Opinion
The Mirror | Week of Nov. 17, 2010
Guys Getting In, Girls Getting Gypped By Amber Nowak Assoc. News Editor
As female applicants flood college admissions offices each year, the old notion of college as an exclusively male domain is fading fast. Male college applicants are becoming an endangered species as women dominate the applicant pool. For the class of 2014, Fairfield University received a total of 8, 419 applications, said Director of Undergraduate Admissions Karen Pellegrino. Of these applicants, 3,403 were men and 5, 016 were women. Fairfield admitted 2,355 (69.2 percent) of the men who applied 3,621 (72.2 percent) of the women. Fairfield is not alone in this phenomenon. According to an article in the Yale Daily News, the gap between male and female acceptance rates has grown from a 12 percent to a 30 percent difference since 2002 making it “the greatest gender disparity among applicants in decades.” Yet for the class of 2012, Yale admitted 68 more men than women even though 2,281 more women than men applied. Competition for women in the sphere of higher education has been historically stiff. Women often have had to work twice as hard as their male peers in order to even be granted the same consideration as their male competitors. Today however, highly qualified women are clamoring at the doors of these once male-dominated institutions in such numbers that some of the most qualified are being turned down. A proficient young woman applying to college today has to compete with not only other women equally accomplished as herself, but also men just as qualified who are rapidly becoming rare valuables in college admissions offices. To forge gender balance when choosing from highly disproportionate pools, many schools are actually lowering their standards for male applicants. ApplyWise.com, a website devoted to providing information to prospective college
Tie Your Towel Tight, It's Another Firedrill By Danica Ceballos Contributing Writer
Mid-shower on a cold day, an alarm blares and flashing lights race across the room. These are the infamous fire drills that are supposed to catch students off guard. It had been said that RAs write students up if they do not automatically leave, but I needed to get the soap off my body, and I refused to go out in the rainy weather with my awful cold. I quickly finished my shower and threw on some clothes, hoping that the drill would stop and I would not need to leave my heated room. To my dismay, the drill continued. My ears were ringing and I could not see straight because of the blinding lights. At this point, the drill had been occurring for over five minutes. I began to panic. What if this is a real fire? Being on the fourth floor, would I be able to get down in time? While dressing, I peeked out the window in search of fire trucks or smoke. I rushed downstairs and literally ran into a fireman. Embarrassed and nervous, I rushed down the next flight of stairs to escape the building. It was obvious that I was the only one left inside. Of course, with my luck, as soon as I was outside of the building, the alarm stopped. It was only a drill that continued for an extremely long time. I was lucky that my stubbornness did not cost me my life, but what about students that did lose their lives due to fires? On Jan. 19, 2000, three students died and over 50 were injured at Seton Hall University in New Jersey when two students were involved in a prank that started a fire in a freshmen dorm. The local Fire Department claimed that it is a “difficult expectation placed on the small department to cover both the town and Seton Hall University.” While Fairfield students dread the unexpected fire drills, I would much rather have to jump out of the shower than never be prepared. The case of the Seton Hall fire confirms
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answering the questions.” Anne Naman, Director of College Counseling at the John Cooper School, stated in the Yale Daily News that, “More qualified girls are applying to these highly selective colleges.” She said, “[Colleges] want to keep some kind of gender balance in their student body, so it’s going to be less competitive for guys, even if they’re taking equally qualified boys and girls.” But is gender balance even necessary? At Fairfield, “We do struggle to keep some sort of gender balance in our class, because we believe it is healthy for a coed institution to have that balance,” said Pellegrino, “However, as you can see by our statistics, we are not Illustration by Tebben Lopez/The Mirror doing so at the expense of the quality of the students, reported that “some schools are admitting male students we are admitting.” applicants over women who have higher test scores, higher According to Applywise.com, experts say that although GPAs, or more extracurricular achievements.” the gender imbalance can have an effect on students’ social That’s right, we have actually reached the point of Affirlives it does not make an impression on their academic expemative Action for men. But if a school does accept men based riences. The article further reported that research at UCLA on lower standards than those set for women (and given discovered that “on campuses with a majority of female the numbers applying, how could they not?) what does this students, the grades of both men and women were higher.” mean for students socially and academically? So what exactly is wrong with having an overwhelming Sarah Krikorian ’14 reflected that, "It’s almost like majority of women in colleges if it is a reflection of the truth? a safety net for [guys] that there’s this unbalanced ratio. If the most qualified students happen to be women, why They kind of come in with this attitude that they can alshould we, for the sake of “gender equality,” offer excuses to ways do what they want.” men who, having had the same opportunities as female apAnd how does this relate in terms of classroom dynamplicants, are still not as qualified? ics? Colleges should choose their applicants without factor“I feel like a lot of guys think ‘Oh, I don’t have to work as ing in gender. Perhaps it would give males the incentive to hard, I don’t have to put as much effort into this’,” Krikorian work harder in order to be considered as qualified as their continued. “I walk into my class and maybe one guy will say female competitors. something. For the most part it’s girls raising their hands and
WWSD: What Would Stags Do? By Lindsay Maida Contributing Writer
For quite some time, illegal music downloading websites such as LimeWire have been the perfect way to escape paying Illustration by Vin Ferrer/The Mirror for music. Many people argue over whether or not stealing music is moral. With the rethat fire drills are necessary and cent closing of LimeWire, Fairfield students beneficial; however, many stu- find themselves struggling to download the dents assume that the annoying latest Rihanna tune because they simply siren and flashing lights indicate a simple drill don’t want to pay for an overpriced song. and are not the cause of an actual fire. As Allie Flannery ’14 says, “It makes me Should drills and legitimate fires be angry at how much music costs these days. differentiated? Based on my experience and Songs are now two dollars on iTunes and lack of urgency on the drill, I assume that a I just find myself missing the days where differentiation would be extremely helpful to songs were 99 a number of students. cents.” This is the While it is understandable that fire drills greatest reason are to be unexpected so as to simulate an why websites actual fire, a general warning would aid stusuch as LimeWire dents in recognizing the difference between a and Dirpy were serious fire and a drill. so popular before These warnings could entail simple signs being closed around a dorm stating, “Watch out for a fire down by the Federal Court. drill in the next week!” It is understandable that artists deserve One could argue that a sign such as money for the music that they produce. But, this would negate the urgency of a legitihow far is too far? mate fire coincidentally occurring someExpecting people to pay an excessive time during that week; however, while it is amount for a single song is just plain ridicuunderstandable that drills are necessary lous. In my iTunes library, I have close to and should be taken seriously, to a certain 3,000 songs. If I had purchased every one of degree, drills should be somewhat different those songs, I would have spent just about from an actual fire. $6,000. For songs that people really only These differences could be extremely listen to a few times before something new subtle. They could be as simple as a fiveis released, this is a waste of money. minute time limit on a drill as opposed If you can listen to music over the radio to the 15-minute drill I experienced. In for free, why not make it free everywhere addition, RAs could parade the halls a few else? There is no real difference between minutes before, warning that there will be a listening to Eminem in a club and in your drill and if students do not cooperate, they own dorm room. Music was created for will be written up. people to enjoy, and now a heavy price tag These differences seem fair while still has been placed on it. maintaining the importance of practicing for On the Fairfield campus, LimeWire an actual fire drill. was actually blocked prior to the court shutMost students can agree that Fairfield ting down the website. It was thought that Public Safety and the Fire Marshall are actthis would prevent students from stealing ing in the best interest of the students. As a music. But most students would just write student, I am grateful that a tragedy like Seton down a list of songs that they wanted and Hall is being avoided in all possible ways at waited until they went home to download Fairfield University; however, a simple warn- for free. In the meantime, listening to music ing for fire drills would make campus life a on YouTube is an acceptable substitute. little bit easier and alleviate some stress. While Dirpy, the website that con-
verted Youtube videos to MP3 files, was not technically illegal itself, it created a gray area between legal and illegal activity. This website was highly used among Fairfield students because of the simplicity in copying and pasting a URL. The conversion of copyrighted material to a person’s iTunes raises a large issue and is seen as illegal. If a person is able to listen to Youtube videos for free, however, why is it illegal to hear these videos through iTunes? It is an identical audio that has been pinpointed as being illegal. As a result, Dirpy was also retired due to illegal downloading of music. Not only did LimeWire offer free music, it had a wider search range for songs. There are many times when certain songs are not available on Photo Illustration/The Mirror iTunes whether they are popular or not. Through the use of LimeWire, however, virtually every song was available for fast and easy download straight into a person’s iTunes library. Songs that have been leaked to the Internet were present in the LimeWire search. Because downloading music from LimeWire was already illegal, it didn’t make a difference whether or not the music itself was illegally leaked. As music is not a tangible item, is it really considered stealing? Stealing an album from Target is very different from downloading one song for free. People do not look at music as something they have to pay for because it is placed right on the Internet. So what do Fairfield students think about the closing of websites such as LimeWire and Dirpy? Esther Kum ’14 says, “I can’t see the closing of LimeWire really being effective. There will always be another source to illegally download music from.” Kum makes a very good point because it’s true that if students want to download music for free, they will find a way. So this raises the question: how far will the government go to ban the inevitable, illegal downloading of music?