Name one thing in common with the gay rights movement, civil rights movement and climate change. No, the answer isn’t bigots fighting against the movement — it’s collaboration. When I say collaboration, many students will think of awful group projects where they can get maybe one or two other people in their group of six to actually do work while the others piggyback off the productive ones. When I talk about collaboration, I’m talking about people with different backgrounds, viewpoints, ideas and cultures coming together to overcome a challenge. The gay rights movement is about males, females and everything in between — your culture and education don’t matter; it’s your beliefs and passions that drive you. It is the same with the civil rights movement: It wasn’t just African-Americans fighting for fair rights; it was people of all races that experienced discrimination. With climate change, everyone is affected. The challenges may all be different, but it’s important for all kinds of people to work together to overcome them.

Let’s break this down to a smaller scale. This upcoming weekend, the Drexel Sierra Club has nine members going to Pittsburgh for Power Shift 2013, a national youth environmental convergence that will have inspiring keynote speakers, challenging activist workshops, and tons of networking among youth from all over the country. Whether new or a veteran to the environmental movement, this conference is a chance for anyone who is passionate about environmentalism to collaborate to make a stronger movement. Our Dragons will learn from students from all over the country what their campus is doing to fight effectively and efficiently for sustainability while making lifelong friends and coming home with their eyes wide open to hundreds of new perspectives. They’ll bring back new ideas and thoughts to our campus and try to help us realize what we need to do to change.

In my article last week, I mentioned how sustainability organizations like the Green Globes and LEED argue about which of them does their process better. We don’t have time or room for organizations to fight against each other for the “best” good. We don’t have time for organizations to keep reinventing the wheel, and we definitely don’t have time to ignore other voices from different places, backgrounds and cultures shouting at us to change our behavior. We have so many people, businesses, governments and organizations working against our cause for a better future. If they see us fight among ourselves, they win.

This slow disaster of climate change is happening. It may seem irrelevant now compared to the immediate disasters that are happening, but it will be devastating in every way until the moment that we all realize, “Oh, this has gotten really bad.” It’s up to us: young, old, poor, rich, women, men — everyone— to work together toward a fight that could save all of us.

Nicole Koedyker is the president of the Drexel Sierra Club. She can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.
The Drexel Sierra Club contributes weekly.

The post Enviroweekly | Collaboration is key to environmentalism appeared first on The Triangle.

Ah, the sweet smells of a brand new building —- sort of like a new car but with more paint vapors. The new Gerri C. LeBow Hall opened at the beginning of this term way ahead of schedule. With its dual-flush toilets, automatic light systems, and natural light emanating from the classrooms, it’s easy for a tree hugger like me to get excited. As a building so new with a fair amount of sustainable features, one would expect the University to take advantage of that and pursue a green building certification, right? Well, yes, but they’re certifying it with the wrong certification organization.

Wait, there’s more than one green building certification? Why, yes, there is! Today, class, we’ll be focusing on the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design and the Green Globes certifications. Some of you may have heard of LEED buildings before: built by the U.S. government, Starbucks, Nike, Whole Foods Market, and over 7,000 other projects around the world. As you may know, Drexel operations favor Green Globe certification over LEED certification because of cost and (probably) the speed of the process. Admittedly, LEED takes a bit longer to certify — it’s a crazy, in-depth process, and if you have some bad LEED consultants, it can cost you more than a conventional building.

So, let me explain why I favor LEED certification over Green Globes by throwing out some information found in other credible articles. As stated by the design editor of TreeHugger, an environmental news site, “Green Globes … serves just one purpose: to be a building certification system that is friendlier to big wood and to the plastics industry and to displace LEED.” You may be thinking: What do plastics and wood have to do with building certifications? Well, think about the materials you put into building a large building like Gerri C. LeBow Hall — you need wood for the trim, furniture and other miscellaneous things. Then you also need other materials like glass, marble, or in some cases plastics like vinyl. The LEED certification doesn’t give you points for irresponsibly sourced wood or any material made of plastic. Green Globes, on the other hand, has been found to lobby with these two industries to rebel against USGBC. They work with plastic and wood industry lobbyists to say, “LEED puts American lumberjacks and oil refinery workers out of a job.” Strike 1 for Green Globes.

Strike 2 is the lack of transparency that the Green Globes process has. This means that in the whole process of certifying a building, whether Green Globes, LEED or Living Building Challenge, it’s important for the information to be public — to be able to see what questions get what points, what the results were, etc. But Green Globes hides many of its points and ratings, giving the certification a bad reputation.

Strike 3? We’re all trying to be green here. We are fighting a huge uphill battle with disbelievers and industries that oppose us. Why are we fighting each other? Green Globes tends to bash LEED and even says that it’s the answer for the buildings that aren’t LEED-eligible or for people who think LEED is too complicated and bureaucratic. Instead of saying what LEED is bad at, tell us what you’re good at (see transparency: strike 2, above.) We’re all in this together!

Our Papadakis Integrated Sciences Building, or as I like to call it  “Pop, Lock and Dak It” (I hope this becomes a thing), is Green Globes certified and LEED silver! Yay — the best of both worlds. But what does the future hold for LeBow’s new monster of a building? Drexel only plans on pursuing Green Globes. I’d like for Drexel to pursue LEED certification for the new building and also the rec center because the rec center is definitely eligible for certification! Email Drexel Green or Drexel Sierra Club to voice your opinion.

This is your campus! What types of green buildings do you want your campus to have?

Nicole Koedyker is the president of the Drexel Sierra Club. She can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.
The Drexel Sierra Club contributes weekly.

The post Enviroweekly | Could Drexel LEED us astray? appeared first on The Triangle.

A few weeks ago, an act of violence shattered the normally peaceful air over the Washington, D.C., Navy Yard. This and other recent mass shootings have sparked national debates on gun control and the presence of violent media, both on television and in popular videos games. With the recent release and phenomenal success of “Grand Theft Auto V,” the average parent may now be even more wary about purchasing such titles for their children. While there is no doubt that our lives are infiltrated with images of violence, corruption and death, we are being led away from addressing the real cause of these terrible acts by scapegoating the media for our woes. In reality, the root of our problem as a society lies in our overabundant reliance in the field of psychology. This “science” of the mind has morphed into a multibillion-dollar industry that now controls a majority of how we view ourselves and others around us. Behavioral psychology has become a masterfully cloaked burden on society, oppressing many while generating massive amounts of money for pharmaceutical companies and therapists nationwide.

The initial problem that psychology poses to society is that it is often construed as a concrete, “applicable in all cases” science when it does not pass the five basic requirements of a science. Psychology does not have a well-defined control group for experimentation, nor does it have a quantifiable scale for measuring individual response. Essentially, there exists no unit to quantify a feeling or emotion, no scale that can encapsulate such data. Additionally, the field itself is so nebulous that often many psychological “conditions” are merely abstract terms built to encompass a majority of the population. For example, conditions such as “sibling rivalry” and “spelling disorder” are listed as mental illnesses in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Interestingly enough, the number of types of mental disorders has risen exponentially in recent years. Is this a sign that humanity is progressively becoming more unstable, or is it a sign that an insatiable greed for money has spawned the creation of fancy new conditions just waiting to be shoved down the throats of the masses?

While many have been helped by psychological intervention, the industry continues to pump out masses of negativity in the form of undergraduate degrees. Here is where much of the danger presents itself in the form of renegade therapists who set themselves apart from society and overanalyze their peer groups. This in itself breeds an aura of superiority into those who decide to take the path of amateur therapists, prancing around with the mindset that they are, in fact, the next Sigmund Freud. Granted, there are benefits of having a graduate degree and helping others through psychology, but the overall impact and increasing abundance of those who remain at the undergraduate level is widespread.

Another problem that presents itself is the overmedication of society, brought on by forcing a culture of abnormality into the minds of the American people. Western medicine has also influenced recent trends in the proliferation of the pharmaceutical industry. Could the addition of disorders in the DSM be an excuse for the production and further medication of the masses? Maybe — the correlation between medication and number of possible diagnoses would seem to point in this direction. Could it be coincidence that recent shootings and acts of violence have links to psychiatrics? It seems likely. The motive for pill-popping madness is money, and psychiatrists know this, so the push to classify everyone as something outside the normal was born.

The expansion of psychology into our daily lives has become more of a burden than a savior. With the push to medicate, the influx of undertrained and unaware psychology majors, and corporate control so powerful that it scapegoats entertainment instead of addressing real issues, psychology and psychiatry have become more of a business than a form of therapy. There is not much room to speculate that this shift from altruism to fiscal gain has already had an effect on our lives. Just ask those affected by recent events — empathy rather than greed may have helped to save their loved ones.

Vaughn Shirey is a sophomore environmental sciences major at Drexel University. He can be contacted at vaughn.shirey@thetriangle.org.

The post Psychology can hurt, too appeared first on The Triangle.

Granted that this op-ed was written Sept. 30  — the very last day for Congress to do what it was intended to and pass a continuing resolution to keep our government operational — it is entirely possible that by the time you read this on Oct. 4, questions of a government shutdown will already have been solved, but don’t hold your breath.

For those of you who are unaware, unless the continuing resolution is passed, I cannot visit Independence Hall or any other national park or any wildlife refuge or the Smithsonian because they won’t be open. They won’t be open because nearly a million government employees will be asked to not come into work as part of a government shutdown. In addition to those current employees, 1.4 million active-duty military personnel will also experience a pay freeze, but they still go to work. Disabled veterans who are waiting for their disability check for sacrificing themselves in our nation’s glorious military? They aren’t getting those, either.

Do you know who still does get paid, regardless of a government shutdown? The 535 U.S. representatives and senators. Do you know who else gets funded during a shutdown? Organizations like the FBI, CIA, and our voyeuristic friends at the NSA. Now, considering who decides if and when a government shutdown initiates (those 535 representatives and senators), it starts to become clear where priorities are in this debate.

While congressional Republicans would love to insist that the Affordable Care Act is the reason that they cannot, in good conscience, pass this continuing resolution, let’s make one thing crystal clear: It is not their conscience that motivates them to block a law that they not only passed but which also survived Supreme Court scrutiny and was intended to improve the quality of health care in this country. After passing the Farm Bill and another bill to strip away money from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program  (the food stamps program), it’s enormously clear where House Republicans stand on the issues of government-supported health and well-being. No, congressional Republicans support a government shutdown for one reason: It screws over the Obama Administration.

Though stated more elegantly, this goal of obstructing and opposing the president and the Democratic Party appears in campaign rhetoric across the country. The Republican Party’s defining mark is its oppositional stance, and while this op-ed is not a critique of American partisanship, it is worth noting here that the failure to avert a government shutdown has everything to do with Republican opposition to funding the Affordable Care Act.

When taking into consideration that members of Congress are waging a verbal war without experiencing any direct side effects, the real effects of a government shutdown become clear. Millions of government workers, active-duty military personnel and disabled veterans are the victims of this budget crisis. Ten days after the shutdown has begun, federal courts will close. If this happens, the guarantee of a “fair and speedy trial” will go out the window, mortgage applications will be paused, and, most ironically of all, gun permits will not be processed. So, in effect, a Republican-backed move to shut down the government will deprive law-abiding citizens from obtaining guns.

But what can we do about this? Well, not much now, but there are a collection of steps that led us to this point. The most important is passing the federal budget. Our legislators wouldn’t be arguing over continuing resolutions (the one we’re dealing with now will only last three months) if they could pass an actual budget. The last actual budget was passed in 2009. In countries that feature similar legislative mechanisms to ours (like the United Kingdom), there are various fail-safes that coerce legislators to do their job or lose it, and yet while the tyrannical nanny-state Brits dissolve their Parliament if a budget is not passed, the “patriotic” Americans reward their legislators with immunity from the effects of a country without a budget.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, it is entirely possible that by Friday, a continuing resolution will have been passed, keeping the government alive to fight another day, but look around and ask yourself: Is this patch enough? Can we really continue living without a permanent budget, keeping our military service members and veterans on the brink while Washington legislators pad their pockets, not only with their guaranteed salaries but also with their lobbying rewards? If this is not the kind of country you would like to live in, you are not alone; but until you make it clear that passing a budget is a priority, you are just one of many hostages in a broken democracy.

Richard Furstein is the distribution manager at The Triangle. He can be contacted at richard.furstein@thetriangle.org.

The post An endless cycle of CRs appeared first on The Triangle.

We all hold our own unique perceptions of animals. Some of us have pets or companion animals; these can include dogs, cats, fish, turtles, snakes, lizards, birds and even spiders. As many of us grow up with pets or have them later in life, we find that each of us likes certain things about them. It could be how your dog is excited to see you when you get home, how your cat snuggles with you for warmth, or maybe even how your snake curls around your arm and rests peacefully. Whatever the characteristic or quirk your animal friend exhibits, we all like something about them that excites or amuses us and would never want anything bad or cruel to happen to them.

Yet every day, millions of animals are subjected to cruel treatment through countless practices. All of these operations have their reasons or excuses. Farm animals in concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, endure their entire lives dwelling in filth, breathing in bio aerosols and particulates, suffering fractured bones from cramped spaces (the worst of which occurs in battery-caged chickens), and eating unnatural diets filled with antibiotics and hormones. Animals in the circus are brutalized in training in order to entertain audiences. Lab animals are used to test everything from bath products to smoke inhalation effects. And of course, many of our well-known companion animals suffer in shelters because of irresponsible breeders and pet owners.

So we supposedly love animals, but we still subject them to cruelty to which we’d never condemn even our worst enemies. Why is this so? Many philosophers, authors and leading lecturers have boiled it down to one idea that has existed for a very long time: speciesism.

Speciesism is probably a term unknown to most of you. It’s similar to racism and sexism, but it goes even further in denoting a superiority complex. A dictionary definition of speciesism is “the assumption of human superiority leading to the exploitation of animals,” but this idea is vague and needs to be explained. To put it in laymen’s terms, as human animals we consider nonhuman animals to be below us in status. Like the Nazis saw Jews as subordinate in the 1930s and ‘40s, we as humans see other species as subordinate to our complex makeup. But why? To sum it up way too briefly, philosophers credit Rene Descartes with generating the idea that animals are senseless automata with similar attributes to humans that are merely quasi-machines. Some humans still think this way today. We see some animals as food and some animals as apparatuses to test our poisonous products.

And who or what is to say that Descartes is wrong? Well, actually, many people and their research. Just look at research by Jonathan Balcombe or Marc Bekoff and you’ll see countless examples of animals not only capable of feeling physical and emotional pain but also experiencing pleasure. If it follows that animals can feel pain and suffer, then why don’t we give equal consideration to animals? Animals certainly can’t vote or participate as citizens, so we can’t physically treat them as equals in that respect, but why shouldn’t we consider their capacity to feel and sense the same things as human beings? We don’t have bigger brains than all nonhuman animals; the Beluga whale trumps us in that category. We are not the fastest animals; the cheetah could smoke us. We are not impervious to our surroundings; cockroaches will still be crawling over our nuked Earth. So what makes us better or superior?

We certainly don’t need animals for food, as thousands of vegans across the United States have shown, and there are many products out there that do the same job, if not better, than products that were tested on animals. I rarely meet anyone who enjoys the circus, so why do we still have these issues? I think it honestly just has to do with not wanting to change old habits. If nothing seems like it needs changing, then why change it? The only dilemmas are that factory farming is the largest contributor to anthropogenic emissions, animal testing rarely makes breakthroughs for human health, and wildlife is continually decimated by forest razing and the unnecessary development of suburbs and draining of nonrenewable resources.
Essentially, we are or were all speciesists at some point in our lives. It takes a long time to recognize that fact for many individuals. The hard truth is that humans are the most destructive species on Earth. So even if you really, and I mean really, love your dog, if you still eat pigs, then you are a speciesist. But no one has to stay this way!

There are options out there that can help you become less speciesist, even if it is through baby steps over time. Drexel’s Handschumacher Dining Center boasts its Meatless Mondays program, which includes many vegetarian and vegan options in the cafeteria every day but especially on Mondays. You can make your own soaps, shampoos and detergents with ingredients that are cheaper and animal-friendly. You and your friends should talk about and consider the benefits of adopting from shelters rather than buying from breeders. You can sign petitions to help protect wildlife from unnecessary hunting and hydraulic fracturing. You can buy eco-friendly and synthetic clothes instead of animal furs.

There are countless ways to help rather than harm animals. You can take these steps, like eating a more plant-based diet, which will benefit your health, the environment, and animals across the globe.

Benjamin Sylvester is the president of the Drexel Animal Welfare Association. He can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.

The post Moo over this | Speciesism hurts every one of us appeared first on The Triangle.

Many of you, one would hope, are aware that the most powerful government in the world has shut down because its House and Senate couldn’t agree to fund a bill by a specific deadline — Sept. 30. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the U.S. government. In this article you will get an overview about the effects this shutdown may have on the environment and/or the environmentalists that come along with it.

First, let’s explain what this shutdown means. The government shut down. The wording makes it sound like someone has just turned off a switch and the Capitol deflated. What this really means is that portions of federal agencies, like the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Homeland Security — deep breath — the Justice Department, the National Park Service, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Social Security Administration, and the State Department will shut their doors and send home at least a small percentage of their employees. Productivity levels drop significantly.

Let’s take a second to think about two of these entities, the National Park Service and the Environmental Protection Agency, and what they do for our nation. Going back to high school government class, the National Park Service basically protects our natural resources, like the Grand Canyon and Yosemite National Park, and also maintains historic sites like the Statue of Liberty and Alcatraz. Currently, the National Park Service and the agency that oversees it get about 1/13 of 1 percent of our national budget. With that money, they employ people, educate youth, clean up parks and sites, dust off the Lincoln Memorial, and so on. It’s not a lot, but imagine what our national parks and sites would be with as much money as, say, the Department of Defense.

So what about the EPA? The EPA oversees all environmental damage caused by humans and enforces environmental legislation passed by the U.S. Congress. It tells BP to clean up their messes, tells you not to litter, teaches children how to recycle, and regulates pollution and pesticides. But the EPA has no enforcing power; it’s usually just a slap on the wrist.
These two government entities will temporarily lose more than 75 percent of their staff until the government gets its act together. Specifically, 94 percent of the EPA’s and NPS’ 16,205 employees will be sent home, and all national parks, museums and monuments will close (except the Grand Canyon because the State of Arizona decided to pick up that tab), which affects tourism everywhere. Applications for renewable energy projects on public land will be delayed, climate and marine research by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will stop, NASA will shut down almost entirely (sorry, extraterrestrial life), and last but definitely not least, you won’t be able to get your flu vaccines! The list goes on and on, trust me. But don’t fret, for a few key staff members will be around to respond to any environmental disasters like a sharknado (heaven forbid).

This government shutdown affects a lot more of us than you think. Do something about it. Call your state representative, light a fire under their ass and get compromising.

Nicole Koedyker the president of the Drexel Sierra Club. She can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.
The Drexel Sierra Club contributes weekly.

The post Enviroweekly | Government shutdown has many environmental effects appeared first on The Triangle.

It is not often that a leader of a well-known and well-respected country makes a point to address the American public directly, let alone by the medium of an editorial in The New York Times. Vladimir Putin’s stark message to the American people did not go unnoticed by many, even those who were not regular readers of the Times, but in addition to the harsh criticisms made by Putin, he established himself a new title in the world as perhaps the greatest political genius of our time. Putin’s plan and its result were multifaceted — embracing an aura of superiority; diminishing American hypocrisy with a cloaked hypocrisy of his own; and establishing himself as a placeholding leader for the American people, who lacked a clear leadership on the issue of Syria. His greatest success was in playing on the already weary opinion of the American people while plopping himself into a leadership position, showing both a clear direction on the Syria issue and pointing out the flaws of the caustic nature of exceptionalism.

There is no doubt on both sides of the argument that Barack Obama utterly diminished his role as a leader by flip-flopping on Syria. He painted a picture of a wavering superpower, built too big to fail but indecisive with power. This was honestly an embarrassment, and Putin saw his opportunity. With a lack of leadership from the commander in chief, Putin expertly inserted himself as a clear and rapid alternative to Obama’s plan of action, effectively usurping Obama’s established position as the leader of the country. This was a phenomenal move of tact, considering that Putin not only established himself and his foreign policy as superior to that of the United States, but he also made the entire debacle more embarrassing for Obama. With plummeting approval ratings and rising public opposition to military action in Syria, Obama was forced into a lose-lose situation, eventually seizing to the last hope offered to him by Putin.

Of course, Putin is not without fault himself. Various military interventions by Russia have resulted in casualties, and Russian foreign policy has not had a perfect track record. Through his piece in the Times, he criticized the concept of American exceptionalism, distracting attention from his own country’s interventions. Putin played his cards well here, realizing that the hypocrisy in U.S. actions and in the country’s very politicians and government would far outweigh any call to stand back and evaluate his own faults. And this hypocrisy has been so very apparent throughout this issue. Politicians from both sides abandoned the people that they represented for a hopeless cause — at least a hopeless cause on the war zone, but not for their pockets. This was so blatantly apparent that the precedence of logic was being set aside simply for selfish reasons in the disguise of a humanitarian effort. A recent poll revealed that 36 percent of Americans support military action in Syria. I would personally like to see those 36 percent be the ones sent to Syria or at least somewhere to receive a decent education.

Although I am not a fan of Putin’s social and foreign policy, after reading his editorial, I have grown fond of the leadership and devious capability of a man who fearlessly stabbed the heart of the American mindset with a sword of hypocrisy. America has witnessed a brilliant streak of leadership from a man who sits not in the White House but a world away and yet still listens to what the American people have to say instead of rallying toward a cause that falls so sour on the plates of many. At this, Putin deserves a roaring round of applause for showing initiative, focus and constitution in the face of a worldwide issue. While his plan may not solve the existence of chemical weapons, Putin calmed a brewing storm caused by the arrogance of exceptionalism fueling the mind of a weak president.

Vaughn Shirey is a sophomore environmental sciences major at Drexel University. He can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.

The post Putin’s op-ed shows leadership appeared first on The Triangle.

“I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.” This line from Dr. Seuss’ “The Lorax” always held a special meaning for me beyond its literal application in the story. Far too often in our society, we assume that all members have the capacity to speak up for themselves, and when a group cannot or does not, its members escape our attention completely.

Recently, Drexel University’s Steinbright Career Development Center partnered with OUT for Work to provide a job database for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer students. While ostensibly a step toward promoting equality, I can’t help but feel that it is actually detrimental to LGBTQ integration into society. Sure, it’s good for people who wear their sexual orientation on their sleeve or who do not wish to support a company that doesn’t support LGBTQ equality, but how about everyone else? Like people who are not comfortable sharing their orientation with their boss and colleagues? Or people who want to work for companies who (due to a lack of legislative leadership) simply haven’t bothered to protect LGBTQ workers?

It may surprise heterosexual readers to learn that not every person who recognizes, accepts and acts on their same-sex attractions feels the need to identify as part of the LGBTQ community. Some choose to avoid it because of the social and political implications (activist and left-leaning) that it represents, while others simply do not believe that their sexuality is that integral to their personality. Is it shocking to think that a male construction worker who is attracted to other men may not want to wear a rainbow-colored helmet to work? Or that a transgender woman may not feel comfortable telling her colleagues about her journey to understand herself?

How are the rights of these people protected when they don’t want to be out at work? Or do we simply ignore them because they forfeited their rights when they rejected the values conflated with the LGBTQ community? While it may look great on paper for Drexel to embrace OUT for Work, what is it doing for the community? It’s promoting a “separate but equal” mindset for both job seekers and employers, a mindset that was firmly discredited nearly 60 years ago by the Supreme Court. It tells students that they either can be LGBTQ or can work for the employer they’ve always dreamed of, but not both. It tells students that to earn equal protections, they need to make their sexuality a defining part of themselves.

So what’s the alternative? The alternative is making employment anti-discrimination laws a priority across Pennsylvania and across this nation. As a private institution of prestige and merit, Drexel University has the authority to encourage legislation that it deems valuable. With opinion polls showing an average of 65 percent public approval statewide, Drexel would serve its students (and the denizens of Pennsylvania) far better by encouraging the Pennsylvania legislature to pass a robust employment anti-discrimination law, something that cities and counties across the commonwealth have already done. Standing up for equal employment opportunity in Pennsylvania takes more than lip service to the LGBTQ community; it requires leadership and legislation.

The SCDC, for its own part, has taken great strides to help students where it can. OUT for Work provides much more than a database. It furnishes the SCDC staff with valuable training to help them address the needs of their LGBTQ student population and also provides students with a number of LGBTQ-specific resources in their job searches. However, it also encourages the use of one’s sexuality as a hiring advantage. Official press releases about the OUT for Work campaign mention that being gay can be a “big plus” in the hiring process. While the OUT for Work database is not to be used in place of the standard SCDC job search database, the University seems to presume that some causal relationship will exist between LGBTQ students using it and then finding employers who are more interested in hiring them. Forgive me if I don’t aspire to be a diversity hire or if I don’t think that my sexual and gender orientations should be written on my resume.

The LGBTQ movement is dominated by people who aren’t afraid to stand up for who they are and what they want. They are the trailblazers who demanded recognition in the ‘60s and have given us so much more since. But like the Lorax’s trees, there are countless people with same-sex attractions or transgender identities who are not comfortable or able to wear the rainbow flag. Their rights are no less valuable, and their experiences no less valid. While it may be easier to focus on helping those who help themselves, our nation’s promise of equal treatment under the law requires us to protect all people regardless of sexual and gender orientation. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. famously said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” To ignore the needs of those who are uncomfortable asking for help is to deny them the rights we claim to support.

I speak for the men who like men, the women who like women, and anyone whose gender isn’t something they feel like sharing with the world. I speak for them because they may not be able to speak for themselves, but that doesn’t mean they don’t deserve a say.

Richard Furstein is the distribution manager at The Triangle. He can be contacted at richard.furstein@thetriangle.org.

The post Standing up for the silent appeared first on The Triangle.

Dear Customer Care,

My name is Richard Furstein (patient No. YHQ3HZN58338870), and I am writing you to share my experiences seeking psychiatric help through your website and phone services. I didn’t find any. Not that I didn’t find any doctors listed; on the contrary, you maintain a long and impressive list of physicians who no longer accept my plan. I’ve had civil conversations with receptionists, self-identified “customer care specialists,” and even a security guard to understand why I am just not allowed to see a doctor from any of Philadelphia’s numerous area hospital systems. It’s not that my insurance is unacceptable, but simply that the psychiatry departments no longer accept it.

That makes perfect sense, in the same way that my brake specialist no longer accepts my auto insurance even though the engine specialist does. I’ll just drive my car somewhere else to get new brakes, except that driving without brakes really isn’t that safe, is it? I don’t mean to sound condescending; I’m just having a bit of trouble wrapping my head around how the $7,000 I pay every year can’t buy me 45 minutes with a trained professional to figure out what’s wrong with me.

But I suppose that’s the reason I’m having such trouble, isn’t it? Is it my clean appearance? My ability to form complete sentences and speak politely to the doctors’ receptionists? Or is it because I haven’t picked up my mother’s gun, shot her in her sleep and stolen her car yet? While trying to schedule an appointment recently, I was asked about my symptoms and patient priority status. Do I feel like killing myself? Do I have violent impulses toward others? Am I having trouble with day-to-day activities? Have I tried other treatments?

Who do you think you are, and what makes you think that you have the right to any of that information? I didn’t realize that MBAs and actuary science degrees are the new Doctor of Medicine degree, or that it’s now the responsibility of suits in an office in Newark to decide if I should get medical care in Philadelphia. I didn’t realize that there’s a shortage of mental health services in this country and that we’re rationing them for the crazies. Is it because I’m still capable of getting out of bed in the morning and going to work that I’m not ready for help yet? When? When do I become your priority? When I’m too scared to leave my room because I don’t want to get hurt? When I’m wearing a tinfoil hat and a winter coat in July, hobbling down Market Street looking for a cigarette? Or when I drown my son in the bathtub because I just can’t take it anymore?

And who am I to expect such priority treatment? I am the man sleeping with prostitutes because he’s too ashamed to tell his wife he lost his job. I’m the new mother who hates herself because she doesn’t understand why she suddenly feels depressed. I’m the gay teenager in Kentucky who’s going to shoot himself in the head because he knows his parents will never love him. And I am perfectly normal. I am a product of a society that’s more worried about how much it will cost to stop polluting the earth than it is about polluting the Earth, where it’s easier to buy a shotgun than an antipsychotic, and where children are taught that being normal is not something they are born into but something they can become. It’s my job to deal with this on a daily basis, and it’s yours to help me through it. I am a human being, and I deserve to be treated like one.

You know why I need a psychiatrist? Because sometimes I’m afraid that I’m too annoying, or that I can’t succeed, or will never be in a stable romantic relationship again. And I don’t want to live in fear anymore. I am not going to sit down and let these problems rot me away. I need help, and with or without your assistance, I’m going to find it.

Sincerely yours,
Richard Furstein

Richard Furstein is the distribution manager at The Triangle. He can be contacted at richard.furstein@thetriangle.org.

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“Gay rights are threatening religious liberty.” This statement, while a touch extreme, is, no less, a common sentiment among political conservatives in the United States. Its iterations and manifestations can be seen across the board, from Washington’s attempt to give “religious and moral exemptions” to anyone who was conflicted about serving lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people (including grocery stores, gas stations, medical clinics, etc.) to Congress’ inability to pass the Student Non-Discrimination Act (which conservative think-tanks warned would make legitimate opposition to the homosexual lifestyle illegal). The legitimacy to which they refer is, in essence, derived from thousands of years of unchanged and unchangeable religious heritage. Therefore, the very concept that homosexuality should be recognized under the law is in clear violation of the religious freedoms that the Constitution so clearly guarantees.

Or is it? Arguing that religious liberties are threatened by changes to civil rights laws (because the Constitution doesn’t say anything about gay people, but it does mention religion) is not unique to this era, nor is it unique to LGBT people. When Civil Rights activists in the 1950s demanded that legalized segregation be ruled unconstitutional, they faced the same opposition from religious activists, citing that such a change would limit their ability to practice their religion as they saw fit. When the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted women the right to vote in 1920, it was argued that doing so threatened a man’s biblical status as head of his household. And when slavery was outlawed in 1865, religious slave-owners lamented that something the Bible accepted was now legally denied.

While religious people throughout U.S. history have used their religion to argue against social change, they reflect only one side of a large discussion. It is a reality that the teachings of a religion change with time, change that is supported by members of the religion (not outside pressures). These changes are not on the order of millennia, but rather decades. As an example, it is commonly assumed that the Catholic Church is monolithically unchangeable in its values. According to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, “for 2,000 years the Church has taught the same things which Jesus taught.”

Strictly speaking, that’s patently false. It wasn’t until the First Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325), that the Church officially considered Jesus divine. More subtle changes can be found in the Church’s recent history. In 1863, Catholic scholar John Henry Newman defended the concept of slavery as morally just, yet Pope John Paul II pronounced it to be intrinsically evil a century later. Before 1966, eating meat on a Friday was grounds for eternal damnation. After 1966, that belief quietly disappeared, as Pope Paul VI authorized national bishops’ councils to relax the requirements for Catholics to abstain from meat in their respective countries. These changes, subtle or drastic, are clues to the Church’s adaptation to a changing society, even while it professes not to change.

But how do the Catholic Church’s changing stances relate to civil rights? While the American discourse on civil rights characterizes them as a result of liberalism (as well as secularism and general godlessness), the word of God can be used to argue for expansions to civil liberties. When the United Kingdom debated legalizing same-sex marriage, it had to account for the fact that the Church of England (the official church of the Kingdom) expressly opposes homosexuality. However, the Society of Friends (what we in America call the Quakers) accepts same-sex marriage within its churches in the U.K. As the Society does not “vote” on issues of canon but rather acts in unanimity, its 2009 decision to endorse same-sex marriage in the U.K. was rather significant. They, along with several other religions like Reform Judaism, were instrumental in arguing for the necessity of same-sex marriage as a matter of their religious freedom.

When religious individuals argue that a change in society directly affects the way they practice their faith, they often avoid and disregard the wider implications of their statements. When any religious adherents living in America believe that their religious convictions alone justify legal policy, they ignore the reality that an individual’s freedom of religion applies only so far as not to infringe upon the rights of any other individual. American media love to demonize Middle Eastern governments, many of which are ruled by a political form of Islam. We charge them as suppressing their citizens’ natural rights to self-determination by imposing an unquestionable interpretation of the Quran. And yet, when Republican Pennsylvania Rep. Daryl Metcalfe of Butler County blocked Democratic Rep. Brian Simms of Philadelphia from talking about same-sex marriage in the chamber, what was his cited reason? That Simms’ speech was an “open rebellion against God.” Metcalfe’s oppressive behavior and religious justification thankfully do not reflect the majority of conservative politicians in Pennsylvania (who apologized to Simms for the action). However, they do find sympathies across the nation, with individuals who argue that their religion must be protected from civil rights.

Richard Furstein is the distribution manager at The Triangle. He can be contacted  at richard.furstein@thetriangle.org.

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