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No, no, no — a final goodbye from Buffalo Soldier Frontlines I cannot think of two sections that are more polar opposites than sports and opinions. Instead of immersing myself in world politics or the national debt, I spent the last few years in a press box at Yurcak Field or driving alone to Bethlehem, Pa., for a wrestling match. To me, politics extend only so far as to debate whether or not Pete Rose belongs in the Baseball Hall of Fame. When two opposing sides engage in a violent act in sports, the end result is usually just a five-minute major penalty for fighting or at worst, a three-game suspension. But one thing that always held true about the editorials and columns in this publication is that there is always a point to be made. Even if that point ruffled a few feathers along the way — shout out to a certain former editor who is a snazzy dresser, a soccer fan and shall remain nameless — there was a message to be heard. So before I jump into the lamentation of my final days with The Daily Targum, there is just one point I’d like to make.
Go out and enjoy life in the company of others, plain and simple. No matter what it is that piques your interest, there are at least 100 other students on this campus with the same hobby. This is going to be the last time in your life when you are grouped with hundreds upon thousands of students, all sharing the same goal of knowledge. Well, some also want to get it in with as many people as possible, but the main goal is still to achieve higher education. Don’t spend your four years here sitting in your dorm room playing Call of Duty and never socializing with anyone. Get involved. Whether it’s through greek life or the Japanese Conversation Club or Oxfam, there is something for your niche. It doesn’t even have to be with a club sanctioned by the University. But nobody is going to hand you these opportunities on a silver platter — you have to be proactive and seek them out. As someone who lacks social grace, it was tough for me to get
It is going to be a strange next couple of months for me. No more Hansel n’ Griddle. No more night edits, staying in the fourth floor of the Rutgers Student Center until 2 a.m. No more getting A.J. JANKOWSKI to spend eight hours a day with some of the brightest minds the University has to offer. involved at first. It also didn’t help But I’ll survive in the real that I grew up seven hours away world somehow. For starters, I from New Jersey and talk like a think I am going to celebrate my Canadian. But I built up the retirement from the Targum with courage somehow, and through a much-needed relaxing night in both my fraternity and the Targum, with a very patient girlfriend. I have made lifelong friends and I cannot thank the 142nd had some fun along the way. Editorial Board enough for the lifetime of memories we seemed “Go out to pack into one small hut on Mine Street and the best of luck and enjoy life to the new board. I don’t know in the company half of you nearly as well as I hoped, but from what I gather the of others, plain paper is in good hands. I’d like to thank all of the players and simple.” and coaches who gave me pleasure of covering their teams over the years. It’s safe to say that I would And I wouldn’t trade any of it not even be anywhere near landing for the world. Well, I’d trade a job in the journalism world if it some of the rough mornings, but weren’t for their willingness to that’s it.
tolerate my questions and their inspirational performances. And last but not least, I want to give my most heartfelt thank you to Anthony, Tyler and Steve. I’m not going to try and sum up all the guidance and laughs that you three have given me the past two years, so I’ll let someone else do it for me. The following quote came from Jerry Seinfeld to his compatriots on their final day on the set of one of the most iconic shows of this or any generation: “For the rest of our lives,” he said, “no one will think of one of us, without thinking of the rest of us. And I can’t think of three people I’d rather have that be true of.” A.J. Jankowski is the outgoing associate sports editor and is a School of Arts and Sciences senior majoring in journalism and media studies. You can begin to look for his work as a biographer in a few years, well after he reimburses a lonely McDonald’s value meal. Since he retired from the office, the laughs in the sports corner are stuck in a mire. Also: fire, liar, perspire. Boom, roasted. Oh, and he does not smoke with cigarettes.
Fight UN Human Rights Council’s inaction Letter EHUD COHEN
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he United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) — established in 2006 — by name alone invokes a sense of justice, of doing the right thing for all people, regardless of race or gender. As the abhorrent killing of innocent protesters continues in Libya, with a death toll breaching the thousands and the quelling of recent protests and basic freedoms continuing in Iran, one would expect this council to enact resolutions condemning these acts. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay’s challenged the council — the council is independent of her — on Tuesday to live up to its calling and take urgent action to help stop bloodshed. The council has since responded with a statement. Not a resolution, not a call for investigation into
the matter of hundreds of innocents killed in open streets — just a statement. When last year’s flotilla incident in the Mediterranean Sea occurred, the UNHRC was all over it, launching a separate investigation and issuing a more than 50-page report accusing Israel of violating human rights and international humanitarian law. That was for the unfortunate death of nine people among many onboard who, in a controversial attempt to break an embargo, violently attacked Israel Defense Forces soldiers as they boarded the ship. And as for the deaths of several hundreds of innocent protestors in Libya, as Libyan pilots are being ordered to bomb the crowds? Thus far just a statement, though there is a meeting this Friday to discuss a resolution. The inaction thus far should not be too shocking, however, as Libya is currently a member of the UNHRC, along with various other nations with questionable human-rights records, such as
Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, who both are in fear of popular uprisings modeled after the Egyptian democratic movement. Many countries belonging to the council have their human rights abuses well documented, even if the UNHRC does not take them to task. And while Iran was not elected to the council, it was elected to serve this year on the U.N.’s 45-member Commission on the Status of Women, a body dedicated to “gender equality and advancement of women.” The sheer notion of Iran sitting on that council is ludicrous. The UNHRC did meet last Friday, though not to discuss the recent violence in northern Africa. No, what the council found more immediately necessary than acting on the reprehensible and abhorrent actions of one of its own members was Israeli settlements. To be clear, settlement policy is central to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, but settlements are not the sole issue central to the peace
process — let alone Middle East peace — especially when Israel has repeatedly indicated a willingness to discuss the future of settlements in direct talks and even acted on it in the past through the 2005 withdrawal from settlements in Gaza, only to be met by rocket fire. Rocket fire that was also ignored in the meeting, as the council again failed to condemn the hundreds of missiles fired just this year at Israeli towns — missiles whose aim, pure and simple, is to harm as many civilians as possible. It should be noted that a grad rocket was fired on Beersheba just two days ago. The United States joined six other nations, including Canada and Israel, in opposing the UNHRC’s draft resolution on its working rules in 2007, on the basis that the agency was ignoring human-rights violations around the globe while obsessively focusing on Israel. It would seem the UNHRC has continued to ignore the world while instead focusing on
the sole Middle East democratic state. It would behoove the entire international community to speak out against the UNHRC’s continued inaction and hypocrisy, to call for the expulsion of Libya from the council — as many have done recently — and for the council to begin working towards enacting resolutions to condemn all humanrights violations, regardless of their country of origin. “It is certainly up to the council members if they want to reinforce or maintain any credibility,” said Frej Fenniche, an aide to Pillay who heads the Middle East and North Africa department. The UNHRC is set to finally meet this Friday to discuss a draft resolution regarding the recent events in Libya and discuss Libya’s role in the council. One can only hope it will be more productive than recent meetings. Ehud Cohen is a School of Engineering junior majoring in electrical and computer engineering.
Take democracy back from all special interests Letter SAM BERMAN
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ne of the most convincing arguments against public-sector unions I’ve heard relies on the principle that private-sector unions and publicsector unions are inherently different creatures. It goes something like this: Private-sector unions provide individual, private-sector workers a means of organizing to represent their interests in order to even the other wise over whelming odds at the negotiating table with powerful executives. Public-sector unions, on the other hand, deal with a government monopoly. A lot of the same pressures that help workers and managers in the private sector come to a mutually beneficial agreement simply don’t exist in the public sector. As a result, public-sector unions act on behalf of government employees in a capacity much more akin to lobbyist groups than negotiators,
advocating for an ever-growing share of government revenue and an almost absurd level of job security for its constituents, without regard to the efficiency or effectiveness of government as a whole. And since the taxpayers have no lobby to represent them at the negotiating table — unlike in the private sector, where business executives are capable of representing themselves — the end result is that public unions give government employees disproportionate power in determining the allocation of government revenue. In a democracy, voters should have more control over such things than any one interest group. Thus, public unions themselves are abhorrent to democracy and need to be checked or eliminated altogether. Even if you disagree, let’s accept this argument as valid for the moment. And, indeed, it is certainly plausible. The Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank in Washington, D.C., published a report in January 2010 that found average compensation, including
benefits, of state and local government employees was 45 percent higher than that of privatesector employees, despite large budget deficits. That sounds less like a mutually beneficial contract negotiated by two parties interested in coming to an effective compromise and more like a contract negotiated to benefit one side, the government employee, with the other side, the taxpayer, unable to drive a harder bargain. So we have our argument, and we have accepted its validity. In logic, you learn that for an argument to be valid, it must take a valid argument form. Think of an argument form as a generalized statement. Here, “argument form” refers to the premises — that Party X (public unions) are a powerful lobby group for Group Y (government employees), that Group Z (taxpayers) has no counterbalancing lobby group and that Party X affords Group Y greater representation in determining the allocation of public funds than Group Z and the conclusion that Party X needs to be checked or eliminated
altogether. The thing about a valid argument form? Every specific argument of that form is valid. Watch this. Let’s keep Group Z as the taxpayers. But let’s replace Party X with, say, the “Chamber of Commerce” and Group Y with “business executives.” Or maybe we should replace Party X with “the NRA” and Group Y with “gun owners.” Or we could call Party X “banking lobbyists” and Group Y “financial institutions” such as Goldman Sachs. If it’s a valid argument for the limiting or dissolution of Party X, it’s valid regardless of whether Party X is the Service Employees International Union or the Chamber of Commerce. Either we recognize and work to rectify the undue influence that lobbyists across the political spectrum have over our politics or we do not. But it is simply far too dangerous to pick and choose which vested interests to allow ever-more uncontested dominance over our politics. If we’ve decided, as a country, the time has come to take back our
democracy, then let us take it back from all special interests. Which brings me to my final comment. I’d like to make a quick note on the idea that taxpayers are unable to effectively represent themselves at the negotiating table. To me, this seems like an odd assertion to make in a democratic society. As a fundamental principle, the people are represented by whomever they elect to public office. Our own Gov. Chris Christie is a perfect example of this — the New Jersey voting public, perceiving the public sector to be receiving unfair wages and benefits in a time of economic crisis, elected someone they thought would drive a hard bargain at the negotiating table. The claim, of course, is that politicians will say anything in order to get elected, then lack the political will to act once in office. Well, you get what you vote for, I suppose. That’s the essence of democracy. Sam Berman is a School of Arts and Sciences first-year student.