Today I write to you, members of the Drexel community, in hopes of making you aware of the situation that Venezuelan people have been in since Feb. 12. Venezuela is a country down in South America, and here in the U.S. it is mostly known for its role in beauty pageants, in setting up international oil prices, and for its former president, Hugo R. Chavez, sticking his finger in the U.S. government’s eye. Other than those few things, my country is not of much interest to the U.S. media.

Right now, however, we need the attention of the international community. Since Feb. 12, my country has been going through a series of demonstrations that, although started out as a pacific way to protest against the current government, have turned quite violent as days pass by. The Feb. 12 rally was organized by student groups nationwide, and its purpose was to condemn the government’s inaction in fighting delinquency and crime rates, as well as its overwhelming power to limit democratic practices across the nation. Politics, opportunism and repression mixed, and Venezuela’s streets nowadays are the perfect example of massive civil unrest.

Thinking of Venezuela’s current situation as a war between President Maduro’s supporters and the people who oppose him is nothing but shortsighted, reductionist and harmful. The current civil unrest is neither red (the government’s color) nor blue (the opposition’s color). It is tricolor: yellow, blue and red like Venezuela’s flag, like all Venezuelans’ flags, for people on the street are not necessarily arguing whether they support President Maduro or the opposing forces. Most people on the street are collectively crying out that they need a government that listens to them and that responds to their needs. And here we are not talking about fancy things; we are talking about basic needs.
The violence and crime rate that we experience on a daily basis is tricolor. It does not discriminate. Robbers and kidnappers do not care about what side of the political spectrum Venezuelans are on. They will rob you, kidnap you and kill you without a reason, without being aware of your political preferences, for the most part. They may kill you even if they do not rob you, but well, Venezuelans’ lives nowadays are worth the same as our country’s currency — nothing! Victims have been children of diplomats, bodyguards of current government officials, well-known media-related people, and of course, countless other Venezuelans who, like you and me, would not make it onto the news except as a number, if at all: “253 people died in Caracas this weekend.” Safety is a basic need.

Another basic need is food. Venezuelans do not need a supermarket aisle full of cereal boxes; we just need corn flour so we can make our staple foods: arepas (corn cake) and bread. Venezuelans do not need a supermarket aisle full of all imaginable versions of milk; we just need milk for our kids. Venezuelans do not need a supermarket aisle full of single, double, triple toilet paper rolls; we just need toilet paper, well, for obvious reasons. Venezuelans do not need supermarkets full of different versions of the same product; we just need to be able to buy some very basic products. We need to be able to feed our families and ourselves, just like we were able to in the past.

And another basic need is to live in an environment that respects democratic practices. I understand that this is neither a need nor a common privilege in some places around the world. Yet, according to Venezuela’s government, Venezuela is a democracy and lives in democracy. So, my question to you is, how is it that most people outside of Venezuela do not know of this civil unrest? How is it that major news agencies, newspapers and TV stations have not reported this news at all?

Certainly, one reason could be lack of interest. But that is not what I would like to focus on here. The reason that concerns me is that these media people have not been able to, for the most part. The government of Venezuela has controlled, limited or simply blocked people’s access to any reporting that addresses the civil unrest that the country is experiencing. It basically ordered TV and radio stations to shut up. And in Venezuela the government has enormous power over the media. Not only does it require licenses for the television and radio stations to function, but it also decides when to take over their air time, when to expropriate them and when to revoke their licenses, even if for no reason.

So Venezuelans have turned to social media to make their voices heard. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have basically become the only resources we have to let the people of the world know that democratic practices in Venezuela are highly questionable, that freedom of speech is nonexistent and that random gunshots are killing dozens of Venezuelans on a regular basis. Social media has become that microphone that Venezuelans do not have access to anymore, just like it did for countless other people a few years ago during the Arab Spring. Will it last? I do not know. On Feb. 13, Nu Wexler, a Twitter spokesman, acknowledged that the Venezuelan government was blocking images on Twitter. So, who knows?

It bears repeating though that the massive civil unrest that is currently happening in Venezuela is not bicolor; it is tricolor. It is yellow, blue and red, the colors of all Venezuelans — this civil unrest affects all of us. For even if something is accomplished at the end of the day, and I do hope this is the case, some Venezuelans have already died, some Venezuelans have been injured, some Venezuelans are being abused, and some Venezuelan businesses have been damaged, among other tragedies. I invite you to watch Andreina Nash’s video, “What’s going on in Venezuela in a nutshell.” It will provide you with a clear visual picture of today’s reality in my country. Nash is a Venezuelan student currently attending the University of Florida.

So, if this is a “war,” then it is the battle of countless courageous students, and now also moms, dads, seniors, and public and private employees fighting for their right to live a safe, well-fed life in which they can express themselves — publicly or otherwise — without fear of retribution. Nothing less, nothing more.

Mariana Mendez is an assistant teaching professor in the Department of English and Philosophy at Drexel University. She can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.

The post Violence in Venezuela appeared first on The Triangle.

They say you never get a second chance to make a good first impression. My first impression of the Philadelphia Auto Show was poor, considering the Ford Motor Company-sponsored breakfast had run out of coffee and was only serving decaf. This was at 8:30 a.m., minutes after registration had opened. Most of the automotive bigwigs had yet to file in, and the coffee supply was already depleted.

Mercedes-Benz was just one of several automakers who showcased models at the annual Philadelphia Auto Show at the Pennsylvania Convention Center. Photo courtesy of Ajon Brodie.

It was a bad sign.

Media Day was crammed with the only the biggest names, like The Guy Who Owns The Bucks County Ford Dealership, The Intern From Car and Driver, The Guy Who Narrates The Kars4Kids Commercial, and The Guy Who Sometimes Drives a Maserati Through Campus But I Think He Goes To the University of Pennsylvania. Only the best and brightest were allowed to attend this exclusive event, and I felt extraordinarily privileged to be there.

Ford’s press conference was up first, and a regional executive came up to talk at us about the new cars.

The new F-150’s gimmick (which was unveiled at the New York Auto Show already, the Ford guy explained) was its recent change to an aluminum body, “just like” the Ford guy said, “the Bradley Fighting Vehicle,” which was “proven to be tough by combat conditions.” (The Bradley has been retrofitted with steel skirts because the aluminum armor has been proven to be ineffective.)

The new 2015 Mustang’s gimmick (“which we already unveiled at the Detroit Auto Show,” the Ford guy was quick to add) was that this model would include independent rear suspension, which was an amazing modern innovation.

The 2015 Ford Transit Connect is now being marketed to families as “a more fuel efficient alternative to the traditional minivan.” It is yet another attempt to fill the gap left by the departure of the station wagon, one that automakers have been trying to fill with crossovers, compact SUVs and Pontiac Azteks for decades now. Features of the Transit Connect include less seating capacity, worse fuel economy and uglier aesthetics as compared to a station wagon. This ended the Ford press conference.

Jeep, of course, came to the show with their traditional “take a ride in a circle over extreme terrain in a Jeep” gimmick. And so I did, in what the driver explained was the Jeep Wrangler “Willys” edition. Once he mentioned that it was the “Willys” edition, I naturally asked if it had a place to mount a machine gun. He did not understand and just looked at me like I was some kind of terrorist.

This ride, of course, had a catch: You had to fill out a survey at the end. I tried to answer as vaguely as possible, but the photographer who went with me actually put down his phone number. He was immediately contacted over the phone by a local Jeep dealership.

Jeep held its press conference shortly after our ride ended. Dozens of journalists showed up, and the Jeep people shoved them all into two cars and took them around the off-road track. I decided to abstain from what was now essentially a clown car ride and went to look at the rest of the floor.

To keep it short, BMW had a new compact electric car they had elected not to call the eSetta and had exhibited a car marked “U.S. Olympic Team,” which, presumably, they had forgotten to send to Sochi. Mazda had put up a billboard stating, “On any given weekend, more Mazdas and Mazda-powered cars are road raced than any other brand,” neglecting to mention that most of those races were being held at 2:00 a.m. on the Delaware waterfront near Olde Kensington. Volvo, in a last-minute fit of panic, had brought a 240 from the late eighties. BMW and Mercedes-Benz were the only companies with enough balls to bring station wagons. And while we were looking at all these, my photographer was receiving incessant phone calls from local Jeep dealerships.

Media Day, on the whole, was a bore, and I left early to go to my rescheduled geology exam. The real story, I reasoned, would unfold during an actual open-to-the-public day.

The Philadelphia Auto Show attracts people from all over southeastern Pennsylvania. Suburban families and university students rub shoulders with bizarre quasi-rednecks with more money and Duck Dynasty merchandise than brains. Or clothing. Beer bellies hung out from under stained polo shirts. Inappropriate sandals and cargo shorts combos were worn. Cigarette-smoking older women showed more skin than was strictly necessary. I watched a 300-pound man laboriously squeeze himself into a Corvette C7, reducing the vehicle’s power-to-weight ratio by perhaps half in the process, and thought, “I paid $12 to see this.”

The human zoo could be avoided, of course, if you stayed away from the Ford and Chevy exhibits, as my friends and I did. We instead looked at BMWs. We looked at Cadillacs. We looked at people looking at Maseratis and Lamborghinis, because it was impossible to get through the crowd to look at the actual cars.

We looked at the classic cars. They were beautiful. The owners … not so much.

That, of course, led us to Dub.

What is Dub?

Dub is an event that will change your outlook on the automotive world. Dub is beautiful, and Dub is awful. Dub is in the basement of the auto show. Dub is an experience not to be missed or to be repeated.

It is, in short, a Thing.

The first thing that hits you when you walk into the Dub show is the bass. The second and third things that hit you are also the bass.

The fourth thing that hits you is that everyone there is wearing baseball hats backward.

Then, you see the cars.

On red carpets and behind velvet ropes sat garishly modified cars in gaudy colors. Their owners, in wife beaters and gold chains, dared you to say anything negative about them. Everything was represented, from Camrys to Camaros, decked out to look much faster than they actually were. That flame decal? Adds five horsepower. Those sponsorship stickers? Ten horsepower each. That fake hood scoop? That adds, like, fifty horsepower, man.

Many of the cars were what the Dub industry calls “hella flush.” These cars had aftermarket rims so large that the tire was little more than a smear of rubber. They were also lowered enough that hitting a decent-sized squirrel would do a number on the front bumper, especially if said bumper was part of a cheap plastic body kit.

Vendors sold automotive vinyl with skulls and tribal patterns, aftermarket window tinting, fake V-TEC stickers, and, inexplicably, Girl Scout cookies. A paint shop exhibited a car they had made look and feel like it was made out of nasty, cheap plastic. Michael Vick’s Bentley Continental rubbed shoulders with a Toyota Camry with a plastic body kit and a fake carbon fiber spoiler. Anything not bolted down vibrated across the floor from the incessant bass. It was not a pretty sight, and I was glad to leave. Thus ended the auto show trip.

To get to the important points, the best car on the floor was the Subaru Impreza WRX. The worst car was the Smart Fortwo. Figuring out what’s in between is left as an exercise to the reader. The Auto Show runs until Feb. 16 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center.

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Why doesn’t Drexel have a football team? Part I // Part II // Part III

Over the last three weeks, The Triangle has run a series of stories looking to answer the question, “Why doesn’t Drexel University have a football team?” It took readers through the history of the team, starting from its humble beginnings in the late 1800s to the ultimate dropping of the sport in 1973 to where the University is today without it. Having been a part of the 1973 team as a junior wide receiver, I think Drexel should consider reviving their football program.

The schedule for the 1973 season consisted of Fordham University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, United States Merchant Marine Academy, Gettysburg College, Long Island University Post, Lafayette College, Albright College and the United States Coast Guard Academy. What makes Drexel in 2014 different from the schools that the 1973 football team played? All of these other schools still play football, and Drexel does not.

Over the last 40 years, Drexel administrators have been handing out the convenient Kool-Aid that cost is the real issue and that football is too expensive a sport to fund. If that’s the case, and the majority of the 1973 football schedule schools field similar sports teams as Drexel, then how could those schools afford to maintain their football programs over the last 40 years?
A little Internet research indicates that Drexel, by far, has the largest undergraduate population of the nine schools, with Fordham having the second most with over 4,000 fewer undergraduates than Drexel’s over 12,000. The USCGA has fewer than 1,000 undergraduate students and can still field a football team.

All of these smaller schools can afford to play football, but Drexel can’t? Interesting.

Drexel administrators did a masterful job of killing off the football program in 1973, using a blitzkrieg-type approach by shutting out all stakeholders from the lightning-quick process — a process that seems eerily reminiscent of what has recently happened at Temple University. For the next 40 years, they further ensured football would never return by putting administrators in place with no football pedigree or, in some cases, no collegiate athletics pedigree at all.

The arguments made by current Director of Athletics Eric Zillmer in the third part of The Triangle’s series revealed the negative bias that Drexel administration still has towards football.

He said, “The farther north you go, the tougher [football] is to sell.” Zillmer has obviously not attended a Pennsylvania State University game recently, as they consistently draw crowds of over 100,000 despite being located in the northern part of the United States.

Zillmer also spoke about the fact that Drexel would be playing bad football if they revived the program. Of course, one could not expect a revived football program to come out of the gates in peak form. Yes, it would take a couple of years to rebuild a program, but I believe the benefits would far exceed the initial growing pains.

The reference he made to the concussion lawsuit at La Salle University related to a football incident in the mid-2000s is also a bit off base. Although it is classified as a club sport, Drexel still supports an ice hockey team, a collision sport that has a higher chance of delivering a concussion. There is inherent risk in every sport, not just football.

Finally, Zillmer referenced a Division III football program not fitting into the current structure of the athletic department. Maybe it’s time to reevaluate the current structure. Maybe it’s time to think a little outside of the box. Wouldn’t Drexel be better off rebranding itself as a big fish in the little pond of D-III athletics rather than a little fish in the big pond of Division I athletics?
A move to D-III could offer Drexel the opportunity to compete for national championships, not just conference championships like at the D-I level. Competing for national championships would bring greater attention to the school, and, more importantly, it would rid Drexel of being the ugly stepsister of the Big 5. Plus, on top of it all, the student athletes would be able to live the full college experience with athletics serving as a major enhancement instead of an experience dominated by mediocrity at the D-I level.

So, back to the question at hand, “Why doesn’t Drexel have a football team?” I don’t think the answer is cost, nor do I think it’s perception. I think the answer is a lack of leadership by administration, alumni and the student body.

Reviving Drexel football could be a reality if it’s done collaboratively: students need to lead the charge, alumni need to lend support and the administration needs to change its current thinking. The student body, as consumers of the Drexel education product, could use their considerable influence on campus to mobilize a call to action. The students are the reason football came to be at Drexel in the first place.

Maybe the bigger question is, “Why should Drexel bring back football?”

For students, football is another fun experience to deposit into their bank of college memories. It is my understanding that Football attracts the most spectators per game of any sport at the universities that field a team, and therefore lends itself to being an event as much as it is a game.

From an event perspective, there’s nothing like a football pre-game tailgate on a crisp, cool fall afternoon — I can almost smell the hamburgers and hot dogs cooking on charcoal grills now. The emotional roller coaster ride during a competitive game with all of its ebbs and flows, and the post-game bonding and partying with players, fans and alumni, are all a welcome break from the grind of academic life and provide a lifetime of fond memories.

For players, football is an opportunity to play a sport they love at a high level, while still having the time to enjoy a full college experience, especially in an increasingly energized, vibrant and college-rich city like Philadelphia. The attraction to compete for a national championship would be too compelling to pass up for many athletes.

For alumni, football is another way to feel and stay connected with the Drexel community and the Drexel experience as a whole, especially on a beautiful fall football homecoming weekend. The first part of The Triangle’s series showed what the homecoming tradition was all about and how it can bring Drexel’s past and present together for a memorable weekend.

For administrators, moving from D-I to D-III could improve the University’s athletic brand by putting all sports in a position to play for championships. From a cost perspective, athletic scholarships are prohibited at the D-III level, so costs go down or are replaced with financial aid. From a sports positioning perspective, Drexel would be able to market itself as a school that attracts D-I skill level players that want a full college experience, not just one that is 24 hours, seven days a week, 365 days a year — an only-enough-time-to-play-my-sport experience.

As a college athlete who has now come full circle — not only playing football at a collegiate level at Drexel but also seeing my daughter perform at a high level in collegiate D-III field hockey — I have a unique perspective on both college sports and the college experience. Although she had the talent to play at the D-I level, she chose a D-III school because she wanted a full college experience, not the onerous commitment that her D-I colleagues unhappily endured. She is the kind of student athlete that Drexel should be aspiring to bring into its sports programs.

As an eternal optimist, I am still hopeful that one day I’ll be walking onto the Drexel field for a football homecoming game.

Steve Spagnolo is an alumnus and former football player at Drexel University. He can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.

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Late last month, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling revealed her regret about pairing the ginger and the brain in her saga’s final chapters. In an interview with Emma Watson, Rowling said she felt a relationship between Ron and Hermione would be fraught with problems, and the couple would need to spend a lot of time in counseling. She asserted that a relationship between Harry and Hermione would have made more sense. Fan response was instantaneous and wide ranging, from “I always knew it!” to “How could she do this? They were meant to be!” The opinions are as varied and as creative as some of the fan fiction.

The Harry Potter fandom has again demonstrated its ability to rise from the almost silent reaches of nearly-but-not-quite-dead fandoms (we didn’t go that far; we are after all, the fandom that launched a thousand fandoms — all due respect to the originals: Tolkien fans), but like the sounds of a dragon rustling in his sleep, the recent movement in the fandom has been subtle, but possibly important. The renewed debate raises an important question: Who the f— cares?

“Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” was first published in 1997, and for the past 17 years Hermione has been distinguished as a pro-feminist character that young girls could genuinely look up to without impunity. This character was a breath of fresh air. In a world that treats women like commodities, reducing us to our most basic ability to help men rule the world, Hermione held her own. At age 11 she cracked a seven-part riddle designed to stump the most talented of wizards. At age 13 she deduced and protected the secret of a beloved professor; she consistently excelled at her academics while founding and promoting the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare, maintained apparently healthy relationships with other female characters (no cat fights in the corridors), and was recognized by students and staff alike as incredibly smart and talented. In the final chapters of the series, Hermione made the tough calls, sacrificing her happiness with her Muggle family for the mission she committed herself to at such a young age. Hermione’s strength as a character, her value as a person, has never been tied to her relationship status. When 10-plus years of hints and suspicions were confirmed and she and Ron made it official, it was barely a blip on the radar for most readers, a sort of “sounds about right” moment among the many emotions stirred by the story’s end.

Hermione has been at the center of the “Potter-Twilight” debate as the most shining example of a well-balanced female character to contrast with Bella Swan’s (let’s be frank) weak, helpless, indecisive and self-pitying uselessness. Harry Potter was never a story about a love triangle; even the fans — who are notorious for disregarding canon in favor of their own understanding of characters’ motivations — respected the dynamic of “The Trio.” To be clear, for those of you who don’t know or remember, the days at Hogwarts were not without their drama; it’s a story of growth and maturity after all, but there were clear lines. Harry liked Hermione but, more importantly, he respected her; he even states on more than one occasion that they wouldn’t have come far without her.

Rowling’s decision to rethink Ron and Hermione’s relationship is nothing new; writers always find something they want to change, but why is this change such a big deal? Rowling’s statements come with her trademark lack of fuss. The fan reaction, however, has been troubling. To have such a strong, independent character reduced to her choice in boyfriend is a major step backward. Say what you will about the f-word, but feminists have warned against this type of reductionism for decades. Women talk about it in the context of every aspect of our lives, being reduced to sex objects for the entertainment of men, pawns for political gain in Washington, one dimensional props for fiction writers.

An example? In the latest Star Trek films, J.J. Abrams (the great film maker that he is) managed to take one of this country’s most openly progressive TV shows of its time and reduce it to a whitewashed, misogynistic joke for the sake of box office sales. The decades old standoff between Star Trek and Star Wars fans has often been summed up in the notion that Star Trek, notoriously slow and cerebral, was for the more philosophical viewers, while Star Wars was big, flashy and action packed; a summer blockbuster type for a wider, more diverse viewer. “Star Trek” (2009) and its sequel, “Star Trek Into Darkness” (2013), were Trek movies for Star Wars fans who think they know Star Trek; it even had the obnoxious scene with a half-naked woman. Star Trek has always had a tenuous relationship with critics and wider audiences but that was part of the charm of Gene Rodenberry’s universe: he wasn’t targeting billions of people. Star Trek (like many shows in the early days of television) was targeted for a niche audience, for the type of person who can sit through a one-hour morality lesson every week for nearly 40 years.

In the process of making a megahit, J.J. Abrams stripped Star Trek of that legacy of careful intellectualism in favor of fights on the bridge and half-naked women. My irritation at seeing my childhood reduced to the most basic and un-Trek qualities pales in the wake of my fury at Abrams’ treatment of his female characters. Setting aside for a moment the gratuitous changing scene with Dr. Carol Marcus, which the director himself later admitted was unnecessary and should have been cut, ignoring for a second the casting of a white actor for a role made iconic by Mexican actor Ricardo Montalban (though British actor Benedict Cumberbatch’s chilling performance as Kahn is almost reason enough to let that slide), let’s talk about the writers’ and director’s treatment of women in this reimagined story. Lieutenant Uhura is a character that stands out to many fans for breaking the color barrier, refusing to let men fight her battles, and never (in the whole of Nichelle Nichols’ tenure in the role) being shown naked just for the sake of being ogled by male viewers (we don’t talk about the fan dance).

In 2009, Lt. Uhura is a beautiful, talented linguist who doesn’t take crap from any man, not even future captain James T. Kirk — as she should be. An hour later, a character that to my admittedly porous memory only had two kisses in four TV seasons and seven feature films — one of them by the power of an alien race — is reduced to a stereotypical female role: the girlfriend. Lt. Uhura is now in a relationship with Commander Spock, an interesting twist that I initially liked. I soon grew concerned about when I realized that the Enterprise bridge crew, which had been an ensemble, was now reduced to a buddy action film where the captain and first officer run off on their adventures while the remaining senior staff pipe up once in a while just to remind us that they are there. Also, the one speaking female character is deflated to a cardboard cutout to be stored away when the boys play and pulled out again, when it suits the needs of the men on the bridge. In the ’60s and ’70s Uhura contributed to the discussion on the bridge; her experience and her voice were valued.

In 2013, we return to the Enterprise to find the boys have once again run into a proper adventure while our towering example to all girls since 1966 is, in the space of three years, reduced yet again, this time to the role of the whiny girlfriend. You know the character I’m talking about: in the heat of the moment, when all the big strong men are plotting to save the day, she huffs loudly in a corner or makes snide comments under her breath until someone grants her enough attention to air her grievances, namely: “Why won’t you pay attention to me and our relationship Spock? I know we’re piloting into enemy territory and our deception is likely to fail, possibly resulting in our catastrophic death and the ruin of the Federation, but I think we should talk about our feelings!”

This type of character reduction is exactly what the narrative around Hermione had been structured to avoid for nearly two decades. She is singularly recognized and valued for her intelligence and contributions in and out of the classroom, yet she’s still a teenage girl. For several books she silently pines for a boy who doesn’t see her as anything more than an answer sheet for the pop quiz of life. Instead of rolling up in a ball asking the universe “WHY?” (ahem, Bella Swan, ahem), she expresses her hurt feelings with a childish bout of the silent treatment. Then Hermione does something amazing: she gets on with her life, she sees other people, she studies for exams, she puts some distance between herself and Ron, using the opportunity to spend more time with another group of friends. This process of navigating the murky waters of adolescent love is healthy, but more importantly, it’s real. Hermione is, figuratively speaking, real.

Some readers like a good love triangle, but the author has always been a fierce protector of Hermione’s integrity. For more than 15 years, the cast, fans, production crew, media, academics, even other characters cited Hermione’s consistent example of a character who was real, real brains, real heart, real quality, as her greatest quality. The fans even made their voices heard when it appeared producers of the “Order of the Phoenix” 3-D Imax posters decided to enhance actress Emma Watsons’s chest to a more “Hollywood appropriate” size.

The point is this: if the new Internet headlines were your first introduction to the character of Hermione, it would make sense to group her in with the other 2-D, boy-crazy, voiceless females in the world of fiction today; the most important question she would invoke would be which boy she will chose. But that’s not who she is; in fact she’s the exact opposite. Hermione’s integrity as a representation of real — albeit exceptional — girls must be protected. Research has shown that no matter how fictional, an idol is an idol, and little girls will imitate what they see is valued. We failed Lt. Uhura (and Nurse Chapel, poor thing); we let her become an accessory to the boy’s adventure instead of the asset to the crew true Trek fans know she is; we can’t fail Hermione too.

Brionne Powell is a sophomore political science major at Drexel University. She can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.

The post The fictional feminine appeared first on The Triangle.

Ah, Ukraine! Home of beautiful churches, Black Sea resorts and, thanks to the great work of Comrade Stalin during collectivization, approximately 4.23 tractors per capita! (Some of which even still run!) Located in Ukraine are incredible cities known throughout the world, like Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk, Sevastopol and, of course, Chernobyl.

Despite these achievements and monuments, Ukraine has a problem.

Since November 2013, protests have been raging all over the country, concentrated in Kiev, its capital. The movement is called “Euromaidan,” which to the average reader should conjure up visions of thousands of attractive Eastern European women protesting … something or other. (Ideally for the right to be topless in public, and ideally through the medium of civil disobedience.)

Unfortunately for our average reader, the reality is that “maidan” is Ukrainian for “square.” As in, Independence Square (Ukrainian: Maidan Nezalezhnosti) in Kiev, where the biggest protests are taking place. While this is certainly a letdown from our initial impressions, we would do well to remember the words of Huey Lewis and the News: “It’s hip to be square.” So let’s talk about Euromaidan.

The protests are centered on the rejection of the Ukraine-European Union Association Agreement, which provided a significant groundwork for Ukraine to join the European Union. Last November, the government decided to discard the eight years of work that went into the agreement and instead join the new “Customs Union.”

The Customs Union is a Russocentric economic union currently made up of Belarus, Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation, with intentions to expand membership to all ex-Soviet countries. Founder Vladimir Putin described it as “totally not a new Eastern Bloc, guys, I swear. Look, just because I said I wanted to include former Soviet states doesn’t make it an Eastern Bloc. Those are your words, not mine.”

Eurocentric Ukrainians are understandably unhappy about their government throwing out eight years of work and voiced their opinion about it through protests last November. The government shut them down. Protesters responded with bigger protests and were violently put down. This, of course, resulted in even bigger protests, which were also violently put down. Last month, the Ukrainian government decided to put an end to it all with a series of anti-protest laws, which were universally condemned by the international community and resulted in bigger protests, which were put down with riot police and the army and all sorts of other methods we expect in a modern, first-world democracy. Blockades were erected. Protesters were shot. Both protesters and police threw Molotov cocktails. One group of protesters vowed to get medieval all over the riot police, and actually built an eight-foot trebuchet.

So four months of bitter cold, eleven deaths and literally thousands of injuries later, here we are. Protesters are now not only calling for the restoration of the Ukraine-European Union Association Agreement, but also the impeachment of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and immediate new parliamentary elections. Most of the anti-protest laws have been repealed, but recently passed “amnesty laws” essentially give the Euromaidan movement a set date to dissolve by or arrested protesters will not be given amnesty.
So why do we, in the West, care? Well, the obvious answer would be that, ostensibly, we care about the democratic process and the rights of the people to assemble. That’s why we went into Iraq and Afghanistan, right?

The real answer to that question is, “we don’t.” Apart from a token condemnation of government actions from the U.S. (who want to limit Russian influence) and from Germany (who could always use another insolvent EU member state to exploit), there has been very little international response. Perhaps the most significant event to occur during the protest was in December, when Vladimir Putin bailed out the Ukrainian government, in a move he described as “totally coincidental, guys, I don’t want to influence international events. No sir-ee bob, I do not.”

And so the protests continue onwards with very few signs of concession from the government. The constitution has been altered now, making EU membership essentially impossible. Plus, political instability has historically been a barrier to EU membership, and new elections and widespread protests aren’t really indicators of stability.

There are no easy answers to Ukraine’s situation. I would hope that the protesters get their way, but even if their demands are answered, EU membership has been set back by many years. It remains to be seen how the situation will pan out.

Editor’s note: This article, while based in truth, is satirical in nature and includes some fabricated and exaggerated facts.

Justin Roczniak is the op-ed editor of The Triangle. He can be contacted at justin.roczniak@thetriangle.org.

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With the Sochi Winter Olympics less than a month away, it seems as if people cannot keep themselves from offending each other. The most recent comment to ruffle our bald eagle feathers comes from known heterosexual Mario Pescante. In his spare time, he also chairs the International Olympic Committee’s International Relations Commission. He had some choice words for President Obama’s decision not to attend the upcoming games. The United States will be represented in Sochi by a group of former Olympians, three of whom are openly gay.

Pescante said that Obama’s planned absence from the games is an excessive show of disapproval, and his chosen ambassadors are an “absurd” demonstration of America’s pro-LGBTQ attitudes. While the leaders of Germany, the United Kingdom and Lithuania have all announced their plans not to attend the games, Pescante felt that the United States’ attempt to politicize the games was totally unnecessary. Swiss President and known heterosexual Ueli Maurer agreed with Pescante, expressing the importance of respecting Russia’s sovereignty and not “spoiling the games.”

There is a certain irony in Pescante’s rebuke. As the ranking representative of Italy, Pescante’s opinions must be compared against Italy’s own long list of LGBTQ-related accomplishments. Italy legalized homosexual relations in the 1890s. They adopted the European Union’s prescribed antidiscrimination laws. And that’s about it. While other founding members of the EU have legalized same-sex marriage, adoption and sweeping anti-discrimination laws, Italy continues to foster a climate of homophobic fear and humiliation. In a 2012 study of the Province of Rome, 73 percent of LGBTQ respondents reported encountering homophobia, mostly at school. Homophobia in school is only the tip of a much more threatening iceberg comprised of LGBTQ teen homelessness, assault and suicide.

For the European Union, the status of LGBTQ people is an increasingly touchy issue. While northwestern member states like Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands feel that LGBTQ rights need to be protected because “it’s the right thing to do,” many of the EU’s newer additions (e.g. Latvia, Malta and Bulgaria) refuse to classify violence against LGBTQ people as “hate crimes.” Like Italy, religious conservatives in these nations often resist legislation that, in their view, would legitimize deviant and socially destructive behavior. As the European Union continues to expand, the founding members’ LGBTQ-affirming liberalism meets ever-strengthening pushbacks from socially conservative southern and eastern nations. With no middle ground in the debate on LGBTQ rights, LGBTQ people in these socially conservative countries are becoming an increasingly marginalized group by the political majority.

So what is the middle ground in this fight? Are there any LGBTQ rights that both ultra-liberal Sweden and hardline conservative Italy can agree upon? How about every individual’s right not to be assaulted, or every child’s right not to be made homeless because their parents disown them? How about an end to teenage suicide? When we can say, with a good degree of certainty, that LGBTQ teenagers are at a significantly higher risk of assault, homelessness and suicide, why can’t we agree that they need extra help? Is their sexuality enough to condemn them to die?

Currently, one major organization has attempted to bridge the gap between LGBTQ rights and religious conservatism. The Church of England, which has vigorously opposed same-sex marriage in the United Kingdom, recently announced a nationwide effort to eliminate anti-gay bullying in Church-run schools. Officials in the Church had the compassion to understand that, regardless of a child’s sexual or gender orientation, a child deserves the right to go to school without feeling harassed. Further, the Church recognized its role in raising a generation of Britons who understand that LGBTQ people do not deserve to be indiscriminately brutalized.

And that brings us to where we started: the Sochi Olympics. The message that we need to send to Russia, Italy and the rest of Europe is simple: no one deserves to be beaten, raped or killed because of his or her orientation. While we may disagree about same-sex marriage, adoption or even the right to speak about homosexual experiences, ending the violence would transcend that. As we hear about the systematic brutalization of LGBTQ youth in Russia and elsewhere, we need to remember that the victims are children. They are not the protesters demanding same-sex marriage; they are people asking not to be assaulted.

To Pescante, to President Maurer and to Vladimir Putin (all known heterosexuals), I remind you to “think of the children” — not only those lucky enough to be born cisgender heterosexual men, like yourselves, but also the ones who live every day in fear. Because no one deserves that.

Richard Furstein is a senior anthropology major at Drexel University. He can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.

Recently, Drexel University’s administration sent an email to students, inviting us to take a professor to the Handschumacher Dining Center for a discussion and a meal. Personally, I was a bit confused, since April 1 is still three months away. If we’re being honest with ourselves, the Hans is the absolute last place I would want to meet with a professor — unless we were discussing the decrepit state of free-market capitalism in the campus restaurant industry. What I’m getting at here is, we all dislike the Hans. Sure, it’s convenient (and free to certain Drexel employees), and they put on great holiday and Family Weekend events, but overall it’s not that good. Why does a university with Drexel’s credentials and price tag maintain such a subpar dining service? Because of socialism.

Blaming this on socialism isn’t strictly true, or even very accurate. However, Drexel’s relationship with our main foodservice provider, Sodexo, does look like something out of the USSR. Not only is the Hans completely managed by the Hans, but it’s also guaranteed Drexel students’ business. Freshmen are still required to buy a meal plan, and resident assistants are still paid with a Drexel meal plan. What do Drexel students get by consenting to Sodexo’s tyranny? Recently, such major improvements as a vegetarian table, an international section and even a take-out option became available. Forgive me if I’m not thrilled. I guess it’s because all the “international dishes” in the world don’t make up for the lack of dedicated kosher or halal food. And before you get through telling me that “this is America, blah, blah, blah,” keep in mind that Saudi Arabian, Kuwaiti, Indian and Jewish students are also paying into this system and expecting to benefit from its services.

As I already stated, Drexel’s relationship with Sodexo is at the root of many of our problems. By entrusting Sodexo with both the job of providing the service and internally regulating complaints, Drexel has washed its hands of responsibility for what happens within the Hans. Consider, for example, the infamous 2010 safety inspection that found multiple violations in the Hans (beverages a la fruitfly, kitchen counters with a side of mouse feces and mops in the vegetable sinks). Although later internal Sodexo audits reported the problem fixed, a June 2011 inspection by city officials found similar insect-related issues. It seems silly to complain about dietary accommodations when Sodexo is still working on basic sanitation issues.

Let’s compare Sodexo’s monopolistic practices to another corporation many Philadelphians have to deal with: the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority. While we all have our gripes about missed buses, skyrocketing fares and dirty stations, there are some noticeable differences between Sodexo and SEPTA. SEPTA is governed by elected officials (from the five Pennsylvania counties that it serves), and it holds numerous public hearings every year. Sodexo has comment cards. SEPTA adapts its system to the needs of the disabled (Customized Community Transportation paratransit buses, new elevator and ramp installations, etc.), while Sodexo simply absolves students with special dietary needs from the freshman meal plan obligation.

And what’s wrong with simply allowing students with special dietary concerns to opt out of the system? We’re excluding them. By requiring students to pay to enter the Hans, we are telling students with allergies, digestive issues or moral and religious objections that they cannot eat with “the rest of us.” How nice that a small restaurant next to the Hans now offers vegetarian options. Let’s keep the veggies to themselves. And don’t worry, we can just send the Jews and Muslims to the University of Pennsylvania’s dining hall, so they can be with their own kind.

This kind of exclusion goes completely unnoticed by other students, because we cannot actively see Sodexo’s discrimination. But what we can see is the structural discrimination against the physically disabled. How are students with special needs expected to enter the Hans? Through a hidden elevator in MacAlister. I’m glad that we had the money to completely replace the Hans’ glass entrance, but not to install a convenient elevator. The Hans was not designed to be serviceable to all of Drexel’s students.

It’s easy to rip on Drexel, but is there a better way? Drexel students who have visited their UPenn, Villanova University and Temple University friends have noticed that their dining halls do not require payment upon entry. Their dining halls are excellent places to socialize, whether a student is on the campus dining plan or not. In addition to this simple change to the payment scheme, Drexel would also benefit greatly from absolving its monopolistic contract with Sodexo, and abolishing “Dining Dollars” (considering we already have Dragon Dollars). Drexel could encourage small restaurants to populate our dining hall, creating actual economic competition. Introducing competition lowers the price point, making food affordable for Drexel students. With the myriad of different food trucks already populating Drexel’s and UPenn’s campuses, there are plenty of ethnically specific options for Drexel’s Retail Management Office to investigate.

At the end of the day, we pay a lot of money to go here. We are obligated to pay even more for our food service. We deserve better than Sodexo’s excuse for service.

Richard Furstein is a senior anthropology major at Drexel University. He can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.

Winter break has ended. Midterms start next week.

In an ordinary school with ordinary term lengths I might ask you to “pause for a second to reflect on 2013,” but this is Drexel University and we don’t have that kind of time. So let’s skip the introductions and get right to business.

It all began in January, with the country still reeling from the most recent school shooting by the most recent deranged psychopath. Students asked each other in their dormitory hallways (the common rooms long since converted to additional rooms to combat residence hall overcrowding), “Why?” and “How could something like this happen?” These conversations were ended, however, once the news broke that a LeBow student had qualified for the Wing Bowl.

Meanwhile, Drexel administrators found a novel solution to the aforementioned residence hall overcrowding problem: send freshmen to Dublin instead of Drexel. They both start with “D,” so no one will know the difference, right?

February was a milestone month for Drexel: it was ranked ninth in sustainability by the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design magazine, EDC Magazine, presumably on account of being 100% wind powered. (If you don’t believe me, it says so right on the side of the University’s buses, next to where it says “Diesel Fuel Only”). Westphal was so excited by this news that they began offering a minor in sustainability, allowing students to sustain their student loan debt for decades into the future.

The University also announced that they were considering possibly switching to a semester system sometime in the future, and resulting riots by the student body claimed the lives of a tenured professor, two Drexel police officers, five adjunct professors and seventy-four freshmen. The school’s propaganda arm, DrexelNOW, hailed the university for “its restraint in handling the situation,” while upperclassmen took it in stride, noting that the freshmen deaths were the first effective solution to residence hall overcrowding the university ever implemented.

Race Hall floors two through six flooded in March. Those who weren’t drowned in the initial deluge ran out with two of every kind of handle: Smirnoff and Stolichnaya, Jim Beam and Jack Daniel’s, Captain Morgan and Kraken, and went forth to repopulate the campus at the nearest Powelton Avenue party. Those students who survived were allowed back in four days later, after spending multiple nights passed out in local gutters and alleys.

Winter term ended in April, and with it ended all our security fears when the Department of Homeland Security chose Drexel for its pilot “campus resilience program.” Never again would students have to fear being shot within two blocks of campus! Features of the program included body-scanners at each dormitory entrance, homeland security personnel armed with automatic weaponry patrolling campus, and publically viewable security cameras in classrooms, hallways and the women’s locker rooms.

Also in April, a Drexel professor turned the side of the Cira Center into a giant game of Pong (as well as several other classic video games), but was then arrested on suspect of terrorism and sedition by the DHS for “taking over a major piece of infrastructure and making it display Tetris, a known Communist game.” The Cira Center, one of the most prominent buildings visible from Drexel’s and the University of Pennsylvania’s campuses, then went back to displaying an enormous Temple “T.”

Which brings us to the summer. For me, and I’m sure for most of us, May, June, July and August blended together into a drunken haze on account of co-op leaving us not only with significantly more free time, but also significantly more money to spend on libations.
From what I can piece together from my sloppy and whiskey-stained notes, I can say definitively that University Crossings caught fire. Furthermore, the Handschumaker Dining Center flooded, on account of contractors not realizing that if there were a giant hole in the roof, water might get in if it rained.

To solve the ever-present problem of residence hall overcrowding, the Sacramento campus began accepting undergraduate students. In what DrexelNOW called “an exceedingly generous gesture,” students residing in Sacramento dormitories have been given priority in class registration and allowed an extra ten minutes to make it to University City campus classes.

Students were suspended from University housing for throwing water balloons out of Towers Hall, prompting hundreds of imitators to do the same, desperate for any way to get out of the two-year residency program.

September came around, and with it the new freshmen. To combat, or at least mitigate, the effects of residence hall overcrowding, Drexel hired white-gloved temporary workers to physically push freshmen into their new residence halls, cramming as many as sixty-five into one double room. Owing to the reduced quality of life, dorm fees went up only $500 this year. DrexelNOW called it an “incredibly magnanimous and unselfish act” and that residents’ comparisons of their conditions to the infamous Black Hole of Calcutta were “inappropriate” and “a ridiculous farce that only spoiled millennials could conceive.”

The fantastic new Gerri ElBow College of Business opened in September. The ElBow school is a masterpiece of architecture, demonstrating a revolutionary new way of thinking about buildings: as paneled concrete boxes with some windows. The interior atrium is the perfect place to ignore as you dash to get in line for the Starbucks, and the basement lecture hall has excellent acoustics for listening to the Market-Frankford Line and trolley routes. And that’s to say nothing of the new quad, a vast featureless expanse of grey pavers, finally putting to rest any questions about that ridiculous fountain returning!

And, after months of round-the-clock construction, Chestnut Square was ready for move-in day. Students came in with their stuff, were shown their space and told that drywall would be installed “here” and “over there,” and that the boundaries of their apartment, in the meantime, were demarked by “this line of caution tape over here. Also, the plumbing isn’t working yet, but you can get a chamber pot at the front desk for a small deposit.”

Students were settled in pretty well by October, and were certain to want to attend “TEDx DrexelU,” a forum of sorts where upper-class straight white men can share their revolutionary ideas about how their iPhone app will eliminate poverty and save the environment, and then ask the audience for money. The highlight, of course, was the excellent and informative “2070 Paradigm Shift,” where speaker Sam Hyde described his quest to bring iPads to the people of central Africa with the help of world-famous electric car and rocket ship entrepreneur Elon Musk.

Nothing happened in November.

In December, Drexel announced a switch to quarterly billing, so you won’t have to pay while you’re on co-op, which is great, but you will have to pay twice as much during other quarters, which isn’t. Though DrexelNOW called it “revolutionary” and a “milestone in making Drexel more affordable,” exactly what this changes in the long run is a mystery, serving only to allow the school to kick out more students for non-payment, presumably in an effort to reduce residence hall overcrowding.

Then, to end the year on a high note, students received no less than twenty DrexelAlerts relating to violence just off campus during winter break, including an “aggravated assault w/ firearm,” “gunshots – no Injuries,” “robbery point of taser,” “correction: gunshots — many injuries,” and of course “invasion and siege: suspects Hunnish/m, armed with catapults + elephants, 3200 block of Baring, Pope Leo I on the scene. Avoid area.”

So ended 2013. Now, with students back in class, the invading Huns defeated and normality returned, we can look forward to a better, brighter 2014.

Or we could if we had time. Midterms start next week, you know…

Justin Roczniak is the Op-ed editor of The Triangle. He can be contacted at justin.roczniak@thetriangle.org.

Editor’s note: This article, while based in truth, is satirical in nature and contains exaggerated facts.