10 July 22-28, 2013 The Daily Illini www.DailyIllini.com
Opinions The Daily Illini
Editorial Easter and Wise overcome shadows of past University scandals
T
he University was rife with scandal after scandal in the high ranks of the school’s administration over the past decade, but after a year with Robert Easter as president, it seems that those days have passed. Because of this, the Board of Trustees will likely extend Easter’s two -year appointment another year through the end of June 2015 at its bimonthly meeting Thursday. Easter has held countless positions throughout the Urbana campus, both as an academic and as an administrator, which, together, proved his capability of leading the University. Although Easter continues to promote the ideals of the University, the board will make a strategic move to extend his term with a base salary of $450,0 0 0 (which while high, is still lower than previous presidents here) and a performancebased, or incentive-based, portion in addition. According to the board’s agenda for its Thursday meeting, the trustees want to “align
the interests” of President Easter and future presidents “with those of the University.” One of the biggest issues facing Easter when his term began last July was an exodus of faculty and professors, aided by a dismal state pension system. And that problem hasn’t gone away: The Illinois House failed to pass legislation to secure a pension system for a state with the lowest credit rating in the union. This problem may become all the more apparent as the University tries to add 50 0 new faculty members over the next five to seven years, per Chancellor Phyllis Wise’s Visioning Future Excellence outcomes report this past week. This ambitious goal in tandem with a state, whose coffers are more empty than full, will prove to be a challenge for both Easter and Wise. Over the past year, Easter and Wise have proven to be a compatible duo, though. Another two years with them at the forefront could position the University as a stronger world leader in academia.
Racism is the reason for the death of Trayvon Martin ADAM SMITH Opinions columnist
Folks, there’s no place quite like the United States of America. Here, banks and traders can run roughshod over, well, any one that’s not a banker or trader. Here, we incarcerate more of our own population — more than 2.3 million men and women — than any other country in the world. Freedom, ladies and gentlemen! Here, the Florida state legislature, along with the legislatures of at least 22 other states, have written and passed laws allowing for public self-defense without retreat — that last part lending the laws their inane “Stand Your Ground” colloquial designation. It allows any person licensed to carry a concealed firearm (concealed carry being a problem in and of itself) to shoot first if he or she feels even slightly frightened, essentially making reasonable suspicion a legal justification. George Zimmerman clearly felt threatened on the night of Feb. 26, 2012, when he called 9-1-1 to report a suspicious individual in his gated townhome community. The neighborhood watch member and frequent nonemergency line caller couldn’t passively abide by the burglaries and attempted break-ins that had been perpetrated in his subdivision. He had nearly caught a black teenager he suspected was responsible for a recent string of burglaries, but a 9-1-1 dispatcher told him to wait for police. The black guy got away. But tonight was going to end much differently than either of them expected. Here, finally, was Zimmerman’s chance to be a hero. “These a-------, they always get away,”Zimmerman told the dispatcher, just before
observing the suspicious individual running off. He pursued his target. The dispatcher told him not to engage the suspect — Zimmerman did anyway. What happened next is still unclear, even after a sensational trial and even more sensational acquittal. Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old Skittles enthusiast who had gone out that night to grab a snack and who was returning to his father’s fiancee’s townhome, must have sensed that someone was following him, just as Zimmerman suspected someone was eyeing him. Somehow, Trayvon Martin — now a “suspicious individual” — and George Zimmerman become entangled in a physical altercation. The younger and spryer Martin held the upper hand, but his opponent had a gun. The gist of it is this: George Zimmerman stalked Trayvon Martin, a black teenager, because black teenagers had committed a number of crimes in their neighborhood. George Zimmerman got into a fight with Trayvon Martin. George Zimmerman was losing the fight, and Trayvon Martin ended up shot and killed. There are so many things wrong here. The acquittal of George Zimmerman was not a failure of the justice system. In fact, Florida’s courts worked exactly as they should have: The prosecution, perhaps caving under the pressure of such inexplicable media coverage, made a pathetically weak case against Zimmerman. They were unable to prove, beyond any reasonable doubt, that he had murdered Trayvon Martin in anything other than self-defense. Some of the real failure lies within the justice system itself. I take issue with any government that gives a de facto license to kill, as “Stand Your Ground” laws effectively do. Its proponents argue that the very threat of retribution by law-abiding gun owners prevents violence in the first place — that assaults, robberies and murders will be dramatically reduced if criminals are subject to a pre-crime penalty of “death by vigilante.” A recent Texas A&M University study showed an 8 percent increase
in manslaughter and murder rates in states with “Stand Your Ground” laws on the books: reason number 628 not to believe the National Rifle Association’s inherently faulty brand of logic. Sure, people kill people, but so do more guns and further expansions of the definition of justified homicide. Much of the blame should be placed on a culture that permitted a neighborhood watchman to indulge his vigilante fantasies without reproach. The NRA, along with its handmaidens within the GOP, have lamented the inability of the police to protect real Americans so endlessly that the once-sane notion of self-defense — of protecting one’s castle and family — has now been inexplicably extended to include street justice. But what is most wrong with the utterly sad case of Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman is what the latter’s most fervent supporters emphatically and so wrongly deny the existence of. An armed white and Latino man shot and killed an unarmed black kid, and it’s OK, because the black kid was probably a thug. Trayvon was probably “up to no good,” as Zimmerman told the emergency dispatcher that night. Travyon was probably a drug user or, even worse, a drug dealer, because there was THC in his blood. Don’t believe Antonin Scalia, who led the recent charge to gut the 1965 Voting Rights Act, when he and his cronies announce the end of racism. We’re still as racist as ever. There is a notion of young black men in America as inherently criminal; they are treated, with frightening regularity, as guilty until proven innocent. Racism is why 90 percent of stop-and-frisk incidents in New York City involve blacks or Hispanics. Racism, however latent or imperceptible, is why George Zimmerman pursued and followed Trayvon Martin last February.
Adam is a sophomore in LAS. He can be reached at ajsmit11@dailyillini.com. Follow him on Twitter @hercules5.
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