The Wake

Recently, a writer named Eric Stone submitted an article to The Wake titled “Cult of Praise” regarding his experience as a member of People of Praise, an on-campus religious group that Mr. Stone considers to be a cult. The article’s loaded take on the politics of religion and campus life was the impetus for much debate among members of the Wake staff about whether or not the article should be published. In order to illuminate the kind of issues and concerns that go into both publishing a magazine and discussing religion in the modern world, we have decided to post the article on our website and publish the ideological stances of three different staff members in this issue. We encourage readers to read the article and join in on the debate.

Ali Jaafar
The word “publication” …

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Boycotting the Olympics is not going to solve any of the human rights issues in China. The calls for boycotts have only angered Chinese citizens and put the Chinese government on the defensive. When the government becomes defensive, it does everything in its power to control any type of political outburst, however small. This will lead to even more abuses within Tibet and the Xingjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The Chinese government has also used the political unrest in Tibet to create a divide between the Han ethnic group of China- which is the ethnic majority -and the minority groups within China.

I am not trying to dismiss China’s serious human rights issues. Indeed, China has many problems besides Tibet that it needs to resolve. But China has only recently become a world power. If you looked …

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Illustration by Srijon Chowdhury

I. INVOCATION

Dearest Senior Class of 2008,

As you are already well aware, May is rapidly approaching and much of the anxiety regarding post-college life that was safely stewing at the recesses of our minds is about to manifest itself, plump and ugly, in our newly re-christened adulthood.

The age we are entering headfirst is certainly an exciting one — despite, or perhaps as a result of, current economic forecasts, a seemingly endless war, and end-of-times weather patterns… But alas! It’s at least the culmination of 16 or so years of education! The prolonged first step in floundering pursuit of answering the question: how are you going to pay the fucking bills when you grow up?

It’s also …

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Photo by Dante Busquets-Anzenberger

Most of the facts in this article are true.

As you’re all aware, Beijing is hosting the 2008 Summer Olympics. They’re spending hundreds of millions of dollars on this thing, they’ve built some cool buildings, and they’re trying to generally spruce up the city in anticipation of the international spotlight that they’ll receive. They’ve been working diligently on this thing for years, putting far more into it than the Greeks did when they half-assed it back in 2004. They know that this is their big moment to shine, to show China to the world as a modern, forward-looking country — the new superpower to reckon with — a respectable force in world economic and political affairs. …

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Illustration by Meghan Matteson

“Hello. My name is Abby. I’m twenty-two years old. I live in St. Paul. I’m working toward a degree in English. I’m a Gemini. I enjoy writing, dancing and riding my bike. My favorite books include Lolita and White Noise. I’m an infamous regular at my local coffee shop. I’m into video editing. I smoke like a chimney. I hate cooking. I like puns. I love my family.”

Check it out. This little bio is made up of tidbits gleaned from my now defunct Facebook profile. Two years ago, this was part of a rather desperate attempt to urge my classmates and friends to take note of me. “Now see here,” it said. “I’m interesting …

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Photo by Ben Alpert

Now I’m as much of a technophile as the next geek. I’ve built computers and bought my fair share of surround systems, HDTVs and the latest, greatest videogame consoles. Most of them have been great, but something has plagued me over the last year and I don’t think I’m alone. It seems that with every technological stride we take, a hundred new problems come to fruition. As we add more and more gadgets to our lives, we need to ask something: Is it going to work in a year?

This past July, Microsoft proved my point when they were forced to extend their warranties and reimburse many early adopters of the Xbox 360. The $400 console suffered …

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Religion
Do you know what Pascal’s Wager is? It states that we should believe in God on the chance, however slim, that He exists and He’ll be irritated if we don’t believe in Him. So I will refrain from addressing the issue of religion here, but bear in mind that Pascal’s Wager scares the shit out of me.

The Nature of Reality
I hate it when I’m trying to convince people that the entire world is just an illusion inside my head. They always insist that that can’t be true because they know that they exist. I then try to explain that of course they say that, my brain made them say that in order to sustain the illusion that they were real. Bastards won’t listen to reason.

J. D. Salinger Always Italicizes Shit
That’s a bit of …

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Illustration by Dustin Nelson

In anticipation of the 2008 election, many serious yet oft-ignored issues have reemerged and exposed themselves to the voting public. There are the perpetually unresolved cases of abortion, religion, states’ rights, education… frankly, the list could go on indefinitely. However, one seemingly played-out but absolutely crucial issue that I think many people are still far too divided over is that of global warming and, by extension, environmental preservation. Unfortunately, people tend to avert their eyes when the “e” word comes up and act as if it’s something that will just disappear. Even worse, they will settle into the irresponsible frame of mind that these catastrophic effects will not take place during their own lifetime, so why …

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Illustration by Ben Alpert

I had a classmate many years ago. We would talk politics on occasion. It rarely worked out.

See, every single time that I tried to raise an objection to or voice an opinion about something, she would yell “think of the children!” It didn’t matter if it was AIDS, war, health care, welfare, etc. It didn’t matter if I wanted to stop war because it killed children or create universal health care so we could care for children, I was always wrong because I wasn’t “think[ing] of the children.”

We have a word for that kind of rhetoric. The word is “histrionics,” which Merriam-Webster’s defines as “a deliberate display of emotion for effect.” Another word we could …

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Don’t buy Super Smash Bros. Brawl if you have a column due.

There are myriad reasons why, but I’ll focus on one: It is terminally good. I chose that word with care; Brawl is a terminal game. It will end careers, marriages, friendships, and college educations. In fact, fuck it, I’m expanding my suggestion.

Don’t buy Brawl if you want to:

• have friends who don’t play Brawl
• pass any classes this semester
• have sex at any point in the near future
• keep up a basic level of hygiene
• eat enough to be healthy
• keep muscles other than your thumbs from atrophying
• read a book
• earn the money to pay your rent
• preserve your dignity
• sleep enough to preserve your sanity
• communicate in something other than grunts

The new shipment of games comes with a warning label to the effect of the list above.
Seriously. Consider what you want from your …

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Illustration by Jeremy Sengly

So what is the true function of the press? Some argue the concept that political and social discourse can be encouraged through the simple presentation of unbiased facts. Others believe that objectivity is a farce, and the only true way to have a democratic press is through open forum debate, with the press as a facilitator.

In America, the notion of objectivity in the press is relatively recent. For the first two centuries of our nation’s history, newspapers, journals and magazines were typically tools used to advance an editor or publisher’s agenda. This biased use of the media is seen as dangerous in the context of our current “truth”-obsessed society, but these publications sparked dialogue and encouraged …

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I’m thinking of a number between one and ten. Okay, bear with me. I’m just going to ask you some questions. So: I’m thinking of a number between one and ten. What is it? Now, what’s the first thing that comes to mind when I say “dog?” Now, quick, what neighborhood do you live in?

Strangely enough, that last question is a difficult one for a lot of students. While college is often viewed as this big, communal vision quest through the forest of knowledge, (or something like that) it has, ironically, caused our generation to become more isolated from the communities in which they live. As we become increasingly obsessed with “social networking,” we are becoming more withdrawn and separated from our neighbors and friends.

So what the hell am I talking about? Think about …

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Illustration by Ben Alpert

“No black man will ever be president.”

This phrase has been uttered countless times by blacks, but with Senator Barack Obama on the cusp of the Democratic presidential nomination, one would think that such rhetoric would dissipate. Unfortunately, though, it has only increased.

Why are we so set on the notion that a black man will never call 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue home? Was Tupac Shakur right in the song where he professed it to be a white-man’s world? Or was he right when in that very same song he stated that rather than them knocking us off, it was us knocking us off?

I have struggled with these questions for sometime now, without making any progress …

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If you’ve ever taken a high school psychology class, you probably have a vague recollection of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Maslow probably thought that he was designing this hierarchy in order to direct humanity down the road to happiness. It is my contention that his actual achievement was to demonstrate to humanity how totally fucked we are. To illustrate this point, I will run through each of Maslow’s needs and discuss how it indicates fucked-ness.

1. Physiological Needs. This includes food, water, and, more provocatively, sex and excretion. Well, like a billion people plus on this planet don’t have clean drinking water and people in certain African countries have an unfortunate tendency to starve. So let’s say that this category automatically discounts 1.4 billion people from happiness.

2. Safety. This includes security of body, employment, something termed …

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Illustration by Srijon Chowdhury

Columbine. Rocori. Red Lake. Virginia Tech. University of Texas. When we think of these words, we think of the tragedies they represent. We think of the sadness and despair caused by individuals who spread their pain and fear across our country in a vast media blitz of bullets. Since 1999, high school and college students haven’t worried about exams so much as they’ve worried about the lone wolf in the student population climbing up the bell tower and shooting up their schools.

What were once separate attacks by tortured souls have become commonplace in the media now. After Valentine’s Day this year, when a 27-year-old former graduate student shot and killed five students at Northern Illinois University, …

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