THE HEIGHTS
A6
EDITORIALS
QUOTE OF THE DAY
8cc$=\dXc\ I`[\j_Xi\ J\im`Z\ Fecp K\dgfiXip Jfclk`fe SafeHer is a rideshare company in Boston that will be launching a femaleonly service nationwide. This means that every driver will be a woman and only females, transgender women, and males under the age of 13 will be accepted as passengers. The exclusive service was created in response to reports of assaults and other incidents perpetrated by male rideshare drivers against female passengers. With this in mind, this new company provides a useful service for the moment, and brings further attention to an important issue, but is not a sustainable solution to the problem of assault by ridesharing drivers. Ridesharing services such as Uber and Lyft are widely used at Boston College, and the dangers they sometimes present are very applicable to the student body. Providing women with a separate service is an immediate way to mitigate these dangers for the moment. It does not, in actuality, completely remove the potential danger. While less common, female aggressors still exist and a gender-separated ridesharing service would not entirely ensure safety. Some of these aggressors could even potentially take advantage of the heightened sense of security. SafeHer still plays an important role in furthering attempts to reform the rideshare system. By providing an entirely separate service marketed around the faults of the more mainstream ridesharing companies, SafeHer presents a challenge to its competitors while also shedding more light on the issue at hand. While these aspects are clearly positive, they are not permanent solutions to the problem. Creating a separate space for women does not mean that the ridesharing sys-
tem does not still need to be reformed. Women should not have to seek out a niche service in order to avoid the possibility of assault. The system itself should be reformed. Background checks should be expanded and rideshare drivers should be thoroughly vetted in order to prevent these crimes. Recent legislation in Massachusetts has already enforced criminal background checks and state certification for Uber and Lyft drivers. This is one step toward the ultimate goal of complete safety in ridesharing services. Further safety measures should be put into place to lower the possibility of danger.
JX]\?\i j_flc[ j\im\ Xj X nXb\$lg ZXcc kf LY\i Xe[ Cp]k% SafeHer should serve as a wake-up call to Uber and Lyft. Female customers can now seek a separate, safer service as an alternative. From a purely practical perspective, this should demonstrate the importance of protecting female passengers from assault by drivers. When business is lost due to the dangers of the service, it is clear that action must be taken. Beyond that, the continued controversy surrounding these services is enhanced by the introduction of this alternative, putting more pressure on the mainstream services. SafeHer remains only a short-term solution to the problem, as it is a relatively small attempt to deal with a flawed system. Women should be able to use the exact same services as men without concern. This will only be possible when an overall reform of the rideshare system takes place.
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The Graduate Student Association has recently put forth a proposal that attempts to address rising parking costs at Boston College. After costs rose 10 percent this year, and are expected to continue to rise, graduate students have complained that the costs are exorbitant, especially considering the fact that students are not always guaranteed a parking spot. During high-traffic events like sporting events, graduate students who have payed over 300 dollars for a permit might not be able to find a space, Christopher Tansey, writer of the proposal and LGSOE ’19, said. The GSA has outlined four main goals to rectif y this issue: halt the increasing parking cost, create a proportional parking system, create more shuttle routes, and ensure that students are notified when parking fees increase. This means increased transparency from the Office of Transportation and Parking, as well as new methods of combating rising permit prices. The new proposed shuttle routes are still being discussed, but they would most likely run into Allston/Brighton, Coolidge Corner, or farther down Commonwealth Avenue, Tansey said. These new shuttles would be available to all students, both undergraduate and graduate. Increasing the number of shuttle routes would benefit all students and would help ease the difficulties commuters face. This would be a practical step toward dealing with the issue of consistently rising parking prices. Although a route into downtown Boston, or any other traffic-packed
The views expressed in the above editorials represent the official position of The Heights, as discussed and written by the Editorial Board. A list
and distant place, is not plausible, a smaller extension would highly benefit students who must commute to BC. The GSA has done a good job of working with the administration and with the undergraduate student body. As the process proceeds, GSA has cohesively brought together these groups and is helping to create the best possible compromise between their varying viewpoints.
K_\ F]Ô Z\ f] KiXejgfikXk`fe Xe[ GXib`e^ j_flc[ kXb\ k_\ >J8Ëj gifgfjXc `ekf XZZflek Xe[ kip kf d\\k k_\ ^fXcj `k gi\j\ekj# fi nfib fe X d`[[c\ ^ifle[ k_Xk c\jj\ej k_\ jk`e^ f] \og\ej`m\ gXib`e^% In order to determine the best new shuttle routes, a survey will be sent out to the University’s entire student body. This demonstrates a positive engagement between the Office of Transportation and Parking and the needs of the GSA and the student body as a whole. Hopefully, these solutions will come to fruition in the future. The Office of Transportation and Parking should take the GSA’s proposal into account and try to meet the goals it presents, or work on a middle ground that lessens the sting of expensive parking without the guarantee of a spot.
of the members of the Editorial Board can be found at bcheights.com/opinions.
HEIGHTS
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Thursday, April 21, 2016
“Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.” -Saul Bellow
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR A Reponse to “Sixteen Minutes at Stokes” If you were near the quad in front of Stokes around 6:00 p.m. on April 1, you probably saw about 20 people lying on their backs in the snow. “Idiots,” you probably thought. “It is 20 degrees outside. Snow is actively falling on their faces.” Here’s what you probably didn’t think about: we, the idiots in question, had to submit our act of masochism to the University for pre-approval at least 48 hours in advance. Did you get that? We had to ask the University for permission to lie on our backs in the snow for 16 minutes, shivering and picturing that scene in The Hateful Eight where Samuel L. Jackson makes the guy walk through the snow naked. Some of us were contemplating the pain of activists who had come before us, while some of us, and I won’t name names, were silently calculating our odds of catching pneumonia. We didn’t do this on a whim. We did this to commemorate the shooting of Laquan McDonald, a black man shot 16 times by police, on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination. We were exercising our right to peaceable assembly as defended in the Constitution. And it makes me livid that in agreeing to attend Boston College, I have signed over my right to speak my mind in the company of like-minded individuals without having to fill out a form first. Let me get this straight. If I go lie on my back in the snow by myself, I just look like
a jackass. But if 20 other people come and lie on their backs at the same time, suddenly it’s a federal issue? As a citizen of these United States, I have the God-given right to look like a jackass in public whenever, and with whomever I choose. If I want to stand on my head in the Quad and scream about how OompaLoompas did 9-11, I should be able to do that. If 15 other people want to join in, they should be able to, and someone should definitely get the whole thing on video. If this were a flash mob, if we decided to lie in the snow for the Vine, no one would care. But if we do it because we’re passionate about a civil rights issue, because we care about social justice … suddenly it’s against University policy? Look, I don’t think I’m asking for the world here. I just want to be able to lie face-up on my back in a snowy field without someone waving a form in my face. Under the current system, I have to talk to an administrator even if what I am commenting on is the administration itself. The administration is making a conscious decision to value its clean-cut Catholic image above the voices of its student body. I just want to lie on my back in the Quad without talking to an administrator first. Can I live?
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A Reponse to “Don’t Let Fear Cast Your Vote” If you’ve ever been told to “just calm down” when you’re angry, you understand this tactic makes things worse. Now, I believe Mr. Hissong makes some important points in his op-ed “Don’t Let Fear Cast Your Vote”, but he entirely misses the legitimate root cause behind this election’s anger and is simply telling incensed Americans to “just calm down.” He posits that the candidates themselves are the source of the vitriolic nature of this election cycle and that the issues we are facing as Americans, chiefly terrorism and economic uncertainty, are nothing to be worried about. I agree with his assertion that terrorism, while certainly a risk to our national security, does not pose the grave threat that many candidates make it out to be. The evidence he provides that it “is statistically just as likely that you will drown in your own bathtub as it is that you will be killed in a terrorist attack” is especially convincing. However, I strongly reject his claim that our economy is “untouchable.” Simply put, the American economy has stopped working for the vast majority of Americans. Unlike Mr. Hissong, I’ll provide some facts to back up my claim. Sure, America is the “unchallenged leader of the financial world,” but when 47 percent of Americans can’t cover an unexpected $400 expense through their savings or credit, nearly half the country isn’t feeling the benefits of our leadership role in the financial world. Yes, “unemployment is falling,” but unemployment coupled with un-
deremployment remains at around 10 percent, showing the weakness in the job market, and this doesn’t even count the millions of hopeless Americans who have stopped looking for a job. And perhaps “the climb out of the financial crisis of 2008 is underway,” but when the top 1 percent captured 95 percent of the income gains following the crash, the other 99 percent of the country has not recovered. Perhaps this is why 72 percent of Americans still think we are in a recession. This is all to say that people are angry for a reason. A politician can stand on TV and shout hateful things, but unless people are in dire straits, they will refuse to listen. It is only when the hope has been sucked out of a society that hate can come and fill the void. Rather than responding to the hateful discourse pulsating throughout the nation with “just calm down,” we need to recognize the massive surge of anger as a warning sign of something gone terribly awry in our society. I agree with Mr. Hissong’s last point that “the world is not going to go up in smoke tomorrow,” but if we keep heading down the imbalanced direction we’re headed, the temperature will only heat up. If this massive wealth and income inequality is not reversed, the repulsive so-called dialogue will continue. Our world may not go up in smoke tomorrow, but it will go up in flames in the future if we don’t change our ways. AFJ? 9<?I<EJ D:8J Ë(/
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