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February 21, 2013
Opinion
EXITMENT
The Daily Free Press
The Independent Student Newspaper at Boston University
YONO
43rd year F Volume 84 F Issue 20
Emily Overholt, Editor-in-Chief T. G. Lay, Managing Editor Melissa Adan, Online Editor
Chris Lisinski, Campus Editor
Jasper Craven, City Editor
Gregory Davis, Sports Editor
Anne Whiting, Opinion Editor
Kaylee Hill, Features Editor
Michelle Jay, Photo Editor
Cheryl Seah, Advertising Manager Clinton Nguyen, Layout Editor Shakti Rovner, Office Manager The Daily Free Press (ISSN 1094-7337) is published Monday through Thursday during the academic year except during vacation and exam periods by Back Bay Publishing Co.,Inc., a nonprofit corporation operated by Boston University students. No content can be reproduced without the permission of Back Bay Publishing Co., Inc. Copyright © 2010 Back Bay Publishing Co., Inc. All rights reserved.
From Bachelor’s Degree to file clerk
It’s been said that you can work your way up in a corporation, or any workplace for that matter: Start low, work hard, get noticed, and then get promoted. That’s the general process. So at first it seemed fair (albeit slightly dismaying) when The New York Times reported Tuesday that the college degree has become the new high school diploma for getting even the lowest-level job these days. Typically, young graduates should expect to get the lower jobs, since most of the time, they’re less experienced and less professional than their superiors. But for a lowpaying job like a file clerk, a Bachelor’s Degree is an expensive credential, and it leaves us asking how much we would ultimately pay for an education that barely wins us the minimum wage. Not much, we’d hope (that is, we’d expect an expensive degree from a private institution like Boston University to afford us some more leeway in our initial career and salary options) — but then again, the cost of college is always rising, and with it student debts, which will be hard to pay off with a $10-an-hour salary. Is this fair? On the one hand, yes. As employers receive more and more applicants for even the lower-paying jobs, they have to be selective. Those college graduates willing to work for a low wage are, at least at first glance, more desirable candidates. They are purportedly educated and driven, and thus ostensibly deserve the job. “College graduates are just more career-
oriented,” said Adam Slipakoff, a managing partner at the law firm featured by the Times. “Going to college means they are making a real commitment to their futures. They’re not just looking for a paycheck.” On the other hand, does awarding lowpaying jobs to college graduates take job opportunities away from those unemployed individuals without a college degree? With education expenses so high, not everyone can afford them. Where, if the low-paying positions require degrees, will such individuals work? Moreover, how will they get the chance to work their way up in their career field, if all the menial jobs and networking abilities have been landed by those who can either afford college or afford to live on just a little bit of cash during the first few years off campus? If a high school diploma is now good for little to nothing, chances are the social and economic gaps already existent in the country will only widen. The problem, of course, arises from the fact that more and more qualified applicants are applying for fewer and fewer jobs. Only the best applicant will get any position. This may encourage more individuals to get that college degree — which can only be a good thing, both for the student and for the country’s general intellectual status. Perhaps universities will respond by offering more cost-accommodating programs. And after that, it’s just a matter of the country finding more jobs with which to accommodate more talents.
To the Editor: Space Program Initiatives As a member of the Boston University chapters of the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics and Students for the Exploration and Development of Space, it was with great joy that I read the Tuesday, February 19th Editorial, “Asteroid hit should be taken as warning.” While Friday’s meteorite actually hit about 1500 kilometers from Moscow, and not in Moscow itself as stated by the editorial, I otherwise cannot agree more with the piece. The meteorite fall and the unrelated close approach to Earth of Asteroid 2012 DA14 are only the latest in a string of events in recent months that have brought space exploration to a prominent place in national and international discussions. Last spring saw the space shuttles Discovery and Enterprise arrive at their new homes in Washington, D.C. and New York City to enthusiastic celebrations. A few weeks later, SpaceX’s Dragon capsule became the first spacecraft built and operated by a private company to dock to the International Space Station — delivering food and other supplies — a feat that was repeated in October. On June 6, the planet Venus passed directly between the Earth and the Sun for the last time until 2117. The summer months brought both sad reflection with the deaths of astronauts Alan Poindexter, Sally Ride and Neil Armstrong, and exultation with the successful landing of the Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars. In the months since its successful landing, Curiosity has made observations confirming that the Red Planet was once much wetter than it is today, in line with the discoveries
of the previous Phoenix, Spirit, Opportunity, and Sojourner rovers. While it occurred far short of the actual boundary of space contrary to some news accounts, the stratospheric skydive performed in the fall by a private team contributed much useful data that may enable future space travelers to survive emergency scenarios in near-space conditions and at supersonic speeds, and set a new record for the most simultaneous YouTube views of a video livestream. Last week’s State of the Union address saw NASA engineer Bobak Ferdowsi of the Curiosity mission team as a special guest of the First Lady. And since his launch to the station in December, International Space Station astronaut Chris Hadfield has been cultivating an incredible Internet presence, performing live from space with Ed Robertson of the Bare Naked Ladies and becoming the first to communicate through Tumblr and Reddit from orbit. All of these events have brought space travel to the public’s attention, and now the meteorite strike has driven home the necessity of the world’s space programs. My fondest hope is that the intersection of these trends will lead to real and lasting progress in space exploration. For too long, visions of apocalypse — zombie, Mayan and otherwise — have dominated our cultural ideas of humanity’s future. It’s time to realize that it is within our power to avert disaster, create a positive future, and reach for the stars. Zoe Strassfield CAS 2015 zpstrass@bu.edu
DAVID FONTANA
Immortality. Sounds pretty nice right? All the coolest people throughout history have had it: Nicholas Flamel, the Greek Gods, Mario and Luigi. I mean you get an eternity of time to do whatever you want (basket weaving, duh), you get to watch other people come up with the most incredible inventions ever (let me just say: Sham “Wow!”), and then you get the prestigious luxury of growing old and turning gray until you can’t even move and then watching everyone who you know and love die in the fiery inferno of a nuclear winter (or an alien attack, I haven’t decided yet) and, if you’re lucky, you become a grasshopper. One out of 10 immortals becomes a grasshopper. What happens to the rest, you ask? Well they just die. Or maybe it’s that they “stop existing.” But either way, I think we can agree: Immortality’s the best! However, I guess there may also be a few downsides to this whole “living for eternity” thing. But then what’s with the obsession? Probably, it comes down to two cups of “fear of death” and one heaping tablespoon of “hope,” all baked in the oven at 350 degrees. There’s a whole world of literature out there on the subject, everything from classic stories like “Gilgamesh” (I think it might take the cake on “classic”), to movies like “Cloud Atlas“ (didn’t anyone else even see that . . .), and songs like “Forever Young.” It wasn’t so long ago that we had Jay-Z whispering in our ears, “Forever young, I wanna be, forever young.” But when this Renaissance man was asked, “Do you really want to live forever?” he deferred to some old-school Outkast logic: “Forever ever, Forever ever.” But “forever never seems so long, until you’ve grown.” So, in a strange kind of acceptance of our mortality, a generation of youths has turned to a different standard for living, a higher moral value, a “so fresh, so clean” mentality, a new low for humanity — a YOLO, that is. Yes, it’s the phrase that has been sweeping the nation (I hope not the world) since back in November of 2011 when popularized by Canada’s finest rapper, Drake, in his song “The Motto.” Luckily for me, at the time of its release, I was living on the streets of northern Africa where they were blasting Shakira instead. Let me tell you, I will take “She Wolf” over “The Motto” any day of the year. And that’s saying something (“hoowwwoooo”). However, even since the beginning, the philosophical gem of a saying “You Only Live Once” has received loads of criticism. As the youth of our nation run around dropping “YOLOs” to unashamedly apologize for what we can only claim to be attempts at suicide by lighter fluid, alcohol, cotton candy, our parents and elders have grown in fear of what harm we’ll do next. But to all those cynics out there
(a.k.a. haters), let me remind you, as Wikipedia so eloquently reminded me, that YOLO is really just the same as Carpe Diem. Yep. That’s right folks. We have successfully taken a phrase that has been around since a majority of people were actually speaking Latin (i.e. it’s very old), a phrase uttered by John Keats and Robin Williams alike, and whittled it down to an ugly, little acronym. YOLO! [said in the most offensively stereotypical-bimbo-ignoramus voice] Alas, poor Yoric. Yet, just when we thought things couldn’t get worse, they did. How could we forget about Ke$ha! And her catchy hit “Die Young” at that. At least before we were focusing on living, even if only once, but we’ve now been asked to literally die, in our youth, at our prime, speak now or forever hold your peace. Wonderful. That lovely little lady with a dollar sign in her name has now made an anthem for people across the world to “make the most of the night like we’re going to die young.” Yet in this battle against Canadians and dollar signs people have tried their best to come up with some catchy phrase to overwhelm the zombie-like-ignorance virus that is deep inside us all. They’ve used things like “YODO — you only die once.” It may be morbid, but perhaps it has just the right amount of realistic sense to knock out YOLO’s aggravating, albeit humorous, overtones — because nothing makes me laugh more than millions of people dying. And then of course there’s “you oughta look out.” Now, while I doubt that anyone could parody ideals like YOLO or The Space Olympics better than Lonely Island in their series of (what some may call jokes but are surely) public service announcements (I know I’ll be staying away from saunas, crawling with piranhas), I thought I’d give it a shot. I offer to you, citizens of the greater Boston area, my antidote to YOLO, my crème-de-lastop-with-this-nonsense: YONO. And no, it’s not short for Yoko Ono. It simply means, “You only niggle once.” All right, so maybe that doesn’t work so well. But perhaps you can use YONO to mean “You only No,” as in “No worries” or “No, thank you” or even “No, I don’t want to hear what you or I or anyone ‘only’ does once.” I don’t “only do anything. I fight, I laugh, I make mistakes, freak out, fall asleep, eat, live and yes, I even die. So they next time someone even starts to utter those four little letters “YOLO,” just remember to be polite, right before you get up in their face and yell at the top of your lungs “YO...NO!” David Fontana is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences, and a weekly columnist for the Daily Free Press. He can be reached at fontad5@bu.edu.
The Feminine Mystique, largely said to be a manifesto of second wave feminism, turned 50 this year. So we here at the Ol’ Free Press wondered what the schools of BU would title their own manifestos, if they had them...
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COM : #Hashtag SHA: Who, What, When, Where and Wine. CGS : Wait, what’s a manifesto? CFA : “Untitled”: A Series of Postmodern and Solipsistic Vignettes Chronicling the Decline of the Verisimilitude of MBTA Sign Art. SMG: The Official Handbook of the 1 Percent. BU Athletics: On Scoring. Dean Elmore : My Life in Bowties. The FreeP : Emergency Bourbon.