The Wake

If you want to see what high school kids know about history, start judging debate rounds. If you want to see what college kids think about race relations, sit in on Journalism 1001. I was discussing the Danish cartoon fiasco in the aforementioned class when one of my classmates decided to point out that there is such a thing as a “Moderate Muslim,” a genteel creature who apparently never gets offended and welcomes all facets of American culture with open arms. Another student applauded Grey’s Anatomy for featuring a black man in a position of power. Some brave souls were even intrepid enough to claim that the media doesn’t perpetuate stereotypes. And everybody agreed that Crash was like the civil rights movement put to film and shown on a projector operated by Malcolm X. …

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The Driven to Discover campaign that started in late September asks the public to enter their “single greatest question,” but it also allows University researchers to show off their research, and not really answer the questions. What a great “campaign,” huh?DTD easily allows those inside and outside of the University to see what our researchers have been up to, with University experts answering the questions being asked. It lets all those who are interested in the research being done at the U to easily access the information. I mean who wouldn’t be sucked in by the question, “What is my dog thinking?”But it also makes one wonder, who is asking these questions and who chooses who answers them? Are these questions asked just solely to “show off” a project the U is doing? If so, …

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Let’s face it. The American forces aren’t fighting the Nazis anymore. What one person might call the “good fight” isn’t exactly black and white. It’s more open to interpretation these days. Unfortunately for our armed forces, more people are realizing this fact every day. Each time someone turns on BBC instead of Fox for their daily news, or maybe when one remembers that Allah is really just another name for the same God, or that Jesus is of frequent crucial presence in the Qur’an, it gets a little harder for recruiters to do their job.Speaking of how our media treats Islam, why is it when someone is strictly religious, they’re “devout” in Christian-speak, they’re “orthodox” in Judaism-speak. Yet, change the name they employ for the same God, and now they’re “fundamentalists,” “extremists” or “Jihads.” This …

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Nervous from the thirty-some hits of marijuana, he had taken on the ride through the neighborhoods. Bryan McCoy resorted to sending text messages to his estranged girlfriend, a sixteen-year-old student at McCoy’s former private high school. According to the young man, he was “bowl-cruising to check the epic X-mas lights, lit up like fire like me man,” he reported, giggling like an asshole, careless and unaware of his forthcoming demise. McCoy, a hopelessly tragic nineteen-year-old and an unemployed hair-gel wearing stoner, insisted that he was neither a hipster nor a hippie, yet maintained a distinct anti-establishment air. Recently, he moved back in with his parents, the experiment of his forty thousand dollar per year tuition failing. Upon being asked what he’d do with the free time, McCoy brushed off the suggestion of …

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First-year, 17-year-old business student Michael Peterson of Hopkins succeeded in exacerbating his short-lived sex life early Saturday morning, when, after losing his virginity to Sophomore Kelly Thomson, he raised his right hand for a high-five following his early climax. The two met at an open-mic event held at the Whole music club in the basement of Coffman Union Friday night. According to Thomson’s friend, Meredith McKenzie, they were drinking shots of tequila before the show at Thomson’s dorm room in Bailey Hall, where, upon leaving, Thomson had a “hungry” look in her eye.Peterson, a resident of the Superblock, had arrived to the Whole, and described the scene as “mad crazy with honeys.” After applying a few more layers of Axe body spray to his person in the bathroom, Peterson took the stage, …

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I am not a particularly imposing or commanding individual. I stand (if I stretch) 5 feet 8 inches tall, and the only striking features I possess are facial piercings that make my grandmother weep long into the night. I have stubby little legs approximately three-fourths the length of my torso. My voice isn’t particularly enjoyable to listen to, and it is both airy and occasionally nasal. Even disregarding its displeasing tone (vocal teachers know me by reputation), I often mumble and have a slightly sibilant “s” that annoys the crap out of anyone with sensitive ears or a respect of refined speech. These problems aren’t all terrible — in fact, they’re very surmountable. A lot of people are a lot freakier-looking and annoying sounding than I am (or at least that’s what I choose to …

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I’m a member of the women’s student activist collective. There are about a dozen of us who are core members. We’re all white. We don’t all define ourselves as feminists, but we find common ground in feeling compelled to challenge what society says is acceptable and normal. We have an office on the second floor of Coffman. The student groups on the second floor are called student cultural centers because the idea is that these groups represent the diverse array of students at the U. Because all of the core members of the collective are white, we fail to proportionally represent the population of the University and the population of the country.Our mission in the women’s collective is to empower women and transpeople by eliminating racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, …

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A scene from South Park: his drinking problem spiraling out of control, Randy Marsh begins attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, where he is convinced he has a disease which he is powerless to control. Losing hope, Randy’s drinking escalates further. Meanwhile, a statue of the Virgin Mary suddenly begins bleeding from her anus. People gather around this spectacle, praying to be healed from their various ailments. Randy approaches the statue, pushing aside those with diseases he considers less severe. He drenches himself in the blood erupting from Mary’s rectum and proclaims he will never drink again. A few days later, the Pope comes to investigate the statue. To the dismay of millions, he discovers that the statue is not bleeding from her butt– but from her vagina. He declares this to be no miracle because …

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With an oxymoronic slogan like “exposing the intolerant left,” the U’s First Annual Conservative Awareness Week focused more on attacking the right’s ideological opposition than proving that they have anything to offer to students. Remembering, of course, that this was only a week after the GOP’s embarrassing defeat in the midterm Congressional elections—this abortion was probably the best response they could come up with. To make matters worse, the creators of the week decided to soullessly insult the GLBT community, through suggesting the asinine idea that somehow, conservatives are more frequently victimized than gays. CFACT, the Campus Conservative Cultural Program, The Minnesota Republic and Students for a Conservative Voice, the creators of the weeklong tribute to conservatism, claim that conservatives on campus feel unsafe, unwelcome and fear academic retribution from …

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In a recent Gallup poll, they found that twenty percent (that’s one in five) of Americans believe in witches.Fucking witches.I would’ve understood if something like 0.015 percent of Americans believed in people with supernatural powers and flying broomsticks and talking cats as I’m sure that 0.015 percent also has been hit in the head with baseball bats over and over again until they became very brain damaged and gullible at some point. I feel like twenty percent is an unacceptable number. There’s only a twelve percent difference in the number of people who believe in witches and the number of people who believe in our president. Luckily, the president is still beating out sorcerers in numbers. Not because George Bush should have more people on his side, but I would expect (and sort of hope …

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Last year, I made plans to move out of the stifling dorms with my friends to the promised land of an apartment. In our heads danced ideas of swanky bachelor pads with wet bars that swung out from the wall at the push of a button, or living rooms torn from the pages of Better Homes and Gardens. It was to be the most glorious home ever created, famous in its time among college students everywhere. They would blink their eyes in wonder as they wept for their own living arrangements. Friends, I am here to tell you that there are no apartments in the metro area with wet bars which swing out from the wall at the push of a button, or at least not in the price range of a thousand dollars a …

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Take my thoughts, experiences and epiphanies and put them in a blender. Turn it on frappe without the lid, on and watch it all splatter in my face like a bad date. Philosophy can have a comparable effect on a student. I walk into discussions hoping that what I’m saying will penetrate the minds of those around me. Perhaps, today my ideas will cause them to sit back and think, “Jesus, how did I think any differently before these wise words?” This rarely happens. In any number of typical classroom settings, if you put enough thought into what you are presenting and have the confidence and credibility to relay it, people may follow. For those who consider themselves extremely persuasive by nature, prepare to die of pure aggravation. Let me preface this by stating that …

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I’m being audited by the state of Minnesota, which I find both appalling — my tax refund is only $46 — and embarrassing. What’s more, I know they picked me because I can’t do math. I have avoided math for decades, careful not to board trains leaving Peoria at 5 p.m. traveling 62 m.p.h., quietly changing banks whenever I screw up my checkbook and confident that, unless I am buying carpet in Egypt, I probably don’t need to know how to figure the square footage of a pyramid. Having lived a full and rewarding life without math, I was slightly hurt by the tone of the letter from the Minnesota Department of Revenue, which, while it didn’t come right out and say that I had failed to subtract line 35 from line 19 because I …

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Five innocent girls dead. A small Amish town shaken and hurt. On Oct. 2, Carl Charles Roberts IV held 10 girls hostage at their schoolhouse and ended up wounding some and taking lives, as well as his own, for what seems to be no reason at all. As with all the other school shootings, this leaves communities all around the United States uneasy about school violence. It seems we only worry about it once it’s too late and the body count has been tallied. When it comes to murder, there are many categories: homicide, gang-related activities, hate crimes and school shootings among others. I consider school shootings and massacres to be different from any other types of murder. They have unique chilling components. They seem more malicious, more hate-filled and more out for some kind …

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Don’t get me wrong, I’ll never pay for sex; I have a hard time urinating next to a stranger. Even with the buffer urinal and several square feet of visual barrier, I’d probably vote Republican before letting someone I don’t know see me naked. With my OCD and crippling fear of germs, I hate myself enough as it is and I can’t imagine trying to fall asleep after paying somebody to pretend to find me attractive for a few minutes.But prostitution doesn’t deserve to be illegal. The government’s vice squads, which march around locking up consenting adults engaging in acts of free will, don’t deserve to have that power. Just because my overactive conscience curbs my personal behavior to a puritanical level doesn’t mean I have any say over what you do with your personal …

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