Category Archives: The State Press

Select opinion articles written for the State Press, ASU’s student-run paper, between 2005 and 2007.

Jun 25 0 comments
The State Press

Katrina Donation Ignores Extreme Poverty

Pub­lished in the State Press on Sep­tem­ber 14, 2005.

The pres­i­dent of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, pledged $100,000 dol­lars on behalf of his coun­try for Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina dis­as­ter relief last week — an impres­sive num­ber from a coun­try cur­rently $8 bil­lion in debt.

The con­tri­bu­tion is even more impres­sive when one con­sid­ers a teacher’s annual salary in Afghanistan (which inci­den­tally has one of the low­est lit­er­acy rates in the world) is only $600.

Afghanistan’s Amer­i­can ambas­sador responded to the ges­ture by prais­ing Afghanistan’s “com­pas­sion and gen­eros­ity.” Given the con­sis­tently unmet needs of the Afghani peo­ple, how­ever, per­haps that com­pas­sion and gen­eros­ity is a tad misplaced.

The 53 per­cent of Afghans liv­ing below the poverty line could cer­tainly ben­e­fit from such com­pas­sion and gen­eros­ity, as could the hun­dreds of thou­sands of Afghans dis­placed by bom­bard­ment and war­fare — forces just as dev­as­tat­ing as a hurricane.

That’s not to say the coun­try hasn’t been struck by its fair share of nat­ural disasters.

The U.N. reports that, in the last six years, an earth­quake killed 1000 peo­ple, and dis­as­trous flood­ing fol­lowed a drought affect­ing mil­lions. And to top it off, there are still those pesky social prob­lems — acid burn­ings, rape and the ever-prevalent forced marriages.

So, how can a coun­try pro­vide relief for the dis­as­ters of Afghans when, accord­ing to the U.N., it gen­er­ates less than half as much rev­enue as it spends and is donat­ing $100,000 to aid the rich­est coun­try in the world?

Maybe Karzai fig­ures we’ll be giv­ing it back in no time anyway.

The dona­tion, iron­i­cally made on behalf of the starv­ing Afghan peo­ple, has received some crit­i­cism. The Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Afghan Women’s Asso­ci­a­tion (RAWA) responded to Karzai’s actions on its Web site, stat­ing, “While hun­dreds of thou­sands of Afghans are fac­ing star­va­tion … and Mr. Karzai and his gov­ern­ment fre­quently call for help from other coun­tries, this kind of dona­tion is worth laugh­ing [at].”

But, with the scant amount of media cov­er­age Afghanistan receives, it’s prob­a­bly pretty easy to indulge in the fan­tasy that Afghanistan, after the Tal­iban, is Eden with active landmines.

Human­i­tar­ian orga­ni­za­tions repeat­edly report on the lack of improve­ment in Afghanistan. But the ongo­ing suf­fer­ing of the Afghan peo­ple is too old to be news and too invis­i­ble to be history.

If noth­ing else, Karzai’s dona­tion (whether hypocrisy or a ges­ture of good will) should remind us of our own respon­si­bil­ity to a nation whose fate was irrev­o­ca­bly altered in our name, if not by our own decree.

The num­ber of Afghan civil­ians killed, injured and oth­er­wise affected by U.S. involve­ment in Afghanistan, both before the Taliban’s rise and after its fall, is com­pa­ra­ble to the dev­as­tat­ing effects of a Kat­rina or a tsunami.

So when you make your $10, $50 or $100 con­tri­bu­tion to the Red Cross for Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina relief, send another $20 to the women of RAWA. They’ll use it to buy school sup­plies for about 100 kids. And if you’re really feel­ing gen­er­ous, throw in another five, you know, for food.

Jun 25 0 comments
The State Press

Misunderstanding Sexual Exploitation

Pub­lished in the State Press on Sep­tem­ber 26, 2005.

ASU women have received a lot of press lately — so much so, in fact, the Uni­ver­sity should seri­ously con­sider rec­og­niz­ing their extra­or­di­nary efforts at bring­ing atten­tion to the school.

After all, what other aca­d­e­mic pow­er­house can say it holds the record for hav­ing the most stu­dents fea­tured in Playboy’s Pac-10 col­lege issue? Yale? Nope. Har­vard? Don’t think so.

This is our baby.

Between non­con­sen­sual appear­ances on Web sites such as PalmWalk.com and ambi­tious appear­ances in bikini cal­en­dars and sor­did mag­a­zines, ASU’s women have set a new prece­dent for women’s achieve­ment this fall.

Not only did they earn ASU the title of “the hottest place on earth” but they’ve also made a pow­er­ful state­ment about women’s lib­erty and free­dom of sex­ual expres­sion — and that is, they don’t know the mean­ing of either.

There is a big dif­fer­ence between “sex­ual expres­sion” and sex­ual exploita­tion, though the women of ASU (and the peo­ple who like to look at them) duti­fully fail to rec­og­nize this.

It is pos­si­ble they haven’t had the oppor­tu­nity to notice the dif­fer­ence. In the media frenzy that always accom­pa­nies the debate over women’s bod­ies, it seems that only the wrong ques­tions are ever asked.

In the whole Palm Walk deba­cle, for exam­ple, at issue was the legal­ity of post­ing pic­tures of women on the Inter­net with­out their per­mis­sion — not nec­es­sar­ily that women’s bod­ies were being used for the self­ish and uneth­i­cal enter­tain­ment of col­lege stu­dents with too much time on their hands.

The cre­ator of the site, mar­ket­ing senior Thomas McCarthy, even told The State Press last week that “from a util­i­tar­ian [sic] per­spec­tive … PalmWalk.com is morally just.”

For those who haven’t taken Phi­los­o­phy 101, util­i­tar­i­an­ism is the idea that “all action should be directed toward achiev­ing the great­est hap­pi­ness for the great­est num­ber of people.”

So, in McCarthy’s head, it seems like tak­ing pho­tographs of women (with or with­out their per­mis­sion), then post­ing them online next to the words “fork me,” and finally rat­ing them accord­ing to their attrac­tive­ness is morally just because it is brings the great­est hap­pi­ness to the great­est num­ber of people.

Here’s a rel­e­vant ques­tion no one’s asked: Does it bring greater hap­pi­ness to the women pho­tographed or men who have never had to worry about the risks of wear­ing a skirt?

Either way, it brings spec­tac­u­lar atten­tion to ASU. And many stu­dents seem to feel that’s a good thing. After all, any­thing that brings atten­tion to the school will help it make money, whether that’s women pos­ing next to ham­burger coupons in the Tempe12 bikini cal­en­dar or with paint for clothes in Playboy.

And if that’s the case, does that make Pres­i­dent Crow their pimp?

More unset­tling than the idea of a uni­ver­sity prof­it­ing from the mis­use of its stu­dents’ images, how­ever, is the fact that the women pos­ing for these pub­li­ca­tions seem obliv­i­ous to the absur­dity of their situation.

Rachelle Pfeifer, who posed for the Tempe12 cal­en­dar, told The State Press last week that the calendar’s mod­els were not selected “based on looks, but how you present yourself.”

What she didn’t men­tion was that the women “pre­sented” them­selves at pool par­ties that served as “open cast­ing calls,” as the cre­ators of Tempe12 pro­mo­tions told The State Press.

Nev­er­the­less, such pub­li­ca­tions are mostly accepted and gen­er­ally enjoyed — jus­ti­fied by the idea that par­tic­i­pat­ing mod­els are will­ing and free.

So why do they do it? Money?

No, that’s for the men who snap the pho­tos and print the pages.

Fame?

Nope. For every Pam Ander­son, there’s a uni­ver­sity full of rejects.

Of course, there’s the age-old idea that only inse­cure women need that kind of val­i­da­tion. But these days, inse­cu­rity has got­ten so pretty, it’s no longer rec­og­niz­able anyway.

Frankly, nobody cares what’s in it for women, why women do it or even who these women are. Men who ques­tion the sys­tem aren’t men, and women who do are jealous.

Maybe that’s why only the wrong ques­tions are asked.

But what­ever the rea­son, one thing should be made clear. How­ever you wish to exploit your­self or oth­ers, please leave ASU out of it.

Con­trary to pop­u­lar belief, the major­ity of stu­dents don’t pose for bikini cal­en­dars or take creepy pic­tures of pre­oc­cu­pied women. And when these stu­dents get their engi­neer­ing, busi­ness or lib­eral arts degrees, they don’t want their diplo­mas inscribed with the words “check out Miss July.”

Jun 25 0 comments
The State Press

Beyond Surface Immigration Issues

Pub­lished in the State Press on Novem­ber 28, 2005.

With Pres­i­dent Bush in town to dis­cuss his plan to curb ille­gal immi­gra­tion, per­haps the time is right to press him on bor­der issues of a dif­fer­ent kind — like how the U.S. is respon­si­ble for fuel­ing the ille­gal immi­gra­tion it’s work­ing so hard to control.

While Bush reclines at the Bilt­more for a day, pon­der­ing an issue law­mak­ers can’t agree on, hun­dreds of thou­sands of Mex­i­cans will end shifts in bor­der sweat­shops owned by For­tune 500 com­pa­nies (accord­ing to Amnesty and Cor­p­watch), with a few dol­lars pay to show for it.

One might expect that the cor­po­ra­tions con­trol­ling Amer­ica would bring some progress to Mex­ico. But instead, they bring, at best, count­less under­paid jobs and, at worst, a dan­ger­ous atmos­phere of hos­til­ity against women.

In Juarez, Mex­ico, for exam­ple, over 300 young women and girls have been raped, tor­tured and mur­dered on their way to and from work at these fac­to­ries. Although the­o­ries abound, no one really knows who is respon­si­ble for these crimes, which remain largely unin­ves­ti­gated despite pleas and protests from griev­ing families.

The 80 For­tune 500 com­pa­nies that run fac­to­ries in Juarez are not directly respon­si­ble for rap­ing and muti­lat­ing these hun­dreds of women. But they are respon­si­ble for cre­at­ing an envi­ron­ment that fos­ters such vicious crimes.

Their prac­tice of hir­ing female work­ers who can be paid less than men has rede­fined mas­culin­ity in Juarez. It’s a city where men, tra­di­tion­ally the bread­win­ners, are largely unem­ployed. When a teenage girl is sud­denly respon­si­ble for sup­port­ing her fam­ily in an intensely patri­ar­chal soci­ety, she risks gar­ner­ing the hos­til­ity of men in her com­mu­nity. Her fem­i­nin­ity and sex­u­al­ity come into question.

Though this is a byprod­uct of indus­tri­al­iza­tion and not exclu­sively the fault of American-run fac­to­ries, these busi­nesses still have a respon­si­bil­ity to pro­tect their female workers.

Instead, most of these fac­to­ries run 24 hours a day, mean­ing that women who don’t earn enough to take a cab must walk or hitch­hike to work in the dark. Only Alcoa, a com­pany that pro­duces alu­minum, pro­vides mon­i­tored trans­porta­tion for its work­ers, accord­ing to Amnesty International.

Appar­ently, most of these com­pa­nies don’t feel the need to pro­tect their work­ers in the same way. The pres­i­dent of Elec­tro­com­po­nentes de Mex­ico, which pro­duces parts for Gen­eral Elec­tric, even told Mex­i­can Labor News and Analy­sis that they “have been con­sis­tent with the other plants in our area as far as offer­ing com­pet­i­tive wages and ben­e­fits, we offer sports teams and that sort of thing. We feel we treat our employ­ees very well.”

But not well enough to ensure safe trans­porta­tion for Irma Ros­ales, a 13-year-old employee who was raped and suf­fo­cated with a plas­tic bag on her way home from work.

Under such con­di­tions, who wouldn’t want to cross the bor­der to safely make $5.15 an hour instead of risk­ing one’s life to earn $4 a day?

Although Mexico’s pres­i­dent, Vicente Fox, has done lit­tle to bring the per­pe­tra­tors of these crimes to jus­tice, it isn’t beyond the scope of Pres­i­dent Bush or local law­mak­ers. In fact, Cal­i­for­nia Rep. Hilda Solis and New Mex­ico Sen. Jeff Binga­man intro­duced a House and Sen­ate con­cur­rent res­o­lu­tion express­ing con­gres­sional con­cern and propos­ing a set of actions to deal with the feminicide.

With the pres­i­dent in town and bring­ing national atten­tion to local bor­der issues, it is the per­fect time to write to local con­gres­sional rep­re­sen­ta­tives urg­ing them to cospon­sor the resolution.

And if you attend any of the numer­ous protests staged today, speak against the giant cor­po­ra­tions who breed the causes of ille­gal immi­gra­tion: poverty, poor qual­ity of life and unsafe communities.

Jun 25 0 comments
The State Press

People still don’t understand Roe v. Wade 34 years later

Pub­lished in the State Press on Tues­day, Jan­u­ary 23, 2007

With yes­ter­day mark­ing the 34th anniver­sary of Roe v. Wade, the ground­break­ing judi­cial opin­ion that changed the land­scape of women’s repro­duc­tive rights in Amer­ica, many pop­u­lar areas of protest prob­a­bly found their own land­scape slightly changed: col­ored with pro-choicers loudly cel­e­brat­ing a land­mark deci­sion, and lit­tered with equally ide­al­is­tic pro-lifers hiss­ing provoca­tive words like “baby killer” in their con­fet­tied wake.

But amid all of this self-righteous clamor, one word in par­tic­u­lar will repeat­edly arise as the cen­ter of all our abor­tion debates this week: “per­son­hood,” that favorite fall­back of all pro-lifers, which will surely be squawked ad nau­seam by either side — a cacoph­ony as obnox­ious, inces­sant and point­less as the fake bird sounds on Mill Avenue.

While reli­gious ide­ol­ogy com­pels the pro-life crowd to argue that fetuses, as cit­i­zens, have a right to life, the pro-life crowd com­pels pro-choicers to argue that fetuses aren’t people.

This is fol­lowed by a vol­ley of pseudo-scientific facts cou­pled with inane metaphors about life and free­dom that is, at the very least, enter­tain­ing to the passers-by but, ulti­mately, a very poor use of Hay­den Lawn.

It’s hard to believe that after 34 years, peo­ple are still hung up on an argu­ment that the Supreme Court itself decided was irrel­e­vant at the time of their land­mark deci­sion way back in 1973.

But as often as debaters talk about the case, whether tout­ing or crit­i­ciz­ing it, few seem to know very much about the par­tic­u­lars of the judi­cial decision.

The Supreme Court Jus­tices didn’t over­look the issue of per­son­hood when they made their deci­sion. Among other things, they were con­cerned about when a life begins, and whether fetuses have, or should have rights.

But ulti­mately they decided that they “need not resolve the dif­fi­cult ques­tion of when life begins” because they felt it wasn’t their place to spec­u­late on some­thing that doc­tors, philoso­phers and the­olo­gians couldn’t agree upon.

That’s right – the flus­tered folks fac­ing off on Hay­den Lawn aren’t the only ones who can’t agree on this issue — far more edu­cated and intel­li­gent peo­ple can’t either.

The jus­tices even­tu­ally came to the con­clu­sion that “the unborn have never been rec­og­nized in the law as per­sons in the legal sense” and there­fore, would not be con­sid­ered as such just because leg­is­la­tors favor­ing a par­tic­u­lar the­ory of life try to over­ride a woman’s repro­duc­tive rights.

So why is there still so much focus on “per­son­hood,” and not on the other count­less (and more valid) points of dis­agree­ment regard­ing the abor­tion debate?

Because, despite the fact that every­one seems to have an opin­ion on abor­tion (formed care­fully and thought­fully, no doubt, through many years of study and delib­er­a­tion), few know very much about it: its prac­tice, its his­tory, its con­se­quences or its ben­e­fits, and espe­cially its legislation.

Per­son­hood is an easy argu­ment for the igno­rant to adopt because there is no answer to it. And, cir­cu­lar debates are a great way to avoid talk­ing about more tan­gi­ble issues, like the dis­as­trous fail­ure of abstinence-only pro­grams in schools, the pro-life movement’s hos­tile war on sex (both safe and non), and the younger pro-choice generation’s fail­ure to artic­u­late its own stance.

Then again, it’s rarely ever been a match of wits as these two groups duke it out for pos­ses­sion of the Amer­i­can woman’s body — the pro-lifers resort­ing to ugly pic­tures of allegedly aborted fetuses and the pro-choicers stick­ing to the tried and true tra­di­tion of catchy picket-line chants, such as the ever clever “Keep your rosaries / off my ovaries!”

It would be refresh­ing if, after 34 years, both sides dropped the gim­micks and instead focused their cre­ativ­ity and pas­sion into edu­cat­ing the pub­lic about the issue at hand — and, in doing so, actu­ally learn a lit­tle some­thing them­selves about the issue that they spend so much time argu­ing about.