Marriage

One of the most fundamental questions that has perplexed humanity for ages, and that perplexes it still is the following: How should we live our lives. This is an issue of intense concern for any reflective person.
Every culture addresses this question and proposes an answer. It comes up with a set of principles, based on experience as well as on the history of human thought; these are the same principles that we are then brought up with. We are indoctrinated to believe that this is the right path in life. Variations are present, but so are similarities. I would like to focus on the latter, namely the institution of marriage.

Marriage in one form or another, is present in virtually every single community on the planet. But what are the reasons behind it? If asked, people will in general say something along these lines: to celebrate your relationship; or to declare your love to the world. It sounds beautiful and it seems true, but it only seems true (at least to a certain extent) because we want it to be true; for you can have all that without the byproducts of the institution of marriage and the paperwork that it entails.
Let us now assume that we cant think of a better reason to get married than the two stated above. Then there is a parallel to be made here between marriage and Facebook( or rather one of its accessories). As much as I hate bringing it up in any kind of serious thought, Facebook is an extremely widespread phenomenon and as such we cannot allow ourselves to ignore it. Moreover, it is not the idea of Facebook that is rotten- to the contrary, it is quite fantastic- it is the people who use it that have made it what it is today. Now, to come back to the point I was trying to make in the first place- the parallel between Facebook and marriage- I ask the following question: Save the party in its name, what is the difference between marriage and setting your relationship status on Facebook to married?

''There is No Romance Without Finance''

In his article ‘’The Great Divide: Male vs. Female’’, Audrey Chapman mentioned ‘’the old adage that there’s no romance without finance’’. [Revelations, 280) While I am usually against such general statements, this time I would have to agree. However, as opposed to Chapman who writes this off as a flaw in our society, I see nothing wrong about it .This world has so many interesting things to offer and money is your ticket to the show.
Not only does money enable you to do pretty much anything you want, but it also opens your eyes to new realms of pleasure. It is important, however, to preserve some form of modesty and moderation, for money can be a double-sided blade. As we have all seen countless times through the example of celebrities (actors, singers or otherwise), running rampant with unhealthy sums of money can turn out quite ugly. Nothing remains interesting forever, and when there are no more realms of pleasure to discover and explore, lots of ‘’stars’’ take a downturn to depression. A very common next step for them are drugs, and as rich as they are, coming up with ridiculous amounts of the latter does not pose any kind of problem. Quite ironically, the same thing that practically gave them life turns out to be their undoing later on.
Money can’t buy happiness, but true happiness is not possible without money. While it serves as means to various kinds of pleasure, this is not its main purpose. Money also provides security, a feeling very important to every human being. Without security, people are very easily irritated, constantly tensed, anxious and thus unable to enjoy even the pleasures that are available to them. Put two people together, and you will just get the same anxiety and tension times two.
Happiness doesn’t come automatically with money; it’s not guaranteed. However, at least it’s possible, whereas without money there is no true happiness. That is reality.

Issues of Cook Hall

I am a freshman at Howard University and a resident of Cook Hall. As my first semester here draws to an end, I must say I was delighted with the faculty, as well as the whole learning experience. However, life on campus is not nearly as impressive. Visitation and Internet restrictions are my main concern.
Every now and then, there would be a notification at the entrance to the dorm saying that visitation would be taken away from us for a certain period of time. In fact, this happens so often that when it is given back, most students don’t even become aware of it until it is taken away again. While the Internet connection is very fast and dependable, some very important applications are rendered useless by an overly-protective network.
Visitation is of vital importance for some students, including myself. It’s my freshman year, and I’ve already worked on 2 group projects. These projects require a lot of research and teamwork and sometimes, very strict visitation hours make it hard for us to work out a convenient time for a meeting. I am aware of the fact that the I-Lab is open almost 24/7 and that it can be used for such meetings. However, for some of us, studying in a room with 200 other people is far from an ideal solution. Also, what bothers me is that visitation is biased in terms of sexual orientation. Having a person of the opposite sex in your room is a bit of a problem; having him or her spend the night- out of the question, even though this person might even be a blood relative. This policy is also unfair towards heterosexual people, and ‘’favours’’ homosexuals.
Cook Hall is a dorm predominantly reserved for student-athletes, and as such it is full of international citizens. The Internet restrictions I was referring to disable the use of various applications and programs, along with the most important one- Skype. This is a very useful program that allows people from all over the world to talk to each other online for free. For foreign students, using a phone would be ridiculously expensive, and that is why Skype is their only connection with family and relatives. Robbing us of Skype, of our only means of talking to our loved ones, is a crime.
I urge the Residence Life staff to reconsider their visitation policies and make them more uniform with the other universities in America. At the same time, I’d like to ask of you one more time to change your Internet Network Settings and allow us to use Skype. Opening the necessary ports is a one-minute job, and yet it would mean the world to all Cook Hall Residents.

Free your mind. Open your eyes

More often than not, the word black is a synonym for something negative. There is a wide range of terms to choose from: Evil, wicked, malignant, unwashed, foul, dirty and so on. Despite the fact that white is often a synonym for clean, pristine, divine or other simmilar positive terms, I believe that it has nothing to do with racism.

These referrences for black and white originate from ancient history, when racism, at least in it's current form, did not exist. If we look back to, for example, ancient Greece, the gods that were considered protectors of humanity were believed to be living in the heavens. Thus, the light was associated with the gods-protectors, and white colour is an obvious symbol for light. Black on the other hand, is the polar opposite of white. Visually, white and black offer the highest possible contrast. That is why Hades, the master of the dead and the underworld, was always depicted as a god enveloped in darkness(blackness).

Night(darkness,blackness) is often associated with danger and evil, because of the connection of night's absolute darkness to the fear of the unknown and the fact that it hinders the sensory system that human beings rely on the most- sight. Humans have always been and always will be creatures of the day. Night is a time of danger and vulnerability for our species. As a result, mythical creatures such as the vampires, werewolves and ghosts are thought to be more active during the night. It's also interesting to note that as far back as the second century, the early Saxon tribes referred to the darkness of the night as the ''death mist''

All of this, as well as numerous other factors, contributed to the negative ring of the word black(blackness). It has absolutely nothing to do with skin colour or race, therefore I see no reason to get upset over the synonyms for the relevant term.

Importance of Education

‘’ The schools are horrible and don't teach anybody anything’’- these are the words of one of Americas most important playwrights, August Wilson. Even though the rest of the interview was very interesting and enlightening in many ways, it was this sentence that had the biggest impact on me.
Wilson argues that from fifth grade on, teachers were essentially holding him back, telling him to ‘’shut up’’ instead of giving actual answers to his questions. This might very well be true, but I think he fails to realize that not everyone was as gifted as he was. Elementary schooling programs are not created to fit the most brilliant of children. They are more oriented towards the average mind, thus giving everybody a chance to learn and progress.
Some people, including Wilson, see the fact that ‘’you have to take all kinds of required courses before you can get to the subject that interests you’’ as a flaw in the educational system. Again, it appears he doesn’t realize that he was a very rare exception. Most children have no clue as to what they might be interested in, and that is why they need to go through such a wide range of courses. Hopefully, it will help them to recognize the areas of academia that suit them the most. Only after that can they make an informed decision, and choose what field of science to focus on.

Paradox

While reading ‘’Straightening Our Hair’’ by bell hooks, I came across a sentence that struck me as vital as the whole essay itself. It was pretty odd, considering that was not the first time I encountered this very fact. In the article, hooks mentioned a black woman who ‘’asserted that her home was a place where blackness was affirmed and celebrated’’. The word ‘’celebrated’’ is what had drawn my attention.
Experience teaches me that black children are encouraged to be proud of being black by their parents, and ‘’Straightening Our Hair’’ bears witness to my assertion. However, I don’t see anything worth ‘’celebrating’’ in being black, just as there is nothing to be ‘’celebrated’’ in being white. Every person, regardless of his or her race, should just accept their skin colour, rather than celebrate it. Therefore, a black person should just accept that, as a matter of fact, he or she is black. Now when I say accept, by no means do I imply that it should be accepted as a necessary, inevitable evil, or any kind of flaw. It is just a matter of facing reality.
Interestingly enough, I believe that no one has ever heard a white person make such a statement: that he is proud of being white. In his essay ‘’Race and the Schooling of Black Americans’’, Claude Steele tried to prove that the reason black students in general score lower on tests had nothing to do with ‘’genetic inferiority’’, but rather with low self-esteem caused by what is known as the ‘’Stereotype Threat’’. The way I see it, celebrating blackness is a way for black people to constantly reassure themselves that they are just as good as, for example, whites. The need for this kind of ‘’celebration’’ rises from the self-esteem issues Steele had written about in his essay. Surprisingly enough, it appears that some black people are having trouble accepting that they are, indeed, just as good a human being as anybody else. Even though they celebrate blackness and claim to be proud of it, it appears they don’t actually believe it. As weird as it may seem, this celebration only further aggravates the situation of our society, instead of taking us one step closer to racial equality.
If the imaginary differences between blacks and whites are ever to be erased and if our society is ever to reach absolute racial equality, the ‘’celebration’’ has to stop.

A Victim of Prejudice

''Black Men and Public Space'' was written by Brent Staples. In this article, he talks about his ''ability to alter public space in ugly ways''.
The first time he noticed he possessed this power was while he was studying in Chicago. One night, he was walking down a deserted street in Hyde Park, while another woman in her late twenty’s was the only other person around. At one point, the woman turned around and saw him behind her. She cast back a few more worried looks, as she was picking up pace up to a point where her walk turned into a full out sprint.
It became clear to the writer that he had been mistaken for a rapist, or a mugger at best. This lead to very mixed feelings of astonishment, disbelief, embarrassment , and anger on his part.
Similar situations followed: in the streets after dark, people would cross to the other side of the sidewalk as soon as they noticed him; while crossing in front of a car that stopped at a traffic light, he would usually hear the sound of doors locking down. Not to mention the countless unpleasantries with policemen, doormen, bouncers, and cabdrivers, or my personal favourite, a black man showing up at a hip restaurant for a meal(after making table reservations) only to be told: ‘’ There must have been some kind of mistake’’.
After a while, Staples got used to it. He learned how to smother his emotions and reduce the tension by whistling melodies from Vivaldi and other popular classic composers.
I found it quite interesting that it is the victim of prejudice who has to develop ways to loosen the tensions, and not the other way around. However, today, 25 years after the publication of the article, the situation has changed drastically. Perhaps, after the election of an African American for President, the vision of American people can be cleansed of prejudice and they will be able to see black people for who they truly are.