W.I.L.T.

Death is difficult for typical American rationalists

By Eric Rollins

I am thoroughly exhausted from talking and thinking about the shooting at the Virginia Tech. But I’m not about to give it up; I’m not going to get bored or annoyed of the talk, the dead are in my heart permanently and I’m not ashamed to say it.

Showing the footage of the killer on NBC Nightly News, and with only a miniscule amount of resistance gives everyone the impression that anyone with a video camera and a death wish can get on national television. The quest for celebrity, an American creation, is partly responsible, not the Information Age itself. YouTube, Facebook and MySpace are all means to an end; that end being the accrual of status. That status is popularity, eccentricity, originality, etc.; anything that gives a person identity.

Cho wanted to be a mystery to people; his Facebook profile detailed him as “the question mark.” He achieved that to some extent, but I think some people knew he was a serious threat. In hindsight they see he was dangerous, but hindsight doesn’t cure it or change it. Plenty of people think that thinking about Cho means he’s won, but I don’t see it that way. What I hold in my heart is my business, but showing his image and manifesto in television demeans the lives lost, and the families and friends still alive.

To me Cho represents all of the passion and spirit lost in American materialism. We can’t be free with our emotions; no one likes to be mocked and put down, especially at our age, and being emotional makes one a freak. I don’t think Cho was a martyr; he merely represents a subculture of Generation X and Y that holds a little more than status, race, wealth, and visual perfection sacred. From his clips I don’t see some latent intelligence and any online group praising him should be voided. His actions and words (from English classes and to friends) were cries of attention and not his true expression.

I felt ill that “specialists” and psychologists think that the Information Age and Facebook define our generation. First, because they make claims like they know what it’s like to be a teenager in the 21st century, which they don’t, but also because they’re unfortunately correct.

Our tenacious rationalism took this killing spree in stride. Everyone was shocked, but hardly surprised. School shootings, untamed civilian violence and suicide are old news. Saying “there’s nothing I could have done or can do now,” “oh, it’s just another irrational act, nothing I can do,” “I can’t let something that doesn’t affect me change my everyday activity” may be truthful sentiment. There’s something more than being a rationalist, automaton though.

I have two examples of how little the rest of America cares about Virginia Tech. By Thursday, Google News didn’t have any new events on their top two news stories, nor were they in the World or US news sections. The only thing they had on it, three days after the massacre, was the debate about the videos under Entertainment News. Your suffering and Cho’s violence is entertainment to the rest of us - how does that make you feel, Virginia?

I set up a Facebook group to spread awareness of the national collegiate day of mourning for V-Tech on Friday. Some people straight up declined to participate, but I’ll chalk that up to them not reading the description; I delete a lot of events and invitations online that I don’t read. But one girl from another school wrote on the message board, “I’ll be wearing a raspberry coat on Friday, but it won’t have anything to do with Virginia Tech. Ugh!” I originally responded violently to the post, including things like “I hope you’re next”, and then I deleted both posts.

The ceremony in the library on Friday was nice. There was the predictably awkward moment of silence where no one knows what quite to do; they mostly end up staring at their feet and waiting. Since no one knows any prayers, it’s hard to say one to yourself during moments of silence for people’s death. Chancellor MacCormack even included “For those of us who are believers” before she asked for general prayers. It’s sad she had to do that. She meant those who believed in Christ, or some deity. The essence of the saying was that there were a lot of people in that room that don’t believe in anything, never mind Jesus or God. It’s hard to pray for forgiveness and relief when you don’t believe in any power that can grant it.

Death is a hard thing to deal with for someone with a strict rational ethos. This country on the whole can’t deal with it. Faced with it, either if it’s a friend, family member, yourself, or someone you don’t even know, understanding the implications is a hard thing to do. The loss of someone’s presence is trivial compared to the circumstances in which they died. Someone’s death is always someone else’s agenda fodder, especially with regards to the media.

The most inspiring event at the ceremony was the new Hindu chaplain’s Sanskrit prayers. They were beautiful and emotional. At then end of April 16, 2007 all we had were 33 more people who will never feel beauty or emotion ever again, and that’s the saddest thing about it, nothing else.

The truth about violence in the news and media

by Lance Gagnon

The late, great novelist Kurt Vonnegut once wrote “there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre.” Thus, I don’t plan on commenting directly on the recent massacre at Virginia Tech. Pretty much everything that could be said about it will be said by someone else in the media. The only thing they won’t talk about is the media itself.

Whenever something like this happens, the media jumps on it like a starving person at an all-you-can-eat buffet. It’s not surprising that they do so; our media has a love affair with any story that can keep the public fearful of unpredictable violence. This one has it all: the random gunman that could be anyone, the everyday setting that you might be in yourself, and the inability to distinguish where it might happen next.

We often call this sensational media, but further examination shows it’s really controlling media. There are plenty of sensational stories that the mainstream media never covers, even if they have a huge impact. They simply will not cover them if they weaken some form of societal control amongst their peers. After all, wouldn’t a sensational media talk about the so-called “humanitarian” Jimmy Carter giving military aid to Indonesia’s Jakarta regime when they committed genocide in East Timor?

The mainstream media actions are best explained by Norm Chomsky in his theory of the manufacture of consent. Essentially, the mainstream media is run by big corporations, who in turn hold a lot of power in the government through lobbying and by having societal elites who are funded by them elected into office. They, along with the university system (which, because it is funded by the government, corporations, and private wealth gained from those institutions, teaches us to think the way those institutions want us to think), work together to control our understanding of the world. That way, when any event happens in the news, they will be able to make us react to it in the way that they see fit.

The recent tragedy is no different. Though over 30 people dying in one day is indeed unfortunate, it is not outside the norm. In many countries, this many people or more die from curable diseases every day. If we were to take a small amount of our runaway military budget and redirect it towards saving these lives, we could have a huge reduction in the amount of avoidable deaths that happen in the world. If the media were to focus on these deaths every day, treating them no different from the Virginia Tech incident, we might even see a movement to do something about it.

Unfortunately, they don’t, and probably won’t so long as they are part of the system that manufactures consent. They won’t risk losing funding from big advertisers like the military-industrial complex or the pharmaceutical industry by promoting actions that would hurt their bottom line. And they won’t risk sounding like they are promoting a political agenda because they don’t want to risk even the smallest amount of backlash from politicians complaining about them being “activist media” (as if that was a bad thing). Besides, they get rich off of the same machine that accumulates profits for the other three institutions; why would they want to stop working with them?

The same situation is happening with the mainstream media’s coverage of the war in Iraq. They talk a lot about our soldiers’ deaths, our soldiers’ legacy, our soldiers’ mission, and our soldiers’ lives. But when do they ever talk about the Iraqi people’s deaths, legacy, mission, or lives? Sure, they talk about bringing freedom to Iraq, as if our government ever cared about the people there, but the effects of the war on the average Iraqi is ignored.

They ignore the fact that the insurgents are not al-Qaeda operatives but simply angry Iraqis that want us out of their country. Worse still, they ignore the fact that over 600,000 civilians have died, and that 50% of the population of Iraq (and one of the largest demographics being killed) is under the age of 15. If they were a sensational media, or even just a media that simply told what was happening, they wouldn’t call this a war; they’d call it a genocide (which historically has been the only thing that ever defeated a people’s insurgency).

But pointing out the truth is not the mainstream media’s job; their job is to control what we know of our world and how we react to it. Thus, they will focus on a random massacre in our country that we can do nothing about but mourn while ignoring situations we can actually do something about. By ignoring the news that will breed an activist spirit in the people, they keep the power to control our nation within the hands of the mainstream media and the other institutions that work with it.

So if you want to mourn those killed at Virginia Tech, do so. But do not act as if these are the only deaths happening at the moment, or that nothing can be done to save any of the lives being lost right now. If that is the only reaction you have, then you have simply fallen into the trap of the mainstream media. If, on the other hand, you take the constant torrent of death in this world as a reason to act to change things so that the preventable deaths - not those at Virginia Tech or similar random massacres, but the others mentioned previously - do not have to happen, then you may not be caught up in the constant fear and misery that the mainstream media pushes on us. You may even be one of the heroes who prevents an even worse tragedy.

Response from UMD Parent

While on campus to visit my daughter, a UMD freshman, and see her perform at “Moby Dick, The Musical,” I picked up your eloquent, heart-felt, insightful column.

Your generation has endured Columbine, 9/11 and now this. And as you ask so pointedly asked, “What have I/we done to stop it?” To stem the tide of violence? To demand video games and movies that don’t feature violence. To educate parents to censor violent movies from their children until they’re old enough to comprehend them—if ever.

Perhaps our media-saturated world has made us impersonal and blind to each other as we step over the homeless, build and live in gated neighborhoods, and avoid places where people don’t look or act like us. Even when they’re in our midst, we look the other way, avoid eye contact, politely step around until the gun is pointed at our face.

What happened to caring about our neighbor, being our brother’s/sister’s keeper? Stopping long enough to care and believe what we do will make a difference? As you said, to slow down, step back and say “Hold on, things aren’t alright here.”

Yes, as you say, teachers should talk to students. What about parents talking to children? Students talking to their parents? Students talking to each other? We can’t legislate people caring about each other. And with free press and expression, we can’t legislate the content of video games and movies.

But we can legislate against gun ownership and availability, and demand the creation of a national database to check backgrounds of gun buyers, so people like Cho can’t lie when they’re buying a gun and say they’ve never been involuntarily committed to a mental institution, as he did.

Such legislation was proposed after Columbine, but Congress answered to the gun lobby and didn’t pass it. Perhaps if Cho traumatized the halls of Congress, they might pass laws to enable better gun control. Even after one of their own, James Brady, press secretary to Reagan, was seriously injured and began lobbying for stricter gun control, Congress turned its back on his wheelchair.

Please keep your passion and caring, in spite of what your generation has endured. Care for those around you and lobby for better laws. If that doesn’t work, run for Congress yourself. Keep writing. Practice freedom of the press to criticize the complacence of lawmakers and citizens. When you get tired, remember what Gandhi said, “Whatever you do may seem insignificant to you, but it is most important that you do it.”

Susan Tordella-Williams
UMD parent

‘I have a stupid name and cookie-cutter sound, this is why I’m hot’

By Shara Sarnelli

Finally! Our tastes in music will never be dissatisfied again! We can turn on any radio station and hear songs that sound similar. This way, we don’t have to take the time to search for something that’s sweet to our ears. It’s so much easier to fit the mold and let the media do the dirty work. Let’s see - I’ll take the star shaped one...

We tend to blame the lack of originality in contemporary music on the record industry itself for creating cookie-cutter, mainstream artists who, within a certain genre, all look and sound alike; but we are as much at fault as well. We pick from the sole provided shape: the star. But there are many more shapes out there. Why not go for the unidentifiably shaped one?

It’s simple, really; if music artists want to excel, make money, get a great deal of publicity and go platinum, they have to maintain specific sounds; fit into the mold of the star. The media and record industry stuff these mainstream artists into our ears daily through the radio and we passively listen with some sort of convenient acceptance. And we wouldn’t want to do anything inconvenient, now, would we? We don’t bother to help underground artists sell their albums. One might argue those bands are kept below the surface because “sometimes in the record industry, there’s nothing worse than success. Success breeds imitation. Imitation encourages conformity and conformity leads to a stultifying sameness” (Cox, NPR). “Sometimes” is the key word in that statement. We can pull atypical artists above the surface. As consumers, we have “the power to let the music industry know who we want to hear” (U-Wire). Yet it seems, as a whole, we’ve come to accept “boring radio” (Henry, The Toronto Star).

Take the rough, powerful sounds of rock for example—and I’m not talking about songs like “Cherry Pie.” I’m talking about mainstream rock, or “pop-rock.” From lyrics to vocals, musical notes to physical appearances, today’s pop-rock bands are the same. The members of such bands sing in jagged tones about brokenhearted souls trying to better their lives. They tend to have scruffy facial hair accompanied by faded, denim jeans with a brown belt and a plain, white t-shirt.

This basis of current, popular rock is thanks to modern radio stations for playing a select few rock-pop bands. With eight plus hit tracks out, Nickelback has become the trendiest of the few. Following right behind are similar bands Creed, Daughtry and Puddle of Mudd. It’s hard to classify a favorite because it’s difficult to discern the differences between them.

It’s time to search deeper to expose rock bands like Alkaline Trio, Bayside and The Early November. These bands do not get assistance from record producers like Rick Parashar, who has worked with our loving members of Nickelback, let alone have their music go double platinum like Daughtry’s debut album. Those albums sell for nearly $20 each, and concert tickets begin at $40. The Early November’s (TEN) albums sell for $10 at shows costing $15.

Fans of the underground discover bands through friends, browsing through record labels’ websites, or going to concerts for bigger bands where less popular bands open the show. I stumbled across TEN through their label’s website, Drive-Thru Records who are home to well-known bands New Found Glory and Hellogoodbye.

TEN is one of my favorite bands and I have supported them for many years. I’ve seen them four times in concert, met lead singer Ace Enders, own every album, and purchase t-shirts at their shows. TEN does not resemble other variations of rock bands at all. Why doesn’t Ace Enders have his face shining on covers of magazines? There aren’t enough supporters; at a TEN show, 50 people could show up whereas at a mainstream band’s concert, expect 50,000. TEN always puts on amazing performances. The intense energy lets fans know TEN loves what they do.

Other than pop-rock, mainstream rap and hip-hop has blended into one. The scene draws “much of its inspiration from the champagne, cell phone and limousine lifestyle” (Cox, NPR) along with “bling-bling” that is way too heavy, but big enough to see the shine of their golden “grills.” The music industry adores Young Jeezy and Little Weezy, rappers who clearly could not use their brains to come up with creative MC names. We also have Mims singing “This is Why I’m Hot” who looks a lot like Rich Boy singing “Throw Some D’s.” Fans can choose to rap repetitious lines like “this is why I’m hot, this is why I’m hot, this is why, this is why I’m hot,” followed by some unclear lines about how Mims is untouchable. Or fans can repeatedly rap “just bought a Cadillac, throw some D’s on that bitch! Just bought a Cadillac, throw some D’s on that bitch!” which goes on and on saying those lines thirty times, adding incomprehensible words ‘bout hoes givin’ him thurr numbers, but he ain’t never gonna call.

Scanning through boring radio in hopes of finding something appealing, I swear I hear the same song on every rap and hip-hop station. In reality, there are twenty artists with hit singles out, but they have comparable attributes. In the 80’s, LL Cool J could easily be separated from Run DMC by both look and sound. There’s got to be more out there. We cannot have seriously settled for Diddy who will soon be known as plain Did. Whole Wheat Bread is an underground rap band that has a unique twist. If you’re sick of throwing D’s on bitches, check them out at purevolume.com.

We don’t look behind mainstream artists to find variety. We take what we are handed and blame it on the music industry when we miss Kansas’s “Carry on Wayward Son” and the past’s larger music variety— well, variety hasn’t died. Why bother finding it when the media will handle it for us? They cut so many star-shaped cookies out for us - Let’s help them cut out something unusual. After all, how bright are those stars really?

THE CAMPUS SPOTLIGHT - EDITOR'S SPECIAL FEATURE

UMD spring traditions: Blown money, art and fun

Outdoor activity

It’s always a good thing to see everyone actually sticking around campus in between classes instead of hiding in their dungeon-like dorms. Nice weather always helps. More and more people lounge around the Quad, the library, outside the classroom buildings, outside the dorms - wherever some dry pavement can be found with a place for cigarette butts nearby. Frisbee and Whiffle Ball always make an appearance, representing the most physical activity any of us have done in the past three months.

Dell construction

A couple of weeks ago, the administration sent out e-mails declaring the Dell parking lots and Dell road off limits to parking. Big construction trucks were going to need that area to move all their tools and materials in and out. But as the weeks went on I didn’t notice any movement of large machinery. There was little activity at all, only a few surveyors went in. I walked down there last week only to see a large fence around Cedar Dell South.

Finally, on Monday, a few signs were put up that basically said “we’re going to do some actual work now, don’t mind our lack of activity while you parked at the library.” I love this picture because it represents the banality of resident squabbling, and that they’ll complain about anything that may or may not inconvenience them in the slightest bit. Not being able to park in the Dell hasn’t been a big problem for anybody. The walk from the library lot to the dorms isn’t much longer, and it’s straighter, and you don’t have to trudge through the mud. No one has complained even though the Dell has been needlessly closed for a while now. Speaking of the Dell, as I have said before: Give it a chance!

Digital Art Gallery

I don’t have much reason for hating this new complement to the architecture in the Campus Center, but I really do hate it. What we had before were standing collages of printed out pictures that we now have on a rotating slide show on a digital computer screen. It cheapens the experience and is a waste of money. Here I am stuck with a computer that takes six years to boot up and there are computers being used to show permanently slide shows! Lots of other schools furnish their students with not one, but two computers (freshmen and junior year).

The thing is, a lot of times when we complain about money we aren’t doing it correctly. Money gets apportioned out at the beginning of the year and what those people choose to do with it, and WHEN. There are fireplaces with gas-powered flames in Group I. Complain all you want, but the maintenance does what they want with their money and no one can do anything about it.

Outdoor sports

I never played volleyball on campus. As a freshman I saw students by Chestnut always serving, setting and spiking, but I never joined. No one I knew or was friends with played. Even though outside of the new dorms, and in the Dell we have and had courts, we never played, or at least I never did. As I sit in on my computer and criticize the hell out of everyone, especially freshmen, for being lazy and apathetic, I applaud them for getting out there and playing some volleyball. You need a lot of friends, the initiative to get a ball, and a court. I was too lazy to do it; they have one-upped me - I’m not as great as I say and they aren’t as bad. Kudos and enjoy the spring weather!!!

Outdoor sculpture exhibit

There are some campus traditions that are fun to take part in. Every year when odd, mangled pieces of left over furniture, metal, and wood grace the lower fields around Group VI, you know it’s spring. The sculpture majors have their yearlong projects on display on the lawn and miniature models inside the CVPA building. This year the highlights are the four-armed upright bass player, the grenade, and the tree with the wires through it. I am not being technical but you know what I’m talking about.

The most public, albeit unintentionally, exhibit is the fifty or so metal pinwheels on the hill of Group VI. It’s an interesting piece of work, designed to represent natural wind power. I don’t know if loud sounds create energy though, just ask the students around the area.

Fire doors in Woodlands

If you live in Ivy Hall, this will be near and dear to your heart, unless you are the person or people responsible. If that is you, then you suck. Since the year started, the fire door facing Ring Road has been permanently broken; not because it never got replaced, oh it gets replaced, it’s because people keep breaking the hinge so the door will stay propped.

Propping doors in a dorm is a college tradition. How else are partiers and under-aged friends supposed to sneak in? Why should I have to walk all the way around to the main entrance and go through the nuisance of taking out my card when I can just go through this door? Well, at Ivy it’s costing us big money. It’s an egregious lack of respect or concern for the rest of the building, especially since we’ve been billed about a dozen times now.

It’s probably a few kids who live closest to the door. Who else would disrespect the building that much, especially if they didn’t greatly benefit from it? They either bend the hinge, permanently disfiguring it, or they dislodge the springs in the “crash bar” as the housing bill details it. Since February 6 of this year, the door has been broken to a point of needed repair more than a dozen times.

So someone keeps breaking it and maintenance kept fixing it, both actions are equally frustrating. Why would you keep fixing it when it’s just going to break again? Well, because it makes the school money. In the housing contract it says students have to pay for any student-sponsored damage. And, from looking at the billing information, the materials and labor alone don’t cost $320 a pop; they are overcharging for a profit, wouldn’t you?

This month housing finally gave up and unlocked the new door. Anyone who was tall enough could wrap their fingers over the top of the door and open it up. Breaking it for propping purposes was not necessary anymore. Yet, this week, someone broke it again; another $320 to the building. Since February, the building has been charged almost $5000, bringing each resident’s fee to about $23 each for a few people’s disregard for anyone but themselves.