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Life
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
BEYOND THE HALLMARK LGBT RESOURCE CENTER CAMPAIGNS FOR EQUALITY By Lauren Jones
Cavalier Daily Staff Writer Do you hear that? That’s the sound of credit cards being swiped. That’s the sound of flowers, jewelry and chocolates being bought in excess. Valentine’s Day is here, or as the bitter among us call it, “Singles Awareness Day.” But along with this Hallmark holiday comes another type of annual awareness effort: the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Resource Center’s “Love is Love” campaign. The mission is to promote the idea
that love is universal, and couples of all kinds should be able to celebrate committed relationships without discrimination this Valentine’s Day.
And the message is spread by the one thing college students love most: free t-shirts, bearing the
pithy “Love is Love.” “Sometimes the LGBT community can be completely overlooked on Valentine’s Day, and this campaign really helps bring that [issue] to the forefront,” LGBT Resource Center director Scott Rheinheimer said. The t-shirts, which have been dis-
tributed on Grounds for the last five years, have since been slightly modified as the center hopes to expand its campaign. Still including the classic “Love is Love” slogan, this year’s shirts also promote equality based on varying gender identity. The symbols for pansexuality and polyamory have also been added to the design, Rheinheimer said. And though the LGBT community is at the center of the campaign, Rheinheimer said the campaign also has a broader focus on equality across age, gender, race and class. Some LGBT students, however, think the focus of the campaign is still too narrow. “To me, ‘Love is Love’ is kind of limiting,” fourth-year College student Hallie Clark said. “I don’t think the LGBT experience is about love. It definitely has aspects of love [in it], but in my experience ... it’s more about the power to live and
identify and breathe in your body. [It’s more about] how you want to be presented.” Clark said the campaign holds LGBT individuals to a higher moral standard than the rest of society, and she wants to celebrate Valentine’s Day in the same way as the rest of the heterosexual community — not conform to the notion that LGBT relationships are exclusively about love. But the campaign may be part of a broader movement toward a more complete acceptance of LGBT relationships and lifestyles. “As states in the Northwest, upper Midwest and West Coast continue to introduce marriage equality, as certainly will be the trend, the marketing of Valentine’s Day will follow suit,” said English Prof. Marlon Ross, who specializes in gender and sexuality studies. This year, Gays, Lesbians and Allies at Darden, the graduate business school’s sexuality support group, have bolstered the Resource Center’s efforts. After winning grant money in a Johnson & Johnson diversity competition, GLAD has been able to expand their Love is Love t-shirt campaign, adding weeklong programming to supplement their Please see LGBT, Page A9
Andrew Elliott | Cavalier Daily
Morrie has Tuesdays By Julia Horowitz
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Cavalier Daily Life Editor
o m e p e o p l e c e l e b ra t e Chr is t m a s . I c e l e bra t e winter Sundays. Sundays on a college campus are a rare specimen of ratchet. Delaying the onset of home-
Hoos on First
JULIA HOROWITZ work and a heavy hangover, students unapologetically stuff themselves with brunch and bawdy tales of debauchery from the weekend’s late nights. Our fine Virginia women complement their yoga pants with visible panty lines. Great Virginia gentlemen appear to have followed up No Shave November with not only “Decembeard,” but also “Manuary” and “Febroary.” It’s a sight to see. And, within a five-mile radius of the Academical Village, the students of the University gather, as our great Thomas Jefferson so hoped they would, to discuss what Jenna should do now that she’s hooked up with Sam. Ideological differences put aside, they agree she may want to get tested. Swearing on the honor code itself, they agree Sarah can totally never know, especially after the Max thing. And using their famed powers of inquisition, they vow Please see Horowitz, Page A9
Reforming the way we view Honor By Anne-Marie Albracht
Board member, but rather the very foundation of the university we call home: the honor It’s safe to say this has been a system. politically charged year at the Let me be clear. I’m not one to University. Before we even set get political — at least not pubfoot on Grounds, licly. Not because students and facI feel uninformed How to Hoo ulty alike took up or unqualified to arms to defend the talk about comname and posiplex issues, but tion of University because I cannot President Teresa stand being told Sullivan. We were what to believe. praised across the Again and again, nation as defendI am reminded ers of justice and that political disdemocracy as course among we protested the my peers often un-Jeffersonian means talking at n a t u r e o f t h e ANN-MARIE ALBRACHT someone instead entire ordeal in of talking with newspapers, in someone — and our every day discourse and nothing is more annoying than here in Charlottesville. And being harangued by someone here we are, again in hot water, who was in diapers the same calling into question not the time you were. decision of an easily demonized So rest easy, I have no interest Cavalier Daily Life Columnist
in telling you how to vote on the Restore the Ideal Act later this month. Instead, I would like to suggest how to go about thinking about your vote. I hate even having to list this as a step in the process, but everyone really needs to suck it up and commit to doing a little bit of light research. If your newsfeed looks anything like mine, then you’re wading through a confusing swamp of misinterpretation and blind defense of the system. Everyone at this school is currently claiming to be an honor expert. But let’s be honest — Honor Committee members are biased. They joined Honor because they believe in the system and often don’t see its drawbacks. On the other end of the spectrum, there’s a lot of noise from those who are heavy critics but have never actually seen how the system works from the inside. Make sure you understand what
the honor system is before you align yourself with either side. From there, it’s a simple question: What does honor mean to you? Does it mean actively seeking to remove all members of the community who violate our code not to lie, steal or cheat? Or does it mean living in trust that this code is being upheld? Do you believe in your untrained peers to make the right decision on a jury? Or are you more inclined to trust your experienced but biased Honor Council members? Think about under what circumstances the single sanction is justified to you. Are lying, cheating and stealing — the founding pillars of the system — meant to remain as such, or do issues like sexual assault and hate crimes fall more in line with our modern definition of honor? This decision is a complex one, Please see Albracht, Page A9
Kids watch the darnedest things By Simone Egwu
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Cavalier Daily Life Columnist
he other day, I found myself having a conversation with my roommates about television shows from our childhood. We fondly went down the list: “Hey Arnold,” “Recess,” “Rocket Power,” “All That,” “The Amanda Show” and “Clarissa Explains It All.” We remembered these shows as wholesome and enjoyable, and we may have even danced to their theme songs on YouTube for a bit. In these shows, regular kids deal with regular problems, like how to hide the vase they broke before mom and dad got home, or if they could sneak out of the house to go to the skate park after school without getting caught. I couldn’t actually relate to
any of these things, seeing the aforementioned cartoon as I’ve been a stay-inside, orange led an army of mice do-your-homework kind of against a vegetable villain. Just what was nerd since birth, but it was nice At the End of the Day going on there? Other proto live vicarigrams were ously through slightly more animated kids normal, with acting our age. famous kids Sometimes, I doing richgo back to the people things I networks of my know nothing youth — Nick, about and cerCartoon Nettainly couldn’t work, Disney relate to. Obvi— and I try to ously, much has find bits of what SIMONE EGWU changed since I used to love in we were young. their modern It seems like kids these days programs. Instead I see rainbows changing shapes and want to live in an upper-class cartoon oranges with moving fantasy world and play with mouths on the screen — and anthropomorphic fruit — or at least that’s what the netI’m really, really confused. Was television really this works believe they want. Then, I started to think back weird when we were kids? I watched a show where to my childhood. There was
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some weird stuff on TV then too. Now that I am 21 and living a relatively normal life, it makes sense all I want to remember is “Rocket Power” and “Hey Arnold,” when kids did the “normal” things I can recall now. But if I think about it, I remember a show on Nick, from when I was 10 or so, about monsters with insane body shapes and extra limbs. At the time, it wasn’t weird to me. Now, I think that show would probably make me do a double take. It’s not that children’s shows are weird — it’s now that I’m grown up, I’m a little less tolerant of weird. Simone’s column runs biweekly Tuesdays. She can be reached at s.egwu@ cavalierdaily.com.