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November 12 2012
Opinion
The Daily Free Press
The Independent Student Newspaper at Boston University 42nd year F Volume 84 F Issue 39
Steph Solis, Editor-in-Chief Sydney L. Shea, Managing Editor Lauren Dezenski, Online Editor Amelia Pak-Harvey, City Editor Emily Overholt, Campus Editor Kevin Dillon, Sports Editor
Meaghan Kilroy, Opinion Page Editor
Divya Shankar, Features Editor
Abigail Lin, Photo Editor
Clinton Nguyen, Layout Editor
Cheryl Seah, Advertising Manager
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.
MBTA woes
Faced with a growing deficit, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority is poised to increase fares and cut services in 2013, according to an article in The Boston Globe on Sunday. Fare increases and service cuts will be made unless “the state finds a longterm solution to its transportation funding woes,” according to the Globe. Clearly the MBTA’s budget is hemorrhaging. In the fiscal year 2013 — June 2012 to June 2013 — available revenues are “projected to be as much as $185 below operating expenses,” according to a January document on the MBTA’s website. In the hopes of increasing revenue, the MBTA raised bus and subway fares in July. Just a few days before that hike, Mass. Gov. Deval Patrick approved a $49-million bailout. While these steps might have reduced the deficit some, how effective is another fare increase going to be? Rather than increase fares or cut services, the MBTA should make more of an effort to receive
funds from the state, advertisers or other entities. Additionally, if the MBTA is willing to raise fares again, after the issue was such a hot-button topic last year, riders may wonder how many more increases they will face and at what rate. If the MBTA continues to respond to its funding woes with fare hikes, riders may start to avoid the service. Fares must be capped at a certain level or people will not be able to afford its services. Eventually, people could start to forgo the T and opt to drive cars instead as their primary form of transportation. Boston, a major commuter city, cannot handle an increase in automobile ridership. Public transportation needs to remain an affordable option for commuters, students and anyone who relies on its services. The MBTA needs to reevaluate its funding and look toward more assistance from the state, corporations or other entities. Frequent fare increases and service cuts are not permanent or realistic solutions.
Sotomayor on success
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor appeared on Sesame Street to give viewers a lesson on what is and is not a suitable career goal, according to an article in TIME Monday. When the Sesame Street character, Abby, told Sotomayor that she aspired to be a princess, Sotomayor told her that a princess was not a viable career choice and that a career was “something that you train for and prepare for and plan on doing for a long time,” according to TIME. Sotomayor then encouraged Abby to pursue a career in teaching, law, engineering, medicine or science instead. It is encouraging to see Sotomayor, a powerful female, appear on a children’s television show and discuss career goals. Between the lack of strong, female role models in a number of television programs, to the media’s tendency to shape people’s views on what aspirations are appropriate for each gender, American society continues to project gender-biased ideas of what defines success to children. Tuning into
Sotomayor might inspire girls to pursue leadership positions similar to hers. However, it is important that the career that Sotomayor describes is seen as one option, not the only option for children. Whether or not they dream of being princesses, some girls will choose not to pursue certain careers. Those people should not be looked down upon because they do no fit Sotoymayor’s definition of what a career is. Viewers should examine how effective Sotomayor’s appeal is in inspiring children. Despite that very few of the Sesame Street characters are traditional role models — the Cookie Monster indulges in junk food and Oscar lives in a trash can — her comment opens the door to critique other fictional characters. If a princess isn’t a “good role model,” then what other fictional characters might be portrayed as poor role models? It is important to prove to children that they can possess highly professional careers as long as role models stress that those are not their only choices.
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I
A global perspective ANNE WHITING
’m at Café Vanille, a French patisserietype joint on the corner of Charles and Mt. Vernon Streets in Beacon Hill, sitting with a friend who just got back from visiting family in Leeds and Edinburgh. A man just ordered a croissant with a German accent (I think?), and the couple to my right is speaking Spanish. That’s a fair amount of internationalism for a place that’s half the size of the Warren Towers Starbucks. Epiphany of the day: you don’t need to study abroad to get a taste of the international in Boston. Or in anywhere, for that matter — the States have always been a melting pot of cultures, and globalism’s been a fact of worldly life since Native Americans migrated to Minnesota, the Europeans discovered cinnamon and sugar and Subway introduced Tuscan chicken to the menu. You catch my continental drift. What I’m realizing is that here — and at Boston University in particular — I’ve got the world at my fingertips. When I first arrived at school, I remember the most exciting thing for me was that I heard a different language on what seemed like every street corner. My freshman year dorm floor housed students from Qatar, Venezuela, China, Japan, Pakistan and Canada. Boston University boasts the country’s oldest study abroad program, and international relations is one of the university’s largest majors (and it’s turned out to be a practical field of study for my roommate, who’s now dating a guy from England). My best college friends are from London, Mumbai and Oslo, and other close acquaintances hail from Singapore, Israel, Russia, Uzbekistan, Algeria, Morocco and Iran. The New York Times and International Herald Tribune’s most recent Global Employability Survey has ranked the employability of BU graduates 17th in the world and 10th in the country, right under Princeton University (holler!). Granted, what makes a person employable is subjective and hard to generalize. But if I had to guess, what makes BU students particularly favorable in an increasingly global world is (in addition to our apparently high standards, re: BU is famous for grade deflation) our school’s highly international profile. According to Kenneth Freeman, the dean of the School of Management, global employers look for the “four Cs” when hiring: cultural awareness, communication skills, collaboration and creativity. “They aspire to hire individuals who are sensitive to the impact of cultural differences across countries in the ways business is conducted,” he says. As BU offers a slice of the world (cliché statement — overflow of Terrier Pride — deal with it), it produces global citizens for a global marketplace. I guess learning the “four Cs” is probably easier when you’ve got students from Sweden and Sudan in your classes. No matter how much time I spend cooped up in my apartment, I’m always provided the chance to become well versed in intercultural communication — that is, cross-cultural communication, which arises when an organization
is composed of individuals from different ethnic, social, religious and educational backgrounds and which seeks to understand how people from different counties and cultures interact, communicate with and respond to the world around them. This is key to success on the global platform. You must learn to distinguish cultural nuances. Last spring I worked for an advertising agency in Paris. We called ourselves “cultural communications specialists” because we worked to raise brand profiles internationally. Such expansion necessitates knowledge of different languages and an understanding of how to approach a variety of cultural demographics. I found a BU background to be quite helpful. True, internationalism isn’t everyone’s passion or end goal. There’s something to be said for small-town consistency (I grew up a block away from my grandparents). Last week I was in Somerville with a friend from Germany, at the Burren Irish Pub, drinking Belgian palm ale next to an old man eating bangers and mash. He told us he’d lived in Somerville his entire life. I was impressed. My date, meanwhile, who works for TripAdvisor, was not. “The world is global now,” he said. “You don’t learn anything if you stay in one place with the same people, even if you eat hummus and Thai food and practice yoga.” Access to other places is easy thanks to both StudentUniverse plane ticket prices and the World Wide Web. And he’s right. That’s why I came across the country to a world-class city for school: because I wanted to meet the world — to widen my perspective and learn to approach things differently and accept a number of viewpoints. (So progressive, so romantic.) I learned a lot from a junior year abroad, but on campus alone I’ve been able to do this. On Friday, I pulled myself away from Stephen Akey’s memoir about college to attend a meeting with IMPACT, a thinktank group on campus. I sat eating arepas with students from Ghana and Milan while we Skyped an activist in Venezuela and discussed educational inequalities around the globe. It occurred to me that although we’d all come from different places, have experienced different things and are undoubtedly going in different directions, we’d all come together to a basement in South Campus for the sole aim of hearing and presenting different worldly perspectives. BU’s campus is a little nutshell of International Relations. After four years we’ll all disperse — we’ll go home, or we’ll go forth into the world. But either way, when it comes down to it, no matter where we’ve come from or where we’re going, we’re all students just trying to learn a bit more about the world, and, maybe, start working toward global progress. And if that’s not common ground, I don’t know what is. Anne Whiting is senior in the College of Arts and Sciences and a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. She can be reached at aew@bu.edu.
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