Some people grew up making memories around the dinner table. My family made memories while taking up two tables at the local pizza shops in Lansdale, Pa. My family members didn’t need two chairs each—there were just seven of us Sylvesters at one time for many years. We laughed, choked on mozzarella sticks, did Rodney Dangerfield impersonations, and maybe asked a little too often whether or not Kurt Vonnegut could read lips.

We grew up around pizza, wings and cheesesteaks, but my parents would have never guessed that the majority of my siblings would eventually become vegetarian and vegan. We are growing up in a generation of twenty- and thirty-somethings that see a need for environmental awareness, especially when it comes to diet. As I’ve written in past articles, meat consumption accounts for a huge part of anthropogenic emissions. The food we eat, love, even, has an impact on the Earth and its resources no matter how you slice it.

I recently was walking up to 33rd Street, and I saw a new pizza place called Pizza.Wings.Steaks. (also known as Pdubbz). I didn’t think much of it until I heard it had vegan options. Not only that, but it partakes in its own Meatless Mondays, cutting veggie option prices in half between 8 p.m. and12 a.m. They have vegan pizza, vegan wings, and of course vegan cheesesteaks. More restaurants in University City and West Philly should follow Pizza.Wings.Steaks. in its effort to reduce the resources it uses like water and energy. They can expand their menu with little cost by having some great vegan options and have more business by advertising those options to Drexel students.

Drexel clubs like the Sierra Club and the Animal Welfare Association, who have more than a handful of vegans and vegetarians, could use some places closer than South Philly and Center City that are cheap and, more importantly, ones where it is fun to eat. With a growing number of students that are participating in Meatless Mondays at the Handschumacher Dining Center, plant-based meals will become a new norm among underclassmen diets. I can’t guarantee freshmen will not gain 15 pounds, but they’ll be contributing to a less polluted environment by being conscious of the decisions they make when it comes to food. I hope more businesses can follow the plant-based trend like Pdubbz and share in the cruelty free meals that are making their marks on Philly menus.
I may not have my family with me, but I can still “get no respect” with my vegetarian friends here at Drexel starting at places like Pdubbz.

Benjamin Sylvester is a member of the Drexel Sierra Club. He can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.
The Drexel Sierra Club contributes weekly.

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It houses the Philadelphia Parking Authority, the Philadelphia City Archives and the offices of some contractor, but we know it best as the entrance to Drexel’s “Garden Level” classrooms: 3101 Market St. It’s a monstrosity and should be demolished as soon as possible to make way for new and better developments.

Sure, we all hate more campus construction, but hear me out. There are many qualities that make a building a “good” one, but let’s start with some of the basics:

A good building should be mixed use. Different uses on different levels (shops on the ground level, apartments and offices above, for instance) lead to a building that has some kind of activity during all times of day.
A good building should “engage with the street” — that is, it ought to have a facade abutting the sidewalk and not recessed behind some enormous lawn, parking lot or vast expanse of concrete.
A good building should function well and be convenient for its users. This can be anything from well-functioning HVAC and elevators to adequate lighting to aesthetic concerns.

Well, everything that could be wrong with a building is wrong with 3101 Market. Instead of a facade that abuts the sidewalk, the building is recessed from the street, isolated by a giant surface parking lot. Pedestrians on Market Street are surrounded on all sides by cars, without any barriers to protect them from either insane drivers on the road or maniacs in the parking lot. There aren’t even any street trees!

This building does not “engage with the street.” In fact, it actively and aggressively denies the existence of the street. There is no ground-floor retail, there are few entrances facing the street, and there are no features to break up the monotonous facade. The whole block is completely devoid of any shade for pedestrians, which makes the walk unbearable in the summer. The JFK Boulevard facade is even worse, offering no entrances whatsoever.

Functionally, the building is a mess. The classrooms are two floors underground and can only be accessed by a seemingly endless corridor. Drexel calls these classrooms “the Garden Level” because the administration has a wholly sadistic sense of humor. Most of the building has no natural lighting, which is not only unpleasant but makes the building energy inefficient. Couple this with bland and windowless classrooms and the ever-present sound of the Market-Frankford Line echoing throughout the floor, and you realize that even these newly renovated areas are functionally deficient.

The facade transcends blandness to the point where it is actually offensive. It’s a gray brick wall all the way around, with no windows on the ground floor and only one small public entrance. There is generally nothing to even suggest that this is an occupied building, let alone one that actively holds offices and classrooms.

The building is an active assault on our campus: bland, boring and blatantly refusing to engage in any way with the street. In turn, it may discourage students from venturing farther than 31st Street from campus because the walk is so unpleasant.

There is, of course, no ground-floor retail, save for the Sovereign Bank on the corner of 31st and Market, done in matching gray brick. This is a shameful use of land, and it leads to our missing out on some significant real-estate potential. Market Street from 32nd to 30th Street Station is a natural location for a significant retail corridor: it’s already busy, it’s easily accessible by transit and car, it’s right next to a major railroad terminal, and it’s ripe for redevelopment. The only potential issue is that the land is currently zoned for industrial use, but Drexel has easily overcome this in the past; look at the recent rezoning for the proposed Lancaster Square. The monetization of this parcel is stupidly easy, so why hasn’t anyone built anything better here yet?

This building is right at the gateway to campus. Anyone coming from 30th Street Station has to see this building, as does anyone coming from I-76 and anyone walking from Center City to Drexel. Everyone has to look at and walk past 3101 Market at some point, and I’m certain that it’s a significant contributing factor to Drexel’s numerous “Ugliest Campus” awards.

Drexel has been focusing on shoehorning buildings between MacAlister Hall and Chestnut Street and demolishing the existing, occupied Hess labs to put up new student housing. Meanwhile, the elephant in the room, 3101 Market, remains standing. This would be a great place for, say, a couple 30-story towers with offices, classrooms and ground-floor retail. The construction would be on the periphery of campus and probably wouldn’t interfere too much with student life, unlike Chestnut Square and the new LeBow building. It’s a win-win situation, so I call upon our university’s president: Mr. Fry, tear down this building.

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Earlier this week, Margaret Thatcher, former prime minister of the United Kingdom, died. She was one of the most influential PMs the U.K. ever had, and when the news broke, the wave of emotion that passed over the world was palpable.

“Ding Dong! the Witch is Dead” reached No. 4 in the U.K. singles charts. Celebrations were held in towns all over the U.K., most particularly in Scotland and other areas more heavily affected by her policies. Obituaries in the British papers were almost universally harsh and critical, save for right-wing newspapers like the Daily Mail.

So why was Thatcher so hated in the U.K.? How could anyone’s death, short of Osama bin Laden, elicit this kind of celebration? And why should we in America care?
Let’s look at some of her highlights:

Thatcher’s career in politics started off on a high note when she tried to do away with free milk for poor students in English schools, on the grounds that it cost money to give free milk. The Tories took an immediate liking to her.

Thatcher organized the downfall of industry in the U.K. One of her first major moves was to privatize the English coal industry, which was, unfortunately, inherently unprofitable and depended on a government subsidy. So when they were privatized, they almost all closed in her first term, putting tens of thousands out of work. Similar privatizations occurred in the British auto industry and aircraft industry, neither of which exist in any meaningful form today (even Minis are made in Germany now). British industry went extinct in the name of profits. She also tried to privatize the National Health Service, Britain’s socialized health care system, but was shot down when her term as prime minister ended.

She, along with her contemporary Ronald Reagan, changed the dialogue about socialism and the welfare state. “Socialism” became a dirty word. “Welfare” was no longer to help less fortunate people live a decent life; it was “government waste” given only to the lazy and other “undesirables.” Since the Thatcher-Reagan era, no politician could ever get elected in the U.S. or the U.K. calling oneself a socialist. She ushered in a new neoliberal era, where equality and decent living standards for all were secondary to corporate profits and individual rights.

Where she really shined, though, was her foreign policy. She refused to impose sanctions on South Africa to end apartheid, and she called Nelson Mandela “a terrorist.” She supported Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet even after the news broke that he had thousands of his political enemies killed. She even tried to shelter Pinochet from international prosecution after he was indicted for his human rights violations.
Thatcher escalated the Falklands War from a diplomatic scuffle to an all-out naval and ground assault. Thatcher’s government supported Saddam Hussein’s takeover of Iraq in the 1980s. Thatcher called mass-murdering Indonesian dictator Suharto “one of our very best and most valuable friends.”

Thatcher’s record on human rights isn’t something to praise, either. She supported legislation like Section 28, which provided provisions that “shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality” or “promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.” Most local authorities closed down lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer support groups as a direct result of this legislation.
Her record on feminism wasn’t great, either. She stated repeatedly during her term that “the battle for women’s rights has largely been won” and frequently denied any connection with the feminist movement.

Finally, Thatcher inspired “The Final Cut,” which was undoubtedly Pink Floyd’s worst album.

So one can see, then, how Thatcher’s death might come as pleasant news to the people of Britain. Her policies were unpopular and destroyed the country to line the pockets of a wealthy few. In a word, Thatcher (and Reagan) broke the socialist system and then pointed to it and said “Look how broken it is!” We took that as proof that socialism could never work, that the poor will always be miserably poor, and that government is wholly incompetent. Thatcher set back the global political dialogue by 50 years, and even now we haven’t even started to recover.

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

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Popin’ ain’t easy, and the aging Pope Benedict XVI has realized this. Citing his “weakness,” he declared himself unfit for office, and effective 8 p.m. Central European Time Feb. 28, he will resign. He is the first pope to resign since 1415, when Gregory XII left to end the Western Schism.

This leaves important questions unanswered: Who will the cardinals choose to replace him? Will the new pope be more liberal? What will Joseph Ratzinger do now? Does he get to keep the Popemobile?

The papal conclave has a potpourri of candidates to choose from — any cardinal could be elected. However, some frontrunners stand out, at least according to the press and Internet bookkeepers: Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson (Ghana), Cardinal Marc Ouellet (Canada), and Cardinal Francis Arinze (Nigeria), among others. Cardinal Angelo Sodano, who is the dean of the College of Cardinals (Ratzinger’s former position), has also been considered for the position, but his election is unlikely due to his advanced age.

As for the other three, how might their papacies turn out?

Arinze, from Nigeria, is the oldest likely candidate. He is 80 and is thus ineligible to vote for pope. However, he can still be selected by the rest of the cardinals for the papal position.

Arinze is conservative, theologically speaking. He has likened homosexuality to pornography, infanticide and adultery in the past. He also does not support the use of condoms to curb the spread of AIDS in Africa. However, he has an excellent record in the world of interfaith relations: he is president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and has, in the past, used his skills as a mediator to end religious conflicts between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria. He is a strong pacifist, and interfaith dialogue would likely be a major feature of his papacy.

Ouellet is another likely candidate. He is from Canada — Quebec, to be precise — and yes, he does play hockey. In fact, Ouellet was inspired to join the priesthood while recovering from a hockey injury in high school, and he still plays hockey with his nephews.

Ouellet has also not expressed positive views of the gay community, and he doesn’t support abortion even in the case of rape. Ouellet has also in the past expressed a reluctance to becoming pope, calling the workload a “nightmare.” Whether televised Catholic Masses would be rescheduled so as to not coincide with Montreal Canadiens games is yet to be determined.

Turkson, from Ghana, is the most likely candidate. He’s relatively young (63) and most commentators consider him to be the “moderate” candidate. He has written extensively on the failure of the international financial system and has suggested means for reform in a paper titled “Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of a Global Public Authority,” which calls for taxation on all financial transactions and is very critical of “neoliberalism.”

Controversially, Turkson has suggested that condoms could be used to curb the spread of AIDS in Africa, at least between faithful couples that include one infected member. He has not, however, compromised on views on homosexuality or abortion.

Turkson also showed support for the Ugandan “Kill the Gays” bill, saying that although the punishments were “exaggerated,” the “intensity of the reaction [to homosexuality] is probably commensurate with tradition.” Turkson is unlikely to make tolerance for the gay community a priority in his papacy, and in fact it is quite likely that anti-gay policies of the Church will increase in scope if he is elected.

It looks like reform to the Church won’t come any time soon, then. The best a liberal secular person could hope for is Turkson perhaps tolerating the use of condoms by Catholics, which is unlikely. However, the election of a black pope would be a milestone for the Church, which has not elected an African pope since Gelasius I in 492 A.D. and has never elected a black pope at all. The likely election of either Turkson or Arinze will also demonstrate how the demographics of the Church are changing and how Africa is becoming more central in Church affairs. Ultimately, however, electing a black pope may be as far as the election gets. When the white smoke rises from the Sistine Chapel, we probably won’t see a reformer elected, but another moderate who will keep the same policies on abortion, homosexuality and contraception that the Church has kept for thousands of years.

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