Leadership on Campus: The Art of Recognition

CDT xxx

5 December 2008

Leadership on Campus

The Justin X. Carroll Residential Hall Honorary (XRHH) serves to cultivate leadership and service to residential life within the Washington University Community. Membership is comprised of past and current student government leaders on campus. It is devoted to the recognition of excellence among WashU leaders, believing that such recognition both rewards past service and encourages future action. To accomplish this, XRHH presents “Of the Month Awards,” ranging from Student Leader of the Month to Community Outreach Event of the Month, hosts a spring leadership retreat, judges the “Of the Year” competition between residential colleges, and awards scholarships to deserving student leaders. As the Publicity Chair of XRHH, I am responsible for promoting the group through Student Life, the WashU student run newspaper, and in presenting the awards to selected groups and individuals. In addition, although the honorary has had a long history at WashU, it had languished in recent years. I was one of a select group of students who re-established the honorary. Not only has it become a visible presence on campus, but it has also helped streamline many internal WashU administrative duties in regards to recognizing groups on campus.

Being in a small group environment, each of the members must pull his or her weight in order to make the group successful. To that end, I have talked to school administrators and student leaders in order to consolidate administrative duties and to serve the WashU community through better programming. I feel that the pressure ROTC places on being able to effectively “get the message across” has been essential to allowing me to perform my responsibilities in the organization. Getting up and speaking in front of other people has even, at times, become an enjoyable experience, especially since everyone in the honorary has known and worked with one another in student government. Being able to contribute to an honorary is important, and to that end, ROTC has helped tremendously. In addition, honorary members are responsible for one to two residential college councils and must advise them on ways to improve their service to their residential college. ROTC has helped me affectively communicate to councils, made up of mostly freshmen, on ways to improve the WashU experience. Unlike ROTC, where we can delegate to our subordinates, leading councils require guidance and patience. Leadership becomes an advisory role.

Moreover, besides the practical leadership attributes that have been taught, ROTC is in essence the practical application of the principle that there are other people and ideals out there that matter more than you do. While many college students choose to party their way through college, I have chosen to step up to the plate and take on what many people would characterize as a trivial matter: recognition. Recognizing student leaders and groups across campus not only shows them that the students care, but it also helps to improve other aspects of student life. When leaders feel that they are recognized through their hard work, whether that is through newspaper articles or a certificate of achievement, they transfer that appreciation back to the people they serve. In the past, when awards use to be bestowed without significant meaning, people, myself included, didn’t appreciate or care about them. However, with XRHH’s active encouragement of groups to make themselves better known and the publicity that they will receive, groups and leaders have started to reveal that they do care about being recognized for their efforts. Being a leader for me is doing all that I can to better the lives of other people.

-This was written as part of an assignment for the Gateway Battalion ROTC program.  XRHH is an honorary at Washington University in St. Louis dedicated to making leaders better through recognition and leadership retreats.  To learn more about XRHH, go to http://xrhh.wustl.edu.  The author is a current member and also an ROTC cadet.

Why it’s pointless to shop on Black Friday

As you all know, yesterday was Black Friday, and what did I get?  7 DVDs from Amazon for the awesome price of $25 with free shipping, and 2 sweaters from Old Navy for $35 + shipping.  Are they good deals? You bet.  But what about those big ticket items from Best Buy, Circuit City, and the mall?  I didn’t even bother.

First of all, I already have a nice 32″ plasma that doesn’t beed replacing, so why spend $699 to upgrade to a 42″?  Besides, when I first saw on Gizmodo that Sears had a 42″ Panasonic Viera plasma for $699, I was giddy with joy, and I was SURE that that was going to be the best deal around.  And then I saw on Amazon that the same TV was on sale for $699 as well.  And that got me thinking.  Why go to a store and brave the crowds on Black Friday when I can sit in the comfort of my home on a chilly night with coffee in my hands and buy the same product online.  Not only that, but Amazon also offered their “White Glove” service for the TV.  Basically, they coordinate the best time to deliver to your house and even set the TV up for you!  That definitely beats me carrying the TV to my car and trying to get it to fit myself.  Why do more than you have to when everything is free?

Yesterday was also Pink Friday brought to you by CompUSA and TigetDirect.  While nobel in their cause to donate to cancer research, the deals were a complete scam.  Phone lines couldn’t get through, and products were gone awfully fast.  After watching for a few hours, I got sick of it and left.  That $99 Xbox 360 Halo edition never materialized.  I’m sure of it: I had my twitter feed set and never saw it pop up.  Towards the end of the night, the whole things crashed!  Talk about one shitty promotion!  I don’t care if the money went to cancer research – it’s a good cause, but what about satisfying the customer?!?

Not only that, 1 Wal-mart worker got trampled to death!  This is the  United States of America people!  Try not to behave like savages while living in this civilized country.  Killing someone to get an awesome deal on TVs and cameras shows your lack of morals.

Monday is Cyber Monday.  What are we going to see then?  More deals?  Absolutely, but to be completely honest, really people, how much tech junk do we really need in our homes?

Memory

In case any of you like to study while watching TV or listening to music, let it be known that you are doing yourselves a disservice.  Indeed, research has shown that listening to anything with words divides your attention and causes interference.  In essense, you are not retaining what you are studying.  So, instead of listening to something with deep meaning, why not tune to some classical music.  Your mind will be calm, drink some tea, relax, and study your heart out.

Why note taking is important

I use to take good notes.  That was before I went to college.  Nowadays, I sometimes just can’t help dozing off in the middle of a class.  It isn’t because the content is boring.  The content almost never is.  It’s just that the professors speak in monotonous voice, so no matter what happens, you have no other option than to slowly doze into your own personal nervana in lala land.

When it comes to tests though, ouch.  You see jibberish in your notes.  Everything starts out clear and then slowly you see squiggly lines.  ANd then soon, nothing makes sense anymore.

Shit.

Hookah, the experience

So I tried smoking hookah for the first time tonight.  It was awesome.  But overall, I didn’t feel the buzz.  To be honest, I don’t feel the effects of nicotine that much.  I can smoke a cigar and feel no different than when I started.  It’s kinda sad.

Jenna Bush Weds Henry Hager at President’s Ranch

The father of the bride beamed Sunday as he reported that his daughter and her new husband had the wedding every family hopes for.

“Our little girl Jenna married a really good guy. The wedding was spectacular. It was all we could hope for,” President Bush said as he and wife Laura left for Washington, D.C., from Texas, where their Crawford ranch served as the location for Jenna Bush and Henry Hager to wed a night earlier.

“The weather cooperated nicely. Just as the vows were exchanged the sun set over our lake and it was just a special day and a wonderful day and we’re mighty blessed,” Bush said.

The intensely private wedding between the younger Bush twin and the son of Virginia’s former lieutenant governor was guarded by Secret Service, Texas State Troopers, a no-fly zone and a vehicle blockade.

Jenna Bush wore an Oscar de la Renta gown made of organza. It had a small train, and according to the band leader, she wore no veil. Hager wore a dark blue suit and powder-blue tie as did the president. Laura Bush also dressed in a metallic blue cocktail-length gown while Jenna’s big sister Barbara, the only bridesmaid, was decked out in a greek-style moonstone blue gown with a gold waistband.

The other 13 women in the “house party” were clad in seven different styles of knee-length dresses in seven different colors that match the palette of Texas wildflowers — blues, greens, lavenders and pinky reds.

The best man was the groom’s brother, John “Jack” Hager. Also part of the “house party” were 14 ushers, who walked with the 14 women down the aisle to their seats, but did not participate in the ceremony.

The band leader, Tyrone Smith of Nashville, Tenn., said the former President Bush and his wife Barbara spoke during the wedding. A store owner in Crawford told FOX News she woke up last night to the sound of fireworks over the ranch.

President Bush walked Jenna down the outdoor aisle to a limestone alter and cross next to the lake. The father and daughter danced to “You Are So Beautiful.” The bride and groom danced first to “Lovin’ in My Baby’s Eyes” by Taj Mahal.

Security was so tight that the 200 guests had to go to an off-site location, get checked by Secret Service and then get bussed to the ranch.

Denver Broncos Coach Mike Shanahan, whose daughter was a college roomate of Jenna’s, told FOX News Radio it was a great, elegant night, but would reveal little else.

The couple heads to a honeymoon in Europe before they settle down in Baltimore, where they’ve bought a house together.

In his weekly radio address ahead of Saturday night’s wedding, Bush noted the event as one of the highlights in their storied family history.

“This is a joyous occasion for our family, as we celebrate the happy life ahead of her and her husband, Henry,” Bush said in his Saturday radio address. “It’s also a special time for Laura who this Mother’s Day weekend will watch a young woman we raised together walk down the aisle.”

Jenna, 26, is the 22nd child of a president to get married while their father was in the Oval Office. Their ceremonies have ranged from Tricia Nixon’s extravagant wedding broadcast live from the Rose Garden in 1971 to the 1992 Camp David wedding of Jenna’s aunt, Dorothy Koch. That one was kept so secret that the press didn’t find out about it until it was over.

“All of them are different. This one really reflects the personality of both Jenna and the George W. Bush family,” said Doug Wead, a former aide to President George H.W. Bush and author of a book on presidents’ kin.

“If they’d have gone on TV, the wedding would have been shown all over the world and Jenna Bush would have been an international celebrity — and she would have been a target. They’re preparing the transition to private life and they’re not particularly interested in seeing Jenna Bush become a huge celebrity.”

The Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell of Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston officiated.

Festivities began Friday with a bridal lunch, rehearsal dinner and post-rehearsal dinner celebration in Salado, a tiny tourist village, which used to be a stagecoach stop. Jenna, her sister and the first lady were in Salado, more than an hour’s drive south of Crawford, all day Friday and the president arrived in the evening by motorcade.

The rehearsal dinner for about 100 people was hosted by the parents of the groom, who turned 30 on Friday. Hager’s father, John Hager, is the chairman of the Virginia Republican Party and is former lieutenant governor of Virginia and former U.S. assistant secretary of education.

The rehearsal dinner crowd, including the president, then walked down a street in Salado with the Belton High School Marching Band from Belton, Texas, to a “Texas-sized celebration” at another establishment. All the wedding guests were invited to this event. They were entertained by the five-member Duke Merrick Band from Charlottesville, Virginia, which performed classic Texas songs and original pieces by Merrick, a relative of the Hager family.

The groom’s family also hosted a barbecue lunch Saturday in Salado ahead of the wedding.

Henry Hager met Jenna during her father’s 2004 re-election campaign. He graduated from Wake Forest University and worked as an aide to Bush’s former top political adviser Karl Rove. He is set to receive a master’s degree in business administration later this month from the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business.

Between February 2005 and January 2006, he was an economic policy aide in the office of Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez and regularly briefed the secretary on economic data. “He was widely regarded as a super star,” said Ann Marie Hauser, press secretary at Commerce.

-foxnews.com

96 Students, Others Arrested in Massive Drug Raid at San Diego State University

Ninety-six students, local gang members and others were arrested Tuesday in a massive drug raid at San Diego State University.

Drugs including cocaine, ecstasy, marijuana and methamphetamines were confiscated in the sting, which came as the result of a months-long undercover operation, according to officials with the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office and the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

Many of the students arrested were members of the Theta Chi and Phi Kappa Psi fraternities. One of the gang members taken into custody allegedly has ties to Mexican drug cartels.

The DEA said a member of the Theta Chi fraternity sent out a mass text message to his “faithful customers” stating that he and his “associates” would be unable to sell cocaine while they were in Las Vegas over one weekend.

In addition to large quantities of narcotics, money and weapons were also seized from sellers and buyers in the bust.

Authorities confiscated two kilograms of cocaine, about 350 ecstasy pills, marijuana, psychedelic mushrooms, hash oil, methamphetamines and illicit prescription drugs, as well as several guns and at least $60,000 in cash.

Undercover officers in “Operation Sudden Fall,” as it was called, conducted more than 130 drug purchases with sellers, authorities said.

Officials said they were surprised by the sophistication of the campus smuggling and trafficking network.

Several of the 96 defendants — 75 of whom are students — were appearing in state court to face charges Tuesday afternoon.

Eighteen of the students were arrested Tuesday when nine search warrants were executed at various locations, among them fraternities.

The undercover sting was spawned by the drug-overdose death of a college student last year.

-foxnews.com

Microsoft withdraws bid for Yahoo

Software maker walks away after it says it
raised its offer to $46 billion – says economics demanded by Yahoo ‘do
not make sense.’

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Microsoft Corp.’s pursuit of Yahoo Inc.
ended abruptly Saturday when the world’s largest software maker
withdrew a sweetened $46 billion offer and said it would not make a
hostile bid for the Internet company.

Microsoft said the
breakdown came despite having raised the bid to $33 a share, or $5
billion above what it said was the current value of the offer and a 70%
premium compared to its original offer.

The offer was valued at $31 a share when it was made in January. Yahoo stock closed Friday at $28.67 a share.

“After careful consideration, we believe the economics demanded by Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500) do not make sense for us,” said Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) CEO Steve Ballmer.

In
a letter to Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang, Ballmer said that Yahoo
wanted at least another $4 a share, or $5 billion in value, added to
the deal, bringing it to at least $37 a share.

Ballmer also told Yang that taking the offer directly to shareholders would not be “sensible.”

“This
approach would necessarily involve a protracted proxy contest and
eventually an exchange offer,” Ballmer wrote. “Our discussions with you
have led us to conclude that, in the interim, you would take steps that
would make Yahoo undesirable as an acquisition for Microsoft.”

Ballmer said he was concerned that a further collaboration between Yahoo and Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) – which he called “the dominant search provider” – would make an acquisition undesirable for several reasons.

Yahoo officials indicated their pleasure with the end of the Microsoft bid.

“Our
independent board and our management have been steadfast in our belief
that Microsoft’s offer undervalued the company and we are pleased that
so many of our shareholders in expressing that view,” Yahoo chairman
Roy Bostock said.

Yang, in the same statement, called the
Microsoft bid a “distraction” and said that Yahoo will now focus “on
executing the most important transition in our history so that we can
maximize our potential.”

Microsoft: We’ll do it without Yahoo

Microsoft indicated that it will proceed with a Web advertising strategy.

“We
have a talented team in place and a compelling plan to grow our
business through innovative new services and strategic transactions
with other business partners,” Ballmer said. “While Yahoo would have
accelerated our strategy, I am confident that we can continue to move
forward toward our goals.”

Both Microsoft and Yahoo have struggled to compete with Google for billions of advertising dollars shifting to the Web.

A
marriage between Microsoft and Yahoo had been widely considered by
analysts as inevitable. “As we have indicated since 2/1, we think MSFT
will eventually acquire YHOO at a price not materially above the value
of its initial offer,” wrote Scott Kessler, an analyst with Standard
& Poor’s, in a report earlier this week.

Microsoft fears that
Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick – the world’s biggest online ad
server company and big player in the increasingly lucrative market for
online display ads – will allow the search giant to seize an even
bigger portion of the ad market as Microsoft’s MSN falls further behind.

Microsoft
made a public offer to buy Yahoo on Jan. 31, two days after the
Internet portal reported weak quarterly earnings and a disappointing
outlook for 2008.

Yahoo was an impressive target. It is one of
the last independent Internet companies with massive scale. In March,
it was the top-ranked site in the United States with 139 million unique
visitors, according to comScore, which tracks Web audiences. Google was
second and Microsoft was third.

What might have been

A Microsoft-Yahoo combo could have offered even greater scale and attracted more advertisers.

None
of that persuaded Yahoo, however. Though the value of the company’s
stock has risen more than 40% since Microsoft made its offer, its board
said the proposal “substantially undervalues” the company.

Throughout
the past three months, Yahoo had said it was not opposed to a merger if
Microsoft offered the right price. But it also sought alternatives.
When no white knights came to the rescue, Yahoo in recent months
pursued other tieups with Time Warner (TWX, Fortune 500) (parent of CNNMoney.com), News Corp. (NWS, Fortune 500) and Google.

But any involvement with Google could raise antitrust issues.

Yahoo’s
two-week test running Google’s search ads caught the attention of the
U.S. Justice Department. Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith said a
Yahoo-Google collaboration would “consolidate over 90% of the search
advertising market in Google’s hand.”

Sen. Herbert Kohl, D-Wis.,
the chairman of Senate Judiciary Committee’s antitrust panel, said last
month that “should there be moves to make this agreement permanent, we
will examine it closely … to ensure that it does not harm
competition.”

On Saturday, Ballmer struck a generally cordial tone with Yang, even as he criticized Yahoo for rejecting Microsoft’s offer.

“I
still believe even today that our offer remains the only alternative
put forward that provides your stockholders full and fair value for
their shares,” Ballmer wrote. “By failing to reach an agreement with
us, you and your stockholders have left significant value on the
table.”

“But clearly a deal is not to be,” Ballmer added. “Thank you again for the time we have spent together discussing this.”

Scott Moritz and Yi-Wyn Yen of Fortune contributed to this article.

One boy, one girl — one dorm room

(AP) — Erik Youngdahl and Michelle Garcia share a dorm room at Connecticut’s Wesleyan University. But they say there’s no funny business going on. Really. They mean it.

They have set up their beds side-by-side like Lucy and Ricky in “I Love Lucy” and avert their eyes when one of them is changing clothes.

“People are shocked to hear that it’s happening and even that it’s possible,” said Youngdahl, a 20-year-old sophomore. But “once you actually live in it, it doesn’t actually turn into a big deal.”

In the prim 1950s, college dorms were off-limits to members of the opposite sex. Then came the 1970s, when male and female students started crossing paths in coed dormitories. Now, to the astonishment of some baby boomer parents, a growing number of colleges are going even further: coed rooms.

At least two dozen schools, including Brown University, the University of Pennsylvania, Oberlin College, Clark University and the California Institute of Technology, allow some or all students to share a room with anyone they choose, including someone of the opposite sex. This spring, as students sign up for next year’s room, more schools are following suit, including Stanford University.

As shocking as it sounds to some parents, some students and schools say it’s not about sex.

Instead, they say the demand is mostly from heterosexual students who want to live with close friends who happen to be of the opposite sex. Some gay students who feel more comfortable rooming with someone of the opposite sex are also taking advantage of the option.

“It ultimately comes down to finding someone that you feel is compatible with you,” said Jeffrey Chang, a junior at Clark in Worcester, Massachusetts, who co-founded the National Student Genderblind Campaign, a group that is pushing for gender-neutral housing. “Students aren’t doing this to make a point. They’re not doing this to upset their parents. It’s really for practical reasons.”

Couples do sometimes room together, an arrangement known at some schools as “roomcest.” Brown explicitly discourages couples from living together on campus, be they gay or straight. But the University of California, Riverside has never had a problem with a roommate couple breaking up midyear, said James C. Smith, assistant director for residence life.

Most schools introduced the couples option in the past three or four years. So far, relatively few students are taking part. At the University of Pennsylvania, which began offering coed rooms in 2005, about 120 out of 10,400 students took advantage of the option this year.

At UC Riverside, which has approximately 6,000 students in campus housing, about 50 have roommates of the opposite sex. The school has had the option since 2005.

Garcia and Youngdahl live in a house for students with an interest in Russian studies. They said they were already friendly and didn’t think they would be compatible with some of the other people in the house.

“I had just roomed with a boy. I was under the impression at the time that girls were a little bit neater and more quiet,” Youngdahl said. “As it turns out, I don’t see much of a difference from one sex to the other.”

Garcia, 19, admitted: “I’m incredibly messy.”

Parents aren’t necessarily thrilled with boy-girl housing.

Debbie Feldman’s 20-year-old daughter, Samantha, is a sophomore at Oberlin in Ohio and plans to room with her platonic friend Grey Caspro, a straight guy, next year. Feldman said she was shocked when her daughter told her.

“When you have a male and female sharing such close quarters, I think it’s somewhat delusional to think there won’t be sexual tension,” 52-year-old Feldman said. “Maybe this generation feels more comfortable walking around in their underwear. I’m not sure that’s a good thing.”

Still, Feldman said her daughter is partly in college to learn life lessons, and it’s her decision. Samantha said she assured her mom that she thinks of Caspro as a brother.

“I’m really close to him, and I consider him one of my really good friends,” she said. “I really trust him. That trust makes it work.”

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press

Race and Politics

As many of you may know, there has been a storm brewing ever since Obama entered the race for the White House.  Inevetably, race and politics would be brought up.  While constructive criticism about the current state of affairs in regards to racism is always healthy, recently, discussions have become negative and unnecessary.

It is unnecessary simply because in the state that our country is in right now, there is no place for racism.  We are in 2 wars, our country’s economy is in a sour state, the housing market is (or has) crashed, jobs are vaporizing at an ungodly rate, and crime is up.  Our country doesn’t have the time, the luxury, of dwelling in a debate centered around race.  And nor should it ever.

When it comes to electing a President of a great nation, the cards he or she brings to the table should be the only issue that matters.  The constitution says that “all men are created equal.”  As such, race should never be a consideration.  To bring up the issue of race in and of itself is racism.  Here’s why:

By bringing undue attention to Mr. Obama’s race, the media is directing fire at the very fact that he is black.  As beings with intelligence, we can see for ourselves that, yes, Obama is black.  No one needs the media to tell him that.  Racism can be loosely defined as harboring prejudice against another race.  To be honest, everyone exhibits some form of racism.  Even the most un-racist person in the world has racist tendencies.  It is our psychological nature to be prejudiced, maybe not at a race, but at something.  The media has chosen to make race an issue.  In almost every instance where a candidate for office has to defend his or her self, it is the media that first brings allegations to light.  But why?

The media thrives on negativity.  Happy news is not news.  Death, beatings, a bad economy, the war: these are what the media is built to present.  People like Glenn Beck chew out others on national tv daily, mostly on negative issues.  By choosing to start reporting on the fact that Obama is black and whether or not that has anything to do with his electability draws fire to the issue and creates a circularity:  the media first brings up the issue, it simmers, attacks are made, and then the media turns around and asks the public if race is really an issue.  YOU BROUGHT IT UP IN THE FIRST PLACE.

To the media:  be nice and focus on the issues.  We have just 7 more months until a new president is elected.  Drop the race issue and tell us why we should vote for one candidate over the other based solely on their merits.

-this is a response to CNN’s iReport question of the day: Does race matter in politics?