Volume 142, Issue #7
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LACK OF TAMPON DISPENSERS MAKES MATTERS WORSE FOR FORGETFUL FEMALES City College’s women’s restrooms are far from being luxurious. Sometimes there is no soap, other times there are no garbage cans; and if women are lucky enough, the stall will have a sufficient amount of toilet paper. But the real concern is not about the lack of essential necessities, but the lack of those personal necessities that female students might find handy — not a full spread full spread of breath mints and perfumes, but simply a dispenser for those wonderful feminine hygiene products that we sometimes forget to pack in our bags. Yet in every bathroom at City College, there is nothing of the sort available to the female population in the event of an emergency. The board of trustees spends so much money each year to better the campus that one would think they would be willing to vote on having feminine hygiene dispensers in the restrooms. We are not asking them to hand out tampons and sanitary napkins for free, just to make them available for when we are desperate and willing to pay 50 cents for one. For the amount of women on campus, the lack of dispensers is upsetting. Tampons are not supposed to be worn for more than a certain amount of time; we need to change them almost as frequently as we need to change our boyfriends. Maybe the school does not recognize the importance of this because there are only two women on the board of trustees. Maybe they think it is not their responsibility to provide this type of service, just like it is not their responsibility to provide desks that can actually hold a grown man. But surely it is just as likely for a lawsuit to be filed against the school for negligence if someone were to fall because of a broken desk as it would be to have a woman get toxic shock syndrome from not having tampons readily available. One might say that the easy solution is just to bring them from home. Granted, that would be the best thing to do — but remember, the women who need this service are menstruating, which makes it impossible to make logical decisions. e-mail: editorial@theguardsman.com
NEW ACT VIOLATES HUMAN RIGHTS President Bush must have forgotten about our constitution when he signed the Military Commission Act in late 2006. This act basically strips a person of their right to habeas corpus, a fair trial. According to the Military Commission Act, the president is authorized to establish a military commission to try “unlawful combatants.” An unlawful combatant is classified as a person who has engaged in hostilities against the United States. This military commission has the power to sentence the defendant to death. This definition is vague and can have many interpretations — that is one of the largest problems with this act. Those opposed to the act say that it violates the defendant’s basic human rights because they cannot invoke any laws established in the Geneva Conventions. President Bush considers this act one of the most important pieces of legislations to help fight the war on terror. The war on terror shouldn’t be fought abroad in other countries. The war on terror should be fought here in the United States against people in the government that would govern with terror. Our government, for all the good it does, has decided to treat its citizens like children. They dictate to us that we should be afraid of the differences that make us all special. We as a country need to stop meddling with other people and start working on our own people before the United States becomes too rotted with terror to change. Our government needs to stop planting seeds of terror and distrust, and start fostering hope. e-mail:dmiller@theguardsman.com STANFORD FORGIVES LOANS
A few weeks ago, Stanford University announced a new $20 million program that will guarantee Stanford graduates half of their loans forgiven after they teach for two years, with the remainder forgiven when they complete four years of teaching. This new program will surely benefit those students who are dreaming of becoming teachers — but what about the rest of us? According to Student Debt Alert, a student interest research group, average student debt levels have tripled since the early 1990s — nearly two-thirds of all four-year college graduates have student loans with over $25,000 in loan debt. Tuition on the other hand, has increased by 57 percent, while the maximum amount a student can borrow from a federal loan program has stayed at $23,000. Critics say that because of this, some students are going to shop around and apply to graduate schools that offer the best deal, not necessarily the best training. Others will choose unwanted careers in favor of their dream jobs. As a result, we are going to end up with people who hate their jobs because they did not want to be teachers in the first place but became them anyway, since this career path was the only way they could get rid of their debts. Not that teaching isn’t a noble profession — it is; and by recognizing it, Stanford speaks highly of itself. Nevertheless, this new program does beg the question: If we believe that teaching is a noble profession, why do we force people into it? Teaching is more than a job — it is a calling. No one should become an educator just because somebody will pay his or her student loan.
Should City College install tampoon dispensers in the women's bathrooms?
BY JOHN GOINS Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness… -John Keats. The mornings at City College are colder now, the air clearer, and the other day while sitting on the steps outside of the journalism department, I saw a skein of geese — or were they ducks? — flying over the campus, oblivious to the anxieties of students worried about their exams, or if they’ll pass or fail the courses that are causing them so much difficulty. Autumn — bridging the last prodigious sighs of summer with winter’s cold stoicism. I think of people who’ve reached middle age, goals half-accomplished and of life and death lingering in the air, and wonder about the students who are in the middle of their journeys. I feel comforted by their presence and ready to savor the seasons with them, step by solitary step. Behind The Guardsman bungalow is a field of weeds and briars scheduled, no doubt, for some kind of development. My eyes wander across the field after looking at the geese —ducks? — and I think how nice it would be if someone planted wild flowers there. Why I should think about wild flowers, which are reminiscent of spring, after gazing at a flock of migrating birds on a cold morning this time of year, is beyond me — but I imagine a field of larkspur behind our building; poppies, of course, black-eyed Susans … Autumn gives us pause to reflect on the bright rebirth of spring and long exuberant summer before the gathering darkness, and makes us take a deeper look at who and where we are — the hills shrouded in mist above the campus, a skein of geese, a student contemplating a field of weeds where wild flowers could be sown …
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Many university students have a massive amount of debt in student loans by the time they graduate.
