As one of the steering committee members of the Israel@60 week at MIT, I was perplexed and bothered by the placement of a blatantly anti-Israel ad in the Tuesday, May 13 edition of The Tech. The events we coordinated were designed to celebrate Israeli culture and the contributions of Israeli society with a general good will toward sections of the student demographic that may share divergent attitudes toward Israel. The week was explicitly non-political, non-propagandistic, and strictly NOT anti-Palestinian/Arab.

Despite creating a program designed to be inclusive and to open dialogue within the MIT community, we are instead rebuffed by an ad indiscriminately designed to demonize Israel and Jewish people.

It would require some pages of The Tech to rectify the factual misrepresentation and de-contextualizations of the claims in the ad, which my letter will not seek to accomplish. I shall suffice to note that Israeli security, history, and the status of the Occupied Territories are complex issues, on which the interested reader should seek to inform himself/herself by reading books and articles from all points of view.

With regret, I call on students responsible for the ad to approach such political and historical issues with greater open-mindedness and sensitivity in the future.

I am writing on behalf of the Mass. Ave. crossing student body. For about two months now we have been taking our life in our hands crossing at Amherst St. I’m careful and yet have narrowly avoided being hit numerous times. In fact, late at night I have even seen an SUV full of large guys yelling at a pedestrian for being in the crosswalk.

Installing a little pair of “flappy” (rhymes with crappy) signs in the middle of the road was not sufficient, especially given the high speed of cars leaving the bridge and the volume of students crossing. (I drive too and the signs are very hard to see until too late.) Nor do I accept “construction” and “delays” as an excuse. Construction-wise Cambridge is a perpetual disaster zone — four years of yellow barrels, missing crossing lights, etc., along Mass. Ave. Temporary solutions, such as large flashing lights or even a police crossing guard, do exist and should have been implemented. And not just at Albany street but at all the randomly failed or disconnected crossing lights along Mass. Ave. This should be someone’s particular job.

On the morning of May 23, after another near miss, I approached the duty officer — who can best be described as “hanging out” with the construction crew — and asked him to step into the street and help students cross. His response was that the crosswalk was “closed” since the lights were out and no lines were painted. I pointed out that it had been this way for two months and asked him to radio for assistance. His mature response was to swear at me and then accuse me of yelling at him. Apparently, the big burly construction workers need more protection than puny pedestrians. What a perfect way to sum up Cambridge’s approach to public safety! (As an aside, when I mentioned this to a foreign national colleague, his response was, it would not be in my best interest to speak to a cop that way. Telling.)

I’m willing to bet that this particular problem will be “fixed” rapidly, however Cambridge needs to significantly and immediately improve their treatment of the bipedal population, integrating them into every construction plan, not just as an afterthought when someone complains.

MIT needs to reinvent the way it solicits and uses student input.

This past year as Undergraduate Association president, I experienced a broad mix of student victories, challenges, and disappointments. During my time in office, I gained great insight into the tremendous opportunities that we have to improve the student experience and strengthen our MIT community.

This year was filled with dozens of great successes. When I took office last spring, Boston Daytime SafeRide had lost a significant amount of outside funding. By gathering information, crunching numbers, gaining student support, and drafting a proposal, the UA was able to emphasize the importance of this service to senior administrators who agreed to provide the necessary additional funding.

Such success stories repeated themselves throughout the year: We drafted legislation and lobbied administrators to ensure W1, the new undergraduate dormitory, receives a complete renovation as opposed to a short-term fix; we partnered with administrators to form the Blue Ribbon Committee on Dining; and we collaborated with administrators to allow Next House residents to participate in the housing adjustment lottery like most other dormitories. In each of these cases, strong relationships with key administrators were crucial to our success.

Though this year has seen tremendous success in many areas, there were a number of disappointments that suggest there is room for improvement. Our most frustrating concern has been with the lack of coordination in addressing the concerns we’ve raised about dining.

After receiving mixed signals and hearing inconsistent statements about the future of dining and the process for improving dining, the UA drafted numerous written requests to senior administrators inviting them to join us for a candid conversation to sort out our confusion. Though discussions with some administrators did alleviate some of our concerns, there was never a coordinated discussion with all the stakeholders that resolved the confusion which remains today.

In addition to the dining confusion, the infrequent opportunity for broad collaboration complicated a major UA initiative to align the fall Career Fair with an Institute holiday.

As a result of these specific disappointments, and many others, there is a strong desire within the UA to better represent student interests on a broader range of issues. Strategic topics that have typically been outside the arena of student involvement, such as undergraduate enrollment, financial aid, responsible investment, deferred maintenance, and capital projects have a tremendous impact on the quality of student life at MIT.

Some of the most heated controversies on campus focus on these strategic decisions. Most prominently, the lack of student involvement in dormitory decisions has led to controversy about the transitions of both Ashdown House and Green Hall from graduate to undergraduate dormitories.

These concerns all come at a time when MIT is struggling to address issues of student support that are complicated by external influences. MIT continues to explore how to deal with Recording Industry Association of America lawsuits, how to balance the valuable yet risky tradition of hacking, and how to interact with the press when commenting on student behavior. Ensuring that student perspective is accurately considered in the decision-making process requires a solution on two fronts.

First, it is imperative that the student government take its responsibility to represent students seriously. If the administration cannot be confident that the student leaders are accurately representing the views of the student body, it follows that they would not engage the student government.

The responsibility to be engaged and informed cannot rest simply in the hands of the UA President, but must extend down to every Senator, every committee member, and each individual student. It is vital that UA members do a better job reaching out to their constituents and that all students be more proactive about providing feedback to the UA.

To help shift the student culture to a more representative one, the UA should be more proactive about publicity, both in The Tech and on the UA Web site (which desperately needs improvement). Furthermore, the UA should make every effort to coordinate with other student governments on campus, ranging from the Graduate Student Council to the Dormitory Council to the IFC to Panhel. Such a cultural shift towards a more representative and cooperative student governance will take time, but it requires a concerted effort on the part of the UA, as well as patience and involvement from the rest of the student body.

In addition to this internal reform, a second necessity that will ensure students are better represented is for the Institute to be more proactive about involving students in decision-making. While it is clear to everyone that students should not have the authority to run the Institute alone, it is also clear that the challenges our community faced this year require us to make changes.

MIT must think about how it collaborates with student government, how it involves students in strategic planning, and how it remains supportive of its student community in the face of unexpected influences from the outside. This is not an easy problem to solve.

A long-term solution has nothing to do with committees, process, or procedure. Rather, it requires a fundamental shift in administrative culture so that all members of the MIT community are aware of the importance their work has on the student body and take the initiative, regardless of any explicit regulation, to reach out to students when an important issue emerges. As with student government, this type of cultural shift among the administration will take time, but it is vital to the success of the Institute.

The good news is that both students and administrators are committed to making these improvements. This semester marked a major step towards achieving these difficult cultural shifts.

In an article for the March/April issue of the Faculty Newsletter, Chancellor Philip L. Clay PhD ’75, Vice President Kirk D. Kolenbrander, Graduate Student Council President Leeland B. Ekstrom, and I wrote about our concerns and our commitment to improving MIT by “strengthening the framework for students’ role in decision-making.” We charted a path forward and established the Task Force on Student Engagement.

This group has already met twice and has been charged with facilitating student-administrative communications and developing a set of principles for student involvement in Institute decision-making. I am excited to see that MIT is serious about exploring methods to strengthen our community.

In addition to the work of this task force, I would suggest the administration consider two other methods to better involve the student body and gather student input.

First, I have been thrilled with my interactions with President Susan Hockfield, but wish that there were a greater opportunity to interact with her. Everyone understands that the president’s time is precious, but more regular communication between the president and student advocates could have alleviated many of the issues we’ve dealt with before they turned into larger ordeals. Indeed, if coordinated carefully, such meetings could be one of the best ways to provide the president with consistent feedback from the student body.

Additionally, I would encourage the administration to consider lifting what appears to be a veil of secrecy to most students. Often we are confused by how decisions get made. Regardless of the outcome, students will always feel more comfortable with a decision if they feel like they understand the decision, their perspective was heard, and they were involved in the planning. Many Institute committees operate with no student involvement. Though there are often good reasons for this, there should also be better mechanisms for bringing the student perspective to those bodies when an important student concern emerges. Academic Council, the Enrollment Management Group, the Building Committee, and the Committee for the Review of Space Planning are only some examples of these decision-making “black boxes.”

We have an incredible opportunity to start fresh next fall by bringing students, faculty, and administrators together to reshape how the Institute does business and address fundamental issues of trust that have strained our community. Paramount in all of these discussions must be candid communication and a recognition across all parties that we are in this together to serve and improve MIT.

During my time in office, I have been inspired by the commitment of all members of the MIT community to take advantage of opportunities to create a stronger Institute for the future. Reinventing student input will take time, but it is an important challenge uniquely fitting for MIT’s innovative minds. I am excited to see how MIT will engineer its future.

Martin F. Holmes ’08 was the president of the Undergraduate Association for the 2007–2008 academic year.

It is well-known that MIT is unique in its path-shaping commitment to the pursuit of knowledge and in the translation of cutting-edge research into the practical realm. Less well-known is that MIT is unique, compared to other major universities, in having graduate students make up a significant majority of our 10,000-strong student body.

As the central representative body of more than 6,000 individuals, each with an accomplished past and a promising future, the MIT Graduate Student Council is the most powerful student group at MIT. The GSC provides essential programs and services that can earn an invaluable place in the life, learning, and development of MIT graduate students and in the tradition of MIT as an institution.

With the inauguration of its new government in early May, the GSC looks ahead to the next year with a broad vision of innovation. I would like to take this opportunity to discuss the GSC’s new initiatives and explain the breadth of our activities.

The GSC is the voice of graduate students to the MIT administration.

By taking a data-driven approach to advocacy, the GSC identifies the needs and desires of graduate students in an objective, principled manner. In our Cost of Living Survey, we determined that most graduate students do not have access to dental insurance. In a year-long effort, the GSC has achieved a plan of basic diagnostic and preventative dental care for graduate students which will be available for subscription in the fall.

Using data from the same survey, the GSC makes the annual case for increasing graduate student stipends to match the increase in the cost of living. For the upcoming year, stipends will increase by 3.5 percent, a portion of which is intended to cover the cost of the dental plan.

In addition, the GSC consistently tackles issues of transportation, housing, rents, and fees. This year, we have worked to change the route of the Cambridge EZ Shuttle so that it provides better service for on-campus students.

The GSC’s relationship with the administration is most often a collaborative one, but sometimes processes break down. In the case of NW35 as well as the conversion of Green Hall to an undergraduate dorm, the administration failed to use these agreed-upon channels to solicit student and faculty input.

To ensure that the administration uses the appropriate channels for soliciting student and faculty input and to explore the issue of student engagement more generally, the GSC and the Undergraduate Association have worked with administrators and faculty to form a new Task Force on Student Engagement, composed of senior administrators and student and faculty leaders. It is a priority of the GSC to make this new body an effective tool for amplifying the voice of graduate students and for safeguarding against what a senior administrator recently referred to as her team’s “dropped passes.”

As for more specific priorities in the realm of advocacy, we will see through the implementation of the basic dental plan, and use it to collect data to make the case for more comprehensive coverage for graduate students. We will work with MIT Medical to increase the effectiveness of health care screening and support at MIT.

With the opening of NW35, the GSC will work with MIT to make sure transportation remains smooth and to explore options for a graduate dining program. At the same time, we will not lose focus on the needs of students living in Tang, Westgate, and Eastgate — particularly on the needs of married students and parents — nor on the unique needs of students living off-campus.

This year, we also look to form a strong partnership with the new Dean for Student Life and to make sure he or she understands the needs and desires of graduate students.

The GSC provides opportunities for intellectual and social interaction between MIT graduate students. Unlike the Institute-run undergraduate Orientation, the GSC organizes and executes its own annual graduate Orientation. Continuing graduate students are welcome at Orientation events, and interactions with incoming students helps to weave a unified fabric of graduate students.

New to this year’s Graduate Orientation is a Lab Open House during which students can explore labs from neighboring departments. In addition, this year we will place a greater emphasis on connecting incoming Sloan students with students from the other Schools.

Beyond Orientation, the GSC administers the Funding Board, a source of financial support for graduate students groups on campus, and in this way promotes the development of a vibrant cultural, academic, and interest-oriented community of graduate students.

Throughout the year, the GSC puts on events that bring students together. Signature events include the Grad Gala, the Ski Trip, the Acoustic BBQ, a range of cultural outings, organized trips to sports games and excursions to various nearby attractions (F1 go-cart racing, Foxwoods casino, Six Flags, and many more).

In addition, the Muddy Charles Pub provides an environment that promotes mingling and mixing between the departments and Schools.

A highly successful monthly series, the Two Dollar Dinners, brings students together for an inexpensive meal and the opportunity for boundary-less social interaction. This year, we will expand and adapt this program to the expanding NW Corridor.

The GSC aims to provide something for everyone, but also recognizes that different people have a different sense of what is fun. We encourage students to get involved in developing their own programming and provide financial incentive for groups to collaborate on joint events.

At the same time, a priority this year is to continue to develop ways to build graduate community. This development will take multiple forms — expanded cultural and academic events, a focus on community involvement and volunteerism, and sustained attention to current events of social and political importance.

An area of focus for the university is increasing diversity and minority recruitment, and the GSC leadership shares this goal. We will work with the Office of the Dean for Graduate Education to improve recruitment efforts. We will expand the scope and effectiveness of programs for education and outreach on diversity, particularly in conjunction with the Institute-wide Diversity Congress set to take place this fall.

This year, we will convene a Task Force on Alumni Relations to begin the multi-year process of developing a coordinated program of alumni relations. It is crucial to think of graduate community as involving not just current graduate students, but also graduate student alumni. This will be a unique chance to expand the ties, communications, and mentorship opportunities between students and alumni.

In addition, this year we will implement a Graduate Gift campaign (similar to a Senior Class Gift) to fundraise for a cause that directly benefits graduate students, such as the Emergency Dental Fund or graduate fellowships.

The GSC provides a range of services to support career development and decision-making.

Along with the Senior Class Council and SWE, the GSC organizes the MIT Career Fair each September. This unique event brings in hundreds of companies to MIT and is fundamental to constructing and promoting the MIT brand to industry.

Panels and workshops on academic careers are a staple of the summer months, and workshops on alternative careers are offered throughout the fall. Collaborations with the MIT Careers Office to bring in speakers throughout the year provide additional opportunities for networking and development.

For incoming international students, the Airport Shuttle and International Mentorship Program provide basic means of support, in addition to the important services of the ISO.

For students unable to secure funding for conference travel from their advisors or departments, the GSC administers a Travel Grant program. New last year was a similar program for Athletics and Performing Arts, which boasted applications totaling an order of magnitude larger than the funds available for allocation.

Looking to the year ahead, the GSC plans to initiate several programs to provide augmented opportunities for growth and development.

A dissertation bootcamp, to be held in conjunction with the Writing Center, will help provide students a little kick to get their thesis moving and out the door.

A more substantial project on the docket for this year is to develop a single seminar calendar for all departments and centers which would unify the disparate ways that these seminars are advertised. Like the Lab Open House discussed earlier, this project serves to address the demands of a multidisciplinary MIT.

We are committed to promoting the development of graduate student leaders at MIT, not just in the GSC.

This effort has multiple goals. For one, increasing student involvement makes for a more vibrant graduate community. To this end, the GSC will work with departments that do not currently have an organized graduate student association to assess the need and potential advantages for creating such a structure.

We will also strengthen our programs that bring together current student leaders in a setting that fosters potential collaborations between groups. The whole really is greater than the sum of its parts.

The GSC also serves as a central means for communicating with the graduate student body — through the GSC Anno mailing list, the GSC Web site, and the Graduate Student News magazine.

Motivated by the mission of the MIT Energy Initiative and the international focus on climate change issues, the GSC also is exploring way to reduce its own carbon footprint. One way is by cutting down the printing and mailing of the GSN so that at most one issue is sent to any given apartment or office. We are exploring other opportunities to decrease our environmental impact, including ways to motivate reductions in energy consumption in graduate dorms, which would also have the net effect of lowering rents.

The strength of the GSC lies in its ability to ascertain and represent the wide range of interests of the diverse MIT graduate student body. I have tremendous enthusiasm for the year ahead. There is much that we can accomplish together.

Oaz Nir G is the GSC President for the 2008–2009 academic year.

Given the endless attention in the past few issues to China’s human rights abuses as the summer Olympics in Beijing approach, I thought this photograph (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3128202.stm) found in a German archive could spark further discussion about possible parallels between China today and Nazi Germany.

The photograph, found in a German archive, is of the English national football team giving the Nazi salute in Berlin’s Olympic Stadium on May 14, 1938. The picture was published widely in Britain amidst the recent controversy in the UK over the capitulation of the British Olympic Committee to China’s demand that British athletes sign a pledge promising not to speak about China’s human rights record.

While the focus of the recent protests has been on the Tibetans, whose plight is truly pitiable, there are others who have grievances against China — Uyghur Muslims whose marriages and unauthorized pregnancies are forcibly terminated. Forced harvesting of organs from political prisoners and others in state custody has also occurred for a long time. After many years of denial, China took steps to curb the forced organ harvesting only when the impending Olympics intensified international scrutiny of its human rights abuses.

Additionally, according to a recent Pentagon report, China has around 1000 missiles pointed at Taiwan, whose inhabitants they claim as their brethren, an assertion bizarrely incongruous with their aggressive military posture. And who can forget the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, immortalized in that photograph of a man standing in front of a tank?

Few educated in China’s schools will know anything about that incident.

Then there are the forced abortions and infanticide stemming from China’s one-child policy. Chinese oil money is also prolonging the plight of Darfurians.

Many of these problems cannot be dismissed as propagandistic anachronisms — they are happening now or have happened recently. Tibet is merely one item in a long list of topics which merit further exploration, particularly for the benefit of our Chinese student friends. There is much to learn from the diligent smuggling out of China by foreign media of facts and history which the Communist government has long suppressed inside their borders.

Technical advancement, economic growth, intellectual prowess, and general improvement in standard of living are among the material things cited as evidence of progress in China, in the numerous letters written to The Tech.

No one denies the remarkably quick and prodigious rise in China’s economic prosperity. But material things have no inherent moral value. Having lots of money, or being really smart, does not necessarily make you a good person. Money is no measure of virtue. In particular, Fei Chen’s letter calls access to education, medical care and food “basic human rights.” However, there is no mention of what most others consider to be human rights — freedom of the press, of religion, the right to speedy and fair trials, to representative government.

Can Christians in China preach the second coming of the Christ? Can Catholics openly avow the pope as the vicar of Christ on Earth and the leader of a spiritual realm beyond the reach of any temporal ruler? Can members of the Falun Gong sect freely advocate and practice their beliefs? Can the media talk candidly about Tibet or Tiananmen Square? Are those charged with crimes tried in the courts of an independent and transparent judiciary, and within a short time of being detained? Are confessions obtained without torture and without the threat of harsher punishment? Are serious opposition parties permitted to organize? Man is more than an economic being — he is a spiritual creature with spiritual needs which only freedom can satisfy.

No amount of material wealth can fill China’s gaping moral deficit.

Such criticisms are directed not at the Chinese people, but at the Chinese government.

The distinction between a people and its government may not be readily comprehended by those who grew up in as fervently nationalistic a society as the Chinese. We make that distinction because an unelected government cannot truly reflect the will and the sentiment of those governed. As a contrasting example, even though we Americans are ultimately responsible for the composition of our government via the ballot box, we are comfortable reproaching our government. That’s why some find puzzling the backlash of the Chinese students to criticism of a government which they don’t even get to choose.

To be sure, there are elections in China, just as there were in the Soviet Union, and in Iraq under Saddam Hussein. One must look past the window-dressing and see that the real power in China is still held by one party. No serious opposition to the Communist Party is allowed to organize and to enter the political process.

Fei Chen writes that the political cartoon offends the dignity of Chinese students. Undoubtedly, their pride is offended. However, no cartoon can debase the dignity of the Chinese people to the depth the Communist government has. What’s more denigrating — a silly drawing, or being forced to abort your second child? Far from trying to ridicule Chinese people, the cartoon is attempting to shed light on the indignities to which the Chinese government subjects its own people.

While we should heed Chen’s suggestion to learn how Chinese history influences the way the Chinese students react to the cartoon, they should learn how political cartoons are used in our culture to convey political messages and social commentary, often more effectively than prose. The very irreverence of the cartoons, and the offense we imagine they must cause to those lampooned in the cartoons, are what make them so effective, endearing, and enduring — they have been a mainstay of American political discourse since colonial times, and are here to stay. That one cartoon was able to trigger so much dialogue in the pages of The Tech illustrates their power.

Mr. Lin, as a big American Idol and Seacrest fan, I can’t help but to point out that you yourself have a low talent-success quotient based on your recent article (“Squid vs. Whale”, May 9).

As an editor, you really should have been able to come up with a more informative, enlightening, and objective article about the subject. You also tended to contradict yourself, especially when you wrote that you didn’t feel that Seacrest was worth getting worked up about, and yet you were clearly worked up about him enough to come up with a 700-word article which, sadly, was completely devoid of any fact-based theory about the subject.

Still, thank you for proving that when it comes to Ryan Seacrest, people who go so far as to belittle him from high atop their mountain of misplaced superiority only end up proving that as talentless as they consider him, he manages to call their own credibility and “talent” into question to discerning readers like myself.

The Inter-Fraternity Council recruitment rules this year include mandatory use of the Clearinghouse system.

Clearinghouse is an online system that fraternities use to track freshmen through Rush week. Whenever a freshman goes to a fraternity event his name is entered into a Web site. Other fraternities can go to the Web site and search for freshmen; they can see what event any particular freshmen is attending and view what events that person has been to that week.

Fraternities collude to keep tabs on freshmen and record their movements; Clearinghouse is a cooperative spying network.

When the modern Clearinghouse system was introduced in 2005, freshmen likened it to “Big Brother” (see “Clearinghouse Worth Missing”, September 13, 2005 in The Tech). This negative response might be why freshmen are now deliberately kept in the dark about Clearinghouse. In Rush 2005, Clearinghouse computers were required to be at the front entrance of each fraternity and freshmen could see that they were being entered into the system; the IFC has since become wiser and last year fraternities were encouraged to keep their Clearinghouse maintenance hidden in a back room. Despite this, all freshmen are entered by default into a system they do not even know exists — and they have to proactively request to be withdrawn if they so choose.

The Inter-Fraternity Council has made several excuses for Clearinghouse. They have claimed that freshmen need to be tracked for liability purposes — but only men are entered into the system, not women attending fraternity rush events. Perhaps the IFC believes that no one will care if an accident happens to a woman. They have argued that the IFC needs a way to make sure freshmen are brought back from trips on time — which does not explain why the names of freshmen going on these trips should be accessible to other fraternities and not to IFC executives only.

No excuse offered stands up to scrutiny. At IFC meetings this term, fraternities have finally been willing to admit it: the purpose of Clearinghouse is to spy. Fraternities use Clearinghouse to see which freshmen are being courted by other houses so that they can target those freshmen — or abandon them. So don’t worry freshmen: it’s all for your own good.

We, at the Number Six Club, think that spying is simply unethical — and we are not the only IFC member to think so. We certainly never intend to use the data we have access to. We also do not want to help enable the spying that goes on. This term we informed the IFC that we will not sign any rules that force us to spy on freshmen. The response: a motion is now going before the IFC that any fraternity that fails to agree to all of the rules including Clearinghouse will be banned from recruitment during Rush week.

If a fraternity wants to keep track of who has been to their house that is their privilege. If a fraternity wants to share that information with other fraternities, no one has the right to stop them. However no fraternity has the authority to coerce others into spying for them.

Ana-Maria A. Piso ’10 is the President of the Number Six Club. M. Tom Kennedy ’09 is a former President and Rush Chair of the Number Six Club. This column is submitted on behalf of the Members of Number Six.

Dear Noah and Mike:

Congratulations on your victory! Your candidacy has sparked tremendous interest: Voter turnout was up by 13 percent this year, with 2,088 votes cast. Over half of the student body voted.

You will lead a student population that is far more engaged than the one that we saw when we arrived at MIT four years ago. Then, the UA was a mere blip on most students’ radar screens (the radar screens of those students who actually knew that the UA existed). It was viewed with suspicion at best and was more often ridiculed as irrelevant.

Today, because of a series of high-profile incidents that sharpened tensions between administrators and students, as well as — we would like to think — proactive efforts on our part, the situation is quite different.

The most important members of the administration know that student engagement is at the top of the UA’s priorities, as do the most influential members of the faculty and the Corporation. We have ended our time in office by establishing and constituting the Task Force on Student Engagement, a group whose recommendations are likely to be taken very seriously in future years.

This task force will not only allow you and the UA to make key reforms in specific areas (for example, dining); it will also allow you to introduce a student voice in areas where it has yet to be consulted.

These are ambitious objectives. Luckily, you will have the privilege of working with an unusually strong set of Senate and Executive officers. Furthermore, your administration may well be the first in memory to experience strong relations with the Dormitory Council, the Interfraternity Council, and the Panhellenic Council.

It is difficult to imagine a better set of circumstances to inherit.

Now that we are on our way out, we thought that we might pass on some advice:

When we came into office, we were so eager to demonstrate concrete progress that we undertook several scattered initiatives without establishing a broad framework in which they could or should occur — student engagement is precisely that framework. Stay focused on high-level, strategic priorities, delegating specific projects to Senators and your committee chairs.

Senators are the UA’s most public face. If they do not feel invested in the organization, the UA will likely be perceived as ineffectual even if it is registering many accomplishments. In our time here, we have seen many individuals who came to Senate with incredible ideas and energy only to grow frustrated with its bureaucracy and inefficiency.

Remember the three C’s: communication, communication, and communication. More often than not, poor (or, in far too many cases, absent) communication is at the root of the UA’s problems.

We have many reasons to be frustrated with the administration. However, we share some of the burden for moving forward. We need to do a better job of understanding administrative perspectives in good faith and communicating our own perspectives without adopting a presumptuous tone.

Administrators have told us that they do not share their personal viewpoints because they are afraid that students will misquote them, initiate rumors, or use those statements as a basis for criticizing the administration; there is certainly some truth to this claim. That being said, it is difficult to redress this state of affairs if we are neither given access to the channels in which high-level strategic decisions are made nor provided the rationales for crucial decisions even after submitting repeated requests. The Task Force offers a promising way out of this chicken-and-egg problem. Do not neglect to take advantage of this rare opportunity.

Keep up the good fight, guys! This year can be the most transformative one that the UA and the students who they represent have had in quite some time. Carpe diem!

Martin F. Holmes ’08 and Ali S. Wyne ’08 are the outgoing President and Vice-President of the Undergraduate Association.

In the last issue of the Tech, Miguel Valença Pires G has labeled the response of the MIT Chinese student community to recent cartoons as “a type of attack,” raising a question “what chance do more basic human rights stand?” However, the author misunderstands the response of Chinese students and I do not agree that it is a type of attack. Moreover, I doubt that the author even knows what basic human rights means, especially to people living in China.

First, it seems that Mr. Pires considers the response of the Chinese students as a violation of the human rights of those who have published anti-China cartoons. I have a complete different view from Mr. Pires.

Let us start with this definition of human rights given by the United Nations: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood”.

For the Chinese student community, the recent cartoons offended their dignity, and hurt their feelings (to understand why this is the case, one has to at least know some

Chinese culture and history). As a response, what they did was simply to use their rights, submitting letters to The Tech to express their different viewpoints about the current issues and clarify the misunderstandings that some cartoon authors may have.

The words they chose were very peaceful and the facts they cited were objective. In those letters, I did not see any single word that could be categorized as “a type of attack” and I do not think they hurt anyone’s feelings.

The Chinese student community is protecting their dignity using their rights without offending other people’s dignity. If Mr. Pires persists in saying that this is “a type of attack” and an overreaction, then I would like to ask Mr. Pires’s advice on two questions: Should the Chinese student community have just kept its mouth shut? How do we distinguish between overreaction, underreaction, and a reaction of the right amount?

When people are talking about human rights, there is no denying that China is still behind most developed countries, like all other developing countries. When it comes to basic human rights, we need to look at the right to food, the right to education, the right to medical care, and the right to work, because these rights are crucial and indispensable.

If you have never lived in a country that has more than 70 percent illiteracy and millions of people suffering from starvation and diseases like China a half-century ago, you would find it difficult to understand how important these basic human rights are to the Chinese people.

Fortunately, China has improved these basic human rights dramatically in this half century: illiteracy decreased to less than 10 percent, life expectancy reached 73, not to mention that no one in China now suffers from starvation.

To maintain the right to food, an American spends about $3000 a year, which is about twice as much as the GDP per capita in China. The Chinese government has to maintain the basic human rights of its people using only half the amount of money that Americans put toward food.

Isn’t this a great achievement for a huge developing country? Wouldn’t this make China qualify to host of the Olympic Games?

Judging China in black and white terms, neglecting China’s achievements on improving basic human rights, and viciously distorting Beijing’s intention of hosting the Olympic Games can hardly be regarded as friendly gestures toward the Chinese community at MIT and everywhere in the world.

The 2008 Olympic Games is being held in Beijing starting August 8, 2008, with the opening ceremony commencing at 08:08:08 p.m. There are six eights in the date and time. ‘Eight’ and ‘six’ are good numbers in Chinese culture, meaning wealth and harmony, respectively.

Hosting the Olympic Games is not to show off, but to deliver a message to people all around the world who really care about China the Chinese people, that wealth and harmony are two characteristics of a society that China is going to be in 20 years, if not shorter.

In response to the letter from Jamie B. Edwards ’08 on May 2, the United States and the global community should not back down in criticizing China for human rights violations. Mr. Edwards is correct that the U.S. has had many despicable incidents in its history that we would rather forget today. But I think his claim that the US should “think twice about scolding the Chinese” is flawed.

It is far worse to remain silent in the face of human rights violations, even in an attempt to avoid hypocrisy, than it is to for a people with its own flawed record to stand up for human rights. If the US had always ignored human rights for the sake of avoiding hypocrisy, many of our best moments in history would never happened.

If the northern states had decided not to fight the Civil War because they had once permitted slavery, the slaves would never have been freed. If the US had decided not to fight the Nazi invasion of Europe in World War II because we had once invaded and destroyed Native Americans, the Nazis would never have been defeated. And again more recently in Kosovo, in Somalia, and in the first Persian Gulf war, the US has stood up, despite its own flaws, for good and just causes.

I recognize that pure altruism did not motivate all of these actions, nor were all of these actions totally morally executed, but I believe the fact remains that on the whole, the US has made many just decisions in defense of human rights.

I agree with Mr. Edwards that our history is imperfect. We have made many mistakes. But if we allow our mistakes to hold us back from doing what we have learned is right, then we doubly wrong all those whom we have wronged in our past.

We cannot rely on perfect leaders, because there are none. We must do the best we can, with open minds and open eyes, and a good memory. And that is why we should not today restrain ourselves from criticizing China and other nations that may violate human rights.

Restoring America’s standing in the world must surely rank as the next administration’s foremost priority. Unfortunately, the three remaining presidential candidates have yet to articulate a clear strategy for achieving this (admittedly daunting) objective. Whoever prevails in November should ground their strategy in seven principles and policies. I do not regard the first three as particularly controversial — the experiences of the past decade or so yield them quite naturally — and, as such, I present them without comment:

1. Abandon neoconservatism as a foreign policy paradigm.

2. Bring in more students and scholars from countries in the Islamic world.

3. Intensify efforts to cultivate alternative energy sources and make them economically viable.

4. Engage India and China.

While India and China are rapidly growing economic powers, they are not the fearsome titans that Western media would often have us believe. They face — China, in particular — serious challenges to their development that are concealed in pictures of gleaming skyscrapers and reports of 10 percent annual GDP growth. The zero-sum conception of global politics that has come to characterize Washington’s mindset maintains that their growth threatens our own. The high extent of interdependence between the world’s powerful economies exposes the fallacy of this argument. Putting aside the reality that attempting to “contain” or reverse their growth would be mutually inimical, such an action would be immoral. In engaging India and China, we have the opportunity to enhance our own leadership and lift billions of enterprising minds out of poverty.

5. Engage non-state actors in the Middle East such as Hamas and Hizballah.

Isolating groups whose interests differ from our own does not always result in their losing appeal among their constituencies. In the case of impoverished, desperate societies that depend on militant organizations, adopting that course only entrenches those organizations’ hold. In 1943, Abraham Maslow proposed a pyramidal hierarchy of human needs. At the bottom were physiological needs such as food and water, and at the top was the need for self-actualization. The Bush Administration stresses the importance of instituting modern governance in Muslim countries, and decries the brutality of groups like Hamas and Hizballah (among others). It is misguided for two reasons. First, most Muslims resent their governments, as polls of Iranians and Saudi Arabians amply demonstrate. Second, and perhaps more important, even the most fervent proponents of democracy will side with an unsavory entity if it can provision their basic needs.

Lebanon offers an excellent example. One of the reasons that the United States is losing the proverbial battle for hearts and minds there is that relief organizations that receive funding from the American government are legally prohibited from employing Hizballah as an intermediary in their efforts. Unfortunately, because its influence is so pervasive — Hizballah administers the disbursement of all reconstruction monies — this stipulation virtually assures that the United States cannot fund or establish a viable, credible alternative to it.

6. Subsidize wheat production in Afghanistan.

In 2007, Afghanistan produced 95 percent of the world’s opium; in 2006, that figure was 92 percent; in 2000, it was 70 percent; and in 1990, it was 52 percent. These figures suggest that NATO’s current counternarcotics campaign is fundamentally misguided. Eliminating poppy crops is tantamount to eliminating the sole source of income for many Afghans. The West cannot hope to undercut the Taliban’s influence unless it creates alternative avenues of employment for them. Since Afghanistan is largely an agrarian economy, NATO should invest more energy in determining which staple crops other than poppy generate the highest yields in its soils. Building a New Afghanistan showcases compelling research on the potential of wheat to be such a staple crop.

7. Sign the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

With the utility and relevance of conventional military power rapidly diminishing, a country’s foreign policy success largely hinges on its credibility. Few single actions would do as much to reverse the notion that the United States abides by double standards than this one. In 2003, it terminated over $47 million in military aid to countries that did not sign deals to grant American soldiers immunity from war crimes prosecution. This policy is difficult to justify when the United States’ government avows (properly so) its right to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law those individuals who are alleged to have committed crimes against American personnel. Indeed, the Bush Administration has circumvented the Geneva Convention to allow for the torture of such individuals.

Unifying these seven propositions is the simple but powerful conviction that the United States stands to achieve its greatest success when the global community is prospering. Articulating a clear foreign policy paradigm and corresponding principles will be of particular importance for the next administration since it will begin to see the appearance and ramifications of nonpolarity. The lead story in the current issue of Foreign Affairs argues that “The United States’ unipolar moment is over. International relations in the twenty-first century will be defined by nonpolarity.”

The end of the United States’ time as superpower will usher in an era where there is no superpower, but rather, multiple strong powers. Individuals, nonprofit organizations, and other non-state actors will experience growing influence. Accelerating globalization and an evolving definition of power — one that deemphasizes military prowess — will ensure that state and non-state actors compete for influence.

The next administration has, then, a dual imperative: restoring American leadership and comprehending a power landscape that is changing in uncertain, complex ways.

Ali Wyne is a member of the Class of 2008 and the current U.A. Vice President.

In the May 2 issue of The Tech, Miguel Valença Pires describes the reaction of some Chinese students to the cartoons critical of their country as a personal “attack,” and advises “brushing aside the criticism” or “taking it at face value.”

Irony aside, why should those be the only choices? I, for one, applaud The Tech for tirelessly printing “endless [l]etters” from diverse opinions, including those of Chinese students at MIT — not a small part of this community.

These letters have been measured and thought-provoking in the main, and have since elicited an ongoing discussion from which we will all learn something. This is a great outcome, considering a few issues back we only had what the “ambivalent” author himself describes as unfunny cartoons.

I have never really been too energized about the cause of Tibet (worthy, no doubt, but just not one of my “pet” causes) and was somewhat ambivalent on the whole issue of the Olympics in China. On one hand, it would be nice to have the Olympics hosted in a place that was more representative of the values the Games are so frequently said to stand for, on the other hand it would be a bit hypocritical of me not to allow my televised sports entertainment to come from a place that already produces pretty much everything else I consume. Even the fact that China is taking this chance as an opportunity to show off its new-found wealth didn’t bother me — hosting and competing in Olympic Games has always been about nationalism, determining who has the best genes, the best doctors, the best coaches, and sometimes even the best athletes. However, the seemingly organized uproar that has been created by an apparently significant portion of the Chinese population at MIT and elsewhere to the vocal criticisms of a few semi-organized activists has managed to change my mind.

China has been somewhat criticized in the media on their Human Rights record recently. Regardless of any considerations regarding the appropriateness of the content or its timing (is any of the information that is coming out really new?), what is more significant is the reaction of Chinese people. Instead of just brushing aside the criticism, as mostly everyone seemed to be doing, or taking it at face value, recognizing the reality and merely stating that they were taking steps to improve it, it seems that the criticism was somehow taken personally, as an offense to their integrity. It almost appears that Chinese people took on the role of what in my country is called the “offended virgin” — like a debutante about to go on a coming-of-age Ball to present her to society that suddenly throws a tantrum when someone notices she is 8-months pregnant underneath the puffy green dress. The completely overblown reactions we have been seeing, from Facebook groups to seemingly endless Letters to the Editor in The Tech, from Beijing Olympics stickers on namecards to the attacks to the Duke student The Tech reported a few editions ago, are a proof of that. At least most Americans (or the ones I know, anyway) were able to distinguish international criticism of the invasion of Iraq from personal attacks on the U.S.A.

In an ironic way, the reactions to the cartoon published in The Tech demonstrate the validity of the points made by the author in a way he probably never thought possible. If a mere cartoon that isn’t even funny published in a small college newspaper is subject to this type of attack, what chance do more basic human rights stand?

We are witnessing the last stages of a great humanitarian tragedy, being acted out in one of the largest and most powerful countries on earth. A small ethnic group, poor in economic and technological prowess but rich in culture and tradition, is slowly being smothered. The group has succumbed to the overwhelming military force of a larger, more advanced nation. Much of their land has been stolen, and their culture has largely been destroyed. Their leader is currently engaged in a desperate attempt to gain independence for his people, but has little chance of success.

I am referring, of course, to the Lakota Sioux Indians, who on December 20, 2007 declared sovereign nation status in large sections of Nebraska, Montana, Wyoming, and North and South Dakota. So why bring up the struggles of Native Americans? Because of all the attention that has been given to the recent pro-Tibet protests. The parallels between the U.S. conquest of Native Americans and China’s actions in Tibet are enough to make any bleeding heart protester squirm. I am hardly an expert on Native American history, but I have studied enough to have a basic knowledge of America’s sad record in this area. And just in case you are inclined to argue that we have since made amends for our wrongdoing, I do not think having the right to own casinos can make up for widespread forcible seizure of land and destruction of culture.

Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that most of the negative things that have been said about China’s actions towards Tibet are true: that Tibet was indeed an independent country, that China launched a brutal invasion, that China has since ruled Tibet oppressively, and that Tibetan culture has suffered. What China has done can still hardly be called worse than what the U.S. has done to its native peoples (at least the Tibetans are still physically living on much of their ancestral land). In other words, unless these protesters are prepared to give virtually all U.S. territory back to the people from whom it was stolen, they should probably think twice about scolding the Chinese over Tibet.

Furthermore, mistreatment of Native Americans is hardly the only example of the U.S. abusing minority groups (slavery comes to mind). Nor has such behavior been relegated to a distant past. America continues to prosecute a vicious war on drugs that is infamously targeted more towards poor African Americans than rich white folks. Problems with race persist in other ways as well, such as our racially segregated inner cities or our ham-fisted approach to immigration.

Other Western anger focuses on China’s supposed complicity in the Darfur genocide. As the story goes, China is preventing serious action in Darfur in return for access to Sudanese oil. Again, there are uncomfortable parallels with America. During the Cold War, the U.S. all too frequently got into bed with bad guys for the sake of fighting communism. We gave Saddam Hussein much of the weaponry that we then had to fight against in 1991 and again in 2003. We funneled weapons into Afghanistan to aid the fight against the Soviets in the 1980s. Elements of the groups we aided then morphed into the Taliban, and we all know where that went. Saudi Arabia continues to be an American ally, even though a Saudi woman cannot seek help from the police even after her husband has shot her twice (see the article on page 64 of last week’s Economist).

I am in no way interested in excusing or justifying oppression. If the Chinese government is violating human rights (and it probably is, though it is hardly alone), everyone who values liberty should be saddened. I am also hardly anti-American. I am a native born white American male. I am intensely patriotic and proud of my country. But patriotism should not mean ignorance, and it certainly should not mean hypocrisy. If Westerners are serious about wanting to clean up the world, perhaps they should stop screaming at the neighbors and focus more on the mess in our own back yard.

Whose idea was it to give far more page space to Baker House’s Piano Drop than the UA presidential elections? Last time I checked, two broken pianos don’t have a say in whether I have to eat in a dining hall or if incoming freshmen get their choice of living groups. The UA may not be the most well-liked group on campus, but without a doubt it is one of the most influential and their elections (which determine who represents me and the entire undergraduate community to the administration) deserve a bit more attention. At least we know that if Baker House decides to drop the UA Exec Board off a roof, everyone will hear about it.

As members of the MIT community, we have always been so proud of the scientific spirit this institute embodies — the spirit of independent thinking, the spirit of objective judgment, and the spirit of innovation. This is what makes MIT the best among all technological institutes. Sadly, we found in recent issues of The Tech a severe lack of such spirit, as demonstrated by the series of cartoons on Olympics. It deviates so much from the MIT style that we start to have doubt about our belief in the spirit of the Institute. As science and engineering majors, we all know how to study things, how to analyze them, and how to propose new ideas based on scientific evidence. But none of these is seen in the cartoon.

First, the authors of the cartoon lack basic knowledge about present day China that he/she is still depicting Chinese people as dressed 40 years ago. Everyone at this institute is an expert in his/her own field and our publications and presentations represent our deep understanding of the subject we are talking about. Under such a circumstance, we cannot understand how this kind of mistake could appear in the top newspaper on campus.

We have to say that we feel very disappointed when we saw The Tech simply copying the tone of other media. We suppose The Tech should represent the independent and critical thinking of MIT students, but we just don’t see that in these cartoons. We suggest the authors do some independent research on this topic. Go to different sources for information. (There are plenty of them on the web). Don’t rush to make any conclusion before taking into consideration different voices.

The best and only way to know the truth is to do the experiment yourself — go to China to see what is really going on. We have all been living in China for more than 20 years and we do not feel our human rights violated. Instead, we have all the freedom to pursue our dreams and we are now studying at MIT. China is open and everyone can go and take a look. (It should be much easier than for Chinese to come to the U.S.). If a trip is not immediately possible, at least try to talk to people who have been and lived there. It is certainly not MIT style to announce results that are premature or just copied from other people’s work, is it?

Amal Dorai G mischaracterizes my letter from last week. Far from saying that we should accommodate the intolerance of other cultures, I was posing a question — how do we reconcile our liberal society (here I use “liberal” in its classical sense) with respect for multicultural diversity, when some of our own values, such as respect for the rights of homosexuals, conflict with those of other cultures? Do we dare to assert the superiority of civilized Western liberalism over the medieval puritanism which still persists in some parts of the world today? Dorai seems to think so, and his letter suggests that it is ridiculous to think otherwise — he believes it is “ludicrous” to accommodate another culture’s bigotry.

However, appropriate limits to multiculturalism are not as obvious to our friends in Europe and Canada. According to the BBC, the Canadian government, flouting free speech rights, brought writer Mark Steyn before a human rights tribunal for writings which were critical of Islam (as if boorishness is on par with, say, genocide). In the UK, Islamic Sharia law courts, where the laws of evidence are more lenient, now operate as an alternative to the legitimate courts of the British government, according to The Telegraph, undoubtedly encouraged by the climate fostered by idealists such as the ruling Labour Party, which had insisted for many years that their country is “multicultural.” In Germany, the judge of a German court cited the Koran in rejecting a Moroccan woman’s petition for an accelerated divorce due to domestic violence and death threats from her husband, according to the International Herald Tribune. While mainstream Muslim leaders, to their credit, swiftly condemned the ruling, the apparent alacrity with which the judge subordinated German legal principles to the Koran illustrates the paralysis of justice which could result from permitting cultural accommodation to become too ingrained. In France, philosopher Jean-Francois Revel has commented that the institutional reluctance to teach French to immigrant children in French schools has stunted the upward mobility of these immigrants, causing resentment which sometimes boils over into the youth riots we have witnessed in recent years. Homosexuals, in particular, comprise one group which has much to fear from the growing Islamization of Europe. In the Netherlands, attacks on gays have increased in recent years, mostly perpetrated by Moroccan youths, according to Radio Netherlands. In Iran, Sharia law calls for the execution of homosexuals. It may be ridiculous now to think that something like that could happen in western Europe, but such changes do not occur suddenly, and we only notice too late when things have gone too far, just as a frog submerged in a pot of cold water does not jump out of the pot if the water is brought gradually to a boil.

It is because other Western countries have served in the past as bellwethers of trends in our own society that the eagerness in the American academy to embrace other cultures concerns me, and compelled me to ask in my earlier letter how far we are willing to go to pat ourselves on the back for being so culturally sensitive. Is the Committee on Discipline denying justice to the Sloan LGBT group out of deference to Krasnoslobodtsev’s upbringing in a foreign culture, in the same manner in which the German judge cited the Koran in ruling against the Moroccan woman? Due to the committee’s secrecy, I can only speculate, but MIT would not invite such speculation if it weren’t for other examples of accommodation: the speaking invitation extended by the school of HASS to a known Holocaust denier, the serious consideration given to a diversity GIR at the expense of core science classes, just to name some of the memorable ones from my time at the Institute. Of course, a few data points do not make a trend, but should caution us to be more conscious of our Western liberal values, lest we lose sight of them when we venture beyond our cultural comfort zones as part of normal college life. We should also guard ourselves against the use of our own tolerance against us.

Even if you believe that Krasnoslobodtsev can be defended on the grounds that he did not know any better because he is from a foreign country, he did know better, if Sloan LGBT’s published reproduction of his e-mail is accurate. His opening line was, “I don’t care what you do among yourselves, and I am not going to teach you how to live.” Clearly, he grasps our libertine outlook towards gays, but instead of finishing with a simple request to be excluded from future mailings, he threatens members of the group with violence. Why did he not restrain himself, knowing as he must that his action would be condemned? His personal lack of inhibition could certainly be a factor. Others might blame conservatives in this country for undermining the teachings of more enlightened progressives, though I’m skeptical of that view since even the most hard-line of mainstream American religious conservatives now call for love of the sinner but condemnation of the sin. Given that Krasnoslobodtsev veers into an aside which takes on a nearly didactic tone when he writes, “in [redacted], beating gays is encouraged by vast majority of people because they insult society and nature,” he may actually have thought, perhaps unwittingly, having internalized the diversity rhetoric which pervades MIT, that the recipients of his e-mail would excuse his remarks because he grew up in “[redacted].” Multiculturalism may have emboldened Krasnoslobodtsev just as it emboldens radical clerics, who, according to the DC gay publication Metro Weekly, have declared entire neighborhoods to be under Islamic jurisdiction in France, Britain, Denmark and Belgium.

Wong is a member of the Class of 2007.

Thomas Armet suggests that The Tech should have not published Artem Kras’ name to avoid a “witch hunt.” The term “witch hunt” distinctly implies an absence of “witches,” which is not the case here — there was a severe incident with an identifiable perpetrator, and the Committee on Disciple proved too impotent to effectively punish him. The Tech is acting as an important public servant by ensuring that Kras is roundly ridiculed for his actions, and is doing the COD’s job by ensuring that this kind of action does not go unpunished in our community.

Justin Wong’s ludicrous idea that we should “accommodate” other cultures’ intolerance is a total perversion of the concept of inclusivity. Inclusivity does not mean importing hate and bigotry which may be tolerated elsewhere; it means creating a welcoming environment for all students that allows us to draw the best and brightest from everywhere. If you’re going to threaten to send your classmate to the “resuscitation ward,” MIT does not want or need you.

Recent Letters to the Editor concerning the Beijing Olympics have focused on the unfair treatment China has received in The Tech’s political cartoons. While I am generally unsympathetic to most of the claims advanced in these letters, I was struck by one sincerely unflattering parallel between China and the current politics of the United States: namely, the subordination of human rights to the expedient resolution of the government’s political agenda.

If we are to believe the group letter printed last Friday, there exists a tension in China between the effort to modernize China economically and the political techniques used to ensure that the transition is orderly. In this analysis, human dignity is simply a cost item to be weighed against the seemingly limitless growth of the Chinese economy.

In America, the years since 9/11 have been marked by a subjugation of basic human rights to help secure the country against terrorists. In our prosecution of the War on Terror, we have demonstrated almost no restraint in our treatment of foreigners with anything of value to our security aims. We have also shown an ominous willingness to turn our security apparatus against U.S. citizens.

These are two different situations — yet, sadly, they are symptomatic of the same illness that seeks to limit, measure, and compare a person’s dignity to and against other goals. As Americans, we should be particularly ashamed because we began our country with a declaration of the correct framework for human rights — that all men are created equal and are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”

The Olympics provide a fitting backdrop to examine not only the human rights record of the host nation but the state of our own human rights. As Americans, we are sacrificing our liberty for the illusion of security. Ben Franklin tells us we will lose both and deserve neither. Similarly, for China, the words of RFK seem particularly poignant: “GDP does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our courage nor our wisdom, nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile, and it can tell us everything about America, except why we are proud to be Americans.”

So I hope the cartoons continue — and I applaud the directness of past cartoons. I hope the cartoons do offend because the situation being parodied is offensive to all decent people. I hope students offended by the cartoons can learn to decouple criticism of the Chinese government from criticism of its people. I hope the Beijing Games give us a chance to change the repressive tactics being used against people everywhere, and I am very much looking forward to this summer’s Games.

Editor’s Note: Chambers also submitted the opinion comic above.

China has dramatically improved its basic human rights during the last thirty years, according to UN’s Human Development Index (HDI) report. Now China ranks 86 on the HDI report, while its GDP per capita ranks 124 in the world, which indicates (at least to me) that China is doing lots better on improving human rights than on developing its economy. China is willing to change and China is changing. Everyone in the world is witnessing the changes that China has been making.

Because China is such a huge country and there are 56 ethnic groups and 1.4 billion people, we cannot expect China change overnight. It is very difficult for the Chinese government to develop its economy and human rights while maintaining a stable social environment. As a Chinese student, I am very proud of Beijing holding the 2008 Olympic Games and I am happy to see any constructive suggestions and friendly criticism about China. I just do not understand the intention of some people who want to boycott the 2008 Olympic Games just because of China’s human rights problem. It is unfair.

Editor’s Note: Chen also submitted the opinion comic at left.