under which their food and clothing were produced, leading to heated arguments about what counted as “organic” or “fair trade.” My friend stopped eating sugar for a while.

He touched on all this in his essay, but the real focus was the precarious fate of young people as they entered the workforce. Finding employment required shameless self-promotion, he complained, if not outright dishonesty. And for what? So that one could earn a living exploiting others and performing pointless tasks, laboring (as he so floridly put it) under a “harness of routine and obsequiousness.”

It was no wonder that so many college graduates had grown cynical, shielding themselves with irony and rolling their eyes at any sort of idealism. The world was built on lying, cheating, and shopping, all of which the rising generation cruelly mocked but engaged in anyway, because they didn’t feel like they could change anything. The most noble of them might pursue academic careers (as I later did) but they would have to subsist on debt and charity, and even then would feel guilty for enjoying a level of success denied to others who were equally qualified. There was no way out. It seemed that we were all doomed to the moral corruption of adulthood.

Despite all of its hand-wringing, however, the essay ended with a hopeful image: young men and women not yet beholden to the capitalist system, free from the chains of consumption that constrained Western society. The term “Arab Spring” did not yet exist—and my friend abhorred both religious orthodoxy and political violence—but he spoke approvingly of the fervor and faith with which young Muslims had reshaped the Arab world. A similar group of American youths, willing to sacrifice financial gain for more moral, meaningful work, might radically transform our own country, he wrote, renewing protections for women, children, workers, and the elderly while establishing a robust sense of the common good.

That message inspired me. It didn’t matter that Ralph Waldo Emerson and I were of different backgrounds, or that his essay, “Man the Reformer,” first appeared in 1841. We were wrestling with the same questions about the individual’s place in the modern world, and I considered him a friend.

I do not mention all of this so that you will go and read Emerson’s essay (though you should), but instead to offer some advice for study at OWU. One of the benefits of a liberal arts education is the ability to recognize that others have confronted the same quandaries and challenges that you do, albeit in times and places that may seem remote. Whether you pursue history, literature, or some other discipline, remember that learning is most effective when it captures the immediacy and applicability—the moral stakes—of other people’s experiences. Making that connection can lead to the best kind of companionship.

Campbell Scribner is an education professor whose teaching-related interests include the history and philosophy of education and the history of childhood.

One choice. 7000 lives.

These chickens lived their entire, brief lives in this room. Photo courtesy of advocacy.britannica.com.

Nearly every American over the age of 18 is at least vaguely aware that the meat they consume doesn’t come from happy cows, pigs and chickens leading long, natural lives on a picturesque farm. However, most people try not to think about what these animals actually go through during their brief, hellish lives, and this willful ignorance needs to stop. Now.

The majority of birds and mammals that end up on platters in this country are born in factory farms. They’re called that because the animals are treated like manufactured products – mere objects with only monetary value. And the average American will eat about 7,000 of these “products” in his or her lifetime.

I’m not trying to preach. I’m not dead set on changing your mind and making you become a vegetarian or vegan. But eating animals is thrown in my face on a daily basis and I’m going to throw it right back.

The weight and size of the average hen in America over time. Photo courtesy of huffingtonpost.com.

Because nine out of ten non-marine animals killed for food in the United States are chickens, I’ll focus on them.

Factory workers sort newborn chicks by sex. Females used for meat often live for only a few months, and during that time they are pumped full of growth hormones. As a result, the hens grow so fast their legs break beneath them because they can no longer support their own weight.

But the chickens aren’t the only ones growing and aging at an unnatural rate. These growth hormones are still present in the chickens’ meat when people buy it at the grocery store, which is the main reason Americans go through puberty about a year earlier than they did a century ago.

That’s not all. The ends of the hens’ beaks are sliced off with a hot blade without the use of anesthesia because the cramped quarters the hens live in make them go insane and peck at each other violently. The hens are commonly killed for their meat at such a young age that they still make the peeping sounds commonly associated with chicks.

Hens used for eggs become prisoners in their own bodies because of genetic engineering, which causes them to produce 250 eggs each year. This is nearly triple what the average hen produced a century ago. They live their entire lives in cages, never seeing sunlight or breathing fresh air.

Because male chicks cannot lay eggs and are less valued for their meat than females, they are killed immediately. A common murder method is to dump them into a “macerator,” a grinding machine that shreds them alive. This happens to 260 million male chicks every year in America.

Of course, meat tastes good to many people, and it can be difficult to give up. Your food options become more limited. You have to deal with people asking you lots of rude, ignorant questions. For me, those questions even came from my family and best friends.

But you know what? It’s worth it. I now lead a healthier and more ethical life, will save thousands of animals in my lifetime and make a positive difference in the environment. So the next time someone asks me, “Why are you a vegetarian?” I’m not going to list the million and one reasons I make the choice every day to abstain from eating meat. I’m just going to say, “Why are you not?”

*Free t-shirt not included

March Madness

My favorite time of the year is finally here. While some prefer the summer months, and others like fall or December, I prefer March for one simple reason: the Madness.

The moment that every basketball and sports fan has been waiting for is upon us. The NCAA Division 1 basketball tournament tips off this week, and fans of college athletics can rejoice in the biggest event of the year.

As a testament to the enormity of the Madness, last year’s revenues were over $1 billion – more than the entirety of the NFL playoffs.

That figure is merely nominal, since everyone knows how big March Madness is. Everyone also knows that the first four days of the tournament in the middle of March are the greatest four days of the year.

An extravaganza of basketball begins this week, as games will be on 24/7 starting today and lasting until Sunday. Legends are made, hearts are crushed and unimaginable stories become reality. During these four days, the first two rounds of the 64-team single-elimination frenzy will take place.

You’ve been filling out NCAA Division I basketball tournament brackets since you’ve been able to write. Fortunes are made and mortgages are lost. Brackets are everything this month, evidenced by the $1 million prize for whoever manages the impossible task of predicting the perfect bracket, the most elusive item in all of athletics. According to Bleacher Report, you have better odds of getting attacked by a shark, struck by lightning or being an NBA player.

The atmosphere of each game is always stunning, and somehow the next game is somehow even better. The ever-amusing David verses Goliath matchups litter the first round.

Yet, more importantly than the revenues, the bets, and the brackets, are the memories of each NCAA tournament. Those last for a lifetime, whether players and fans like it or not.

Kentucky fans still wear shirts that say, “I hate Christian Laettner” across the chest after what became known as “The Shot” made by Duke’s Laettner in the 1992 semifinals to beat the Wildcats by one.

In the category of improbable villains, Michigan’s star Chris Webber is the first that comes to mind. As a member of the iconic Fab 5 Wolverines team in the 1990s, Webber mistakenly called a timeout when his team had none left, which cost Michigan the national championship.

Or if you’re feeling especially nostalgic on this throwback Thursday, another famous improbable villain is Georgetown’s Eric “Sleepy” Floyd, who accidentally passed the ball to North Carolina’s James Worthy, helping the Tar Heels seal the 1982 championship.

While the villains are remembered, the heroes are ultimately celebrated. Who can forget the NC State “alley-oop” to win the 1983 national championship against Houston that sent coach Jim Valvano running around the court in shock?

If we’re talking about shock, George Mason’s Cinderella run to the Final Four as an 11 seed definitely comes to mind. As does Mario Chalmers’ game-tying three-pointer with just over two seconds left in regulation. Propelling the Kansas Jayhawks to the championship, shocking not only the then Memphis Tigers coach John Calipari and future NBA MVP Derrick Rose, but a whole nation.

Whether you’re watching to root on the alma mater, to win the bracket pool at work or just out of shear enjoyment; sit back, relax and enjoy the spectacle that is March Madness. That’s what I’ll be doing.

*Free t-shirt not included

Saint Patrick’s Day

By: Ben Miller and Matt Cohen

Just like us, you’ve probably been celebrating St. Patrick’s Day your whole life. And even though you’re not quite sure why it’s a holiday, dressing like leprechauns, pinching people and day-drinking is more than enough to jump on the Patty’s bandwagon.

But just with anything else, no one likes fair-weather fans. Listen up to gain some St. Patty’s cred for this year’s festivities.

What you should know:

Saint Patrick’s Day, or the Feast of Saint Patrick, commemorates the arrival of Christianity in Ireland and Saint Patrick himself. The holiday always falls on March 17, the day Saint Patrick died. Apparently he was a pretty cool dude.

He was born in the fourth century to a wealthy family in Roman Britain. He was kidnapped at the age of 16 by Irish raiders and taken as a slave to Gaelic Ireland. Just imagine that for a second. Irish raiders! Well, turns out he spent six years with the raiders, found God and went back home where he became a priest and converted Irish pagans to Christianity.

There you have it, a little more about the exciting day.

What you need to know:

In my book, Saint Patty’s day represents the coming of spring. Believe it or not, the weather is warming up, grass is visible and the sun is kind of shining. Enjoy the day outside drinking liquids and soaking up the rays of sun. Just like Patty would have wanted.

Green beer tastes the same as normal beer. The dyed liquid is a festive treat and before long you will found out the only addition to the colored beer is that your mouth will be dyed as well. You’ll look like one big Saint Patty’s day monstah that likes those green marshmallows from Lucky Charms a little too much.

Photo courtesy of stpatricksday-2015.com.

If you’re like us, green is not a prominent color of your existing wardrobe. The last minute $5 Walmart purchase is always an option. That is, if you want to be wearing the same corny shirt as three other guys at the same party as you (You don’t want that, trust us). Instead, get a plain green shirt and come up with your own St. Patty’s Day slogan to write on.

Disclaimer: If you’re stumped with coming up with any good original slogans like we are right now, let us know, maybe we can help each other out. And we’re supposed to be the writers. I know, right?

So, we think you are now ready to have a great Saint Patrick’s Day. Go make your bro Patrick proud. And always remember: Keep calm and leprechaun. We’re hilarious.

Too much hot air

By: TC Brown

By many measures, this winter has been a pain in areas where the sun rarely reaches.

Dreadful weather is bad enough on its own, but it can also be a real boon for the radical element that deny the existence of climate change.

The cold, snow and ice morph into a convenient prop for these folks and their head-in-the-sand outlook that says changes in climate are not fueled by the world’s booming population and the ever increasing numbers of people driving fuel-burning vehicles.

Forget that in 2013 a United Nations panel, which includes thousands of scientists from around the world, said it is a 95 percent certainty that humans are the “dominant cause” behind the monumental changes to our climate.

They’re not alone. NASA, the National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. Department of Defense, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Meteorological Society agree, as noted recently in The Columbus Dispatch.

Scientists seem unequivocal in their reasoning, so who’s to argue?

Send in the clowns.

At the end of February, Sen. James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican and well-known denier, packed snow into a large ball and lugged it into the Senate chambers. “Do you know what this is? It’s a snowball,” Inhofe said.

Not getting anything past this Congress.

Inhofe explained he had made the snowball outside and that it was very cold, “very unseasonable.” Really? Snow in February, who knew.

There’s more. Earlier this month employees of Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection revealed that they are forbidden to use phrases like “global warming” and “climate change” in official communications.

Soon after that news broke a former staffer from the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources said they had been “explicitly ordered” to remove all references to climate change from the organization’s website.

And the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources also deleted links and documents related to climate change from its website. Not to be outdone, 39 Republican U.S. senators opposed an amendment that blamed human activity for climate shifts.

Playing politics with this somber and factual meteorological phenomena is a very dangerous game. Last year, that same U.N. panel of global scientists issued a report that said greenhouse gas emissions are the highest in history. The gasses come from a variety of sources, especially from the burning of fossil fuels for electricity, heat and transportation, and can trap and hold heat in the atmosphere. Globally, the ten hottest years on record have occurred since 1998.

In 2008, I spent six months helping climate change scientists develop multimedia content for their website. Frankly, I was startled by what I learned and that was seven years ago.

Glaciers and ice packs in mountain regions are in full retreat. Melting ice is expected to contribute to a continuing rise in sea levels, threatening many costal cities and potentially displacing millions. Global sea levels rose a little more than 6 ½ inches in the last century and the rate in the last decade is nearly double that, according to NASA. Small Pacific islands are sinking.

The changing climate is likely to fuel more violent and costly storms, create regional droughts and threaten the natural habitat of animal and plant life. The Nature Conservancy predicts that if the changes continue to occur rapidly, one-fourth of Earth’s species could be headed toward extinction by 2050.

Superstorm Sandy, which plowed into New Jersey in 2012, cost at least $65 billion in damages, making it the second most costly storm since Katrina wiped out the New Orleans region, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Sobering stuff, but that’s simply a big-picture scan of the potential danger and damage. Deeper evidence abounds should one look, and I strongly urge the students on this campus to get engaged.

The deniers like to claim that this is all a liberal media hoax and that little if any proof exists. Guess what drives that view? Money.

It will cost many industries real cash to clean up and reduce carbon emissions and many of those organizations and their political allies have said, “No thanks, not enough proof.”

Helen Keller, the deaf and blind author, political activist and lecturer once said, “The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but not vision.”

The scientific jury is still out on whether it is too late for us to do anything to reverse these processes. It’s clear we all need to at least try. But this country, in fact the entire planet, needs vision regarding climate change and how we as a human race might diminish these looming dangers. Politically motivated denial simply digs a deeper hole for everyone.

I’ve heard the denier’s arguments that the changes now underway have occurred on the Earth before. Certainly true, but the planet was not home to 7 billion people at the time. That’s where the dangers lie.

It’s going to take personal and even global energy to try to turn the direction in which we are headed. It’s a vital calling, if for nothing else, one simple fact – the wellbeing of future generations. It’s time to stop the political gamesmanship and act.

If we don’t, the kids will pay the real price.

TC Brown is an adjunct instructor of journalism at Ohio Wesleyan, an author, and a journalist of 25 years. His work has been featured in many publications, including The New York Times and Cleveland’s The Plain Dealer.

Shame on you: leave my TV alone

I consider myself to be a fairly smart person. I read The New York Times every day, I understand world politics and I can hold my own in just about any conversation. But my ultimate guilty pleasure is reality television. And by reality TV, I mean the trashiest television possible. Keeping Up with the Kardashians, check. The Real Housewives of wherever, check. Any random television marathon that I stumble upon, I’ll definitely watch it.

I can’t help but like the outlandish drama that unfolds before my eyes. Maybe because my life is so boring, the only drama I can get is on television. But maybe that’s not the worst thing. As I’m writing this, I’m watching a Keeping Up with the Kardashians marathon in preparation for the new season premiere.

People like to make fun of me for my guilty pleasure. I mean, it’s not so much a guilty pleasure because I’m very vocal about my love of trash TV. But I see the scowl on some people’s faces whenever I bring up the Kardashian family in conversation. The disdain is apparent. I used to feel like I had to justify myself in my television habits. But I don’t do that anymore. Why do I have to justify what television shows I like? So what if I like to unwind while watching old seasons of Keeping Up with the Kardashians? There are definitely television shows that people watch that I turn my nose to, but I definitely don’t say anything to them. Well, except now.

Let’s be real: different people have different television preferences. And that’s completely normal. I try not to judge people’s television habits, but when they criticize mine, I can’t help but bite back. I get defensive and pull out the whole “smart” card. But why do I have to say I’m smart in order to watch trashy television? Watching trashy television doesn’t diminish my academic achievements or my political knowledge. It adds another facet to me; it adds to my popular culture knowledge. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

You never know how people unwind or what their secret television habits are. Now I’m not saying everyone watches trashy television like I do, but they could be watching something you may not want to watch. But hey, you could be watching something people may normally never turn on.

So let’s stop shaming people based on the television shows they watch. People are entitled to watch anything they want without judgment. Everyone has their guilty pleasures, be it television, music or movies. And who am I to judge your favorite show? If you don’t judge me, I won’t judge you.

It’s hip and so are you

The newest G-Eazy album cover. Photo courtesy of uproxx.com.

An album was brought to my attention a couple weeks ago, and I haven’t been able to stop listening to it since.

The album is called These Things Happen by G-Eazy. The hip-hop artist has become a well-known name around many college campuses and his hits have gone viral.

G-Eazy was born in Oakland, California and knew he wanted to become a musician in 9th grade geometry class. Upon realizing he couldn’t focus during class he turned to music. He wrote music to express himself, which soon lead him to become a rapper, songwriter and producer.

The musician has released many albums and mix tapes. Of all of his music, These Things Happen easily is the one album that people should be listening to.

Many singles were released from the album before it dropped in July 2014. The songs that I would suggest off the album are: I Mean It, an anthem to a carefree lifestyle of unabashed luxury and Almost Famous, a jaded song about enjoying the perks of fame before the limelight inevitably fades. Although I enjoy every song on the album, these two are definitely the jams that I listen to the most.

The album will appeal to any person who chooses to listen, which is why it has made its way high on various charts including number three on the Billboard 200 list. In July 2014 MTV placed the young rapper on the Artists To Watch list. Go and listen to it for yourself, it won’t disappoint.

Seriously, go.