A casual observer might conclude that Venkatesan is on the edge of a nervous breakdown, frantically trying to confront her demons that sometimes appear to her as students. But Venkatesan has no apparent demons; in fact, she seems like she has had a very normal, undramatic life. Raised halfway between New York City and Albany by traditional Hindu parents, Venkatesan suggests that her heavy inculcation in Indian culture may have played a part in her ardent desire to excel academically (but then again it may not have - such is the nature of the self-described "postmodernist in the laboratory"). Talking with her, one certainly gets the impression that, above all, she has focused her life on scholarship and allows herself to be distracted by little else. So why get tripped up by a little nose-blowing?

This question, oddly enough, may eventually be at the center of an intense legal battle. For Venkatesan, the nose-blowing, "evil" glances, and off-handed remarks added up to something bigger - something bordering on discrimination by her students. Venkatesan claims that her students' overall treatment of her created a hostile work environment, one that she would not have faced as a white male. According to her, Dartmouth turned a blind eye to this situation and further refused to afford her the respect that a similarly accomplished white male would have received. As a result, the College and several of its youngest students now face a potential lawsuit alleging harassment and workplace discrimination.

Though Venkatesan's recent comments, which cite few explicitly discriminatory events, may give the impression of a person waiting to claim racism at every turn, she hardly considers herself a lifelong victim. She describes her hometown as a "small South Asian community" near Poughkeepsie, NY, where she was "extensively exposed to Indian culture." She attended high school in Poughkeepsie, a relatively cosmopolitan city known partially for its universities. Though she claims she didn't experience any discrimination during her childhood and teenage years, she says now that she felt like she was constantly "straddling between two cultures." She paused a bit, though, when I asked her to describe the cultural makeup of her upbringing - I got the sense that her description of "straddling between two cultures" was more of an "after the fact" social commentary by a postmodernist than it was a central feeling during her childhood. Really, Venkatesan's youth sounds like it was pretty much the same as any minority's, struggling to negotiate her identity without knowing it, placing one foot in her parents' East India and the other in the nearby Big Apple, trying to figure out which way to lean.

When it came time to choose a college, she opted for the woods instead of skyscrapers and headed to Hanover, NH, to begin her undergraduate studies at Dartmouth. She says she "got into academics" at Dartmouth, but this seems like an understatement. She says she "adapted well" to the Dartmouth undergraduate environment and avoided any feelings of "(racial) uneasiness" because of her focus on academics (translation: she was a bookworm). She recalls her strong desire to impress her professors with a combination of effort and respect. Venkatesan's positive undergraduate experience would later serve as the impetus for her desire to teach at the College, as she wanted to "simulate (her) experience for (her) students."

After she graduated in 1990, she moved to California to earn an unusual combination of post-graduate degrees: an M.S. in Genetics from UC-Davis and a Ph.D. in Literature from UC-San Diego. In July 2005, she moved back to Hanover to accept a postdoctoral fellowship at Dartmouth Medical School. Soon thereafter, Venkatesan published her first book, Molecular Biology in Narrative Form, which focused on exploring the link between her two areas of expertise, science and literature (a theme she plans to further develop in her upcoming book, which is preliminarily titled A Postmodernist in the Laboratory).

As her first book was going to press, though, Venkatesan began noticing what she calls "inappropriate and unprofessional behavior" from her colleagues in a molecular biology lab at the medical school. According to Venkatesan, the supervisor of the lab, Dr. Christopher Lowrey, attempted to make Venkatesan uncomfortable by showing blatantly preferential treatment to her female colleagues, "very deliberately, with intention to harm." Venkatesan insists that there were between 15 and 20 instances of such behavior.

Venkatesan isn't simply guessing at the number. In fact, she is in the process of constructing a chronology of the inappropriate treatment she claims to have received at Dartmouth Medical School. According to Venkatesan, this chronology is the first step in her lawsuit against Lowrey, the medical school, and four of her research colleagues. Venkatesan is adamant that she "would not have been exposed to such demeaning behavior if (she) were not female, of South Asian decent, and high-achieving." Venkatesan continues: "I had a book published. I had a scientific paper published, which is almost unheard of for someone with a doctorate in literature. I was being published in journals all over the world, and there was resentment. If I was a white male, I would not have seen that resentment. I would have been treated with respect. I don't know if I can prove that in a court of law, but I can try."

Venkatesan didn't get along with her colleagues - who consisted of research associates, Ph.D. students, and other postdoctoral fellows - from the very outset of her tenure at DMS. According to Venkatesan, the entire lab was "hostile to (her) type of academic discourse" (that is, trying to incorporate literary criticism into molecular biology). She alleges that Christine Richardson, a research technician in the lab, treated her with absolute contempt, always responding to Venkatesan's requests for assistance with either dismissive gestures or complete silence. Venkatesan takes particular exception to a sarcastic comment Richardson, who Venkatesan describes as "the kind of person who was always expressing herself," made about wanting "to get down and dirty with (Venkatesan) concerning (her) research." When Venkatesan confronted Lowrey about this incident, she claims that Lowrey responded, "How do you think you're making Christine feel by mentioning all these names of these big philosophers?"

Venkatesan took this as a major slight. Her exchange with Lowrey was contentious, but not nearly as heated as when she approached him about an incident when the group was together at a conference. According to Venkatesan, Lowrey told Richardson that her "beauty will attract people to her poster" at the conference (Venkatesan further alleges that Lowrey later "made bedroom eyes" at Richardson when the two entered Venkatesan's bedroom to get their coats during a party at Venkatesan's house, a look Richardson apparently returned with a smile). Venkatesan submitted a formal complaint about the incident but withdrew it when she determined that a complaint against her boss could put her job in jeopardy. When Venkatesan told Lowrey that she was uncomfortable with his comments to Richardson, Lowrey apparently "went into a rampage," accusing Venkatesan of "wreaking havoc wherever (she) goes." Venkatesan recalls Lowrey telling her that he called Richardson pretty because she was pretty. She also remembers Lowrey "slamming a bunch of coke bottles and files into a garbage can during this rage." Insisting that "inappropriate displays (between Lowrey and Richardson) were always present," Venkatesan concludes that the two were having an affair and were using it to "make (her) feel belittled."

Venkatesan also feels that she was ethnically discriminated against. For this claim, she cites the behavior of Rachel West, another research technician in the lab. West, who Venkatesan describes as "an aggressive and competitive personality...that always wanted to know what everyone else was doing without conveying anything about her work," allegedly was demeaning and disrespectful toward a number of South Asians, including one to whom she made a sarcastic comment ("That would be smart") when he visited the lab to help with a procedure. In another incident, Venkatesan claims that when a South Asian graduate student approached West with a birthday card for a fellow researcher, West took the card and flung it across the room. Venkatesan thinks that West did this "deliberately in my presence to impress upon me that I'm Indian...and don't belong." Venkatesan further accuses West of trying to constantly assert her superiority over her by reminding Venkatesan that she had perfected certain experiments first (for reasons that are unclear, Venkatesan confided her frustrations with West to Richardson and Michael Green, another member of the lab who Venkatesan is considering legal action against; Richardson apparently agreed that West had been disrespectful). Venkatesan also strongly implied to me that she thought Richardson was racist: when she told me that she knew a Ph.D. student in another lab who could "confirm in a court of law" that Richardson engaged in "certain research misconduct," Venkatesan went out of her way to tell me that this Ph.D. student is Chinese (presumably, the student "confided" in Venkatesan to show sympathy with Venkatesan's dislike for Richardson).

Venkatesan is also planning on naming Dr. Michael Green, who made a joke in the laboratory that Venkatesan had at some point received shock treatment, in the lawsuit. Venkatesan claims that Richardson burst out laughing in response to the joke and that Lowrey would later defend her despite not being present for the incident. The fourth member of the lab who Venkatesan plans on suing is Rodwell Mabaera. When I asked what Mabaera did to warrant legal action, she merely responded that he was an "abrasive, sometimes rude" personality, but then confusingly added that "sometimes you have to give some slack." She is also accusing Lowrey of violating National Institute of Health regulations by, as of yet, refusing to publish Venkatesan's research, which, according to Venkatesan, takes away from the credibility of her upcoming book (the NIH, according to Venkatesan, requires projects that they fund with grants to publish all their research in a timely manner). Unfortunately, none of the members of the lab returned requests for comment.

Whether she has a legitimate legal claim or not, it is relatively clear that, for the rest of Venkatesan's time at Dartmouth, thoughts of her experiences in the medical school remained in the back of her mind and framed the way she perceived whatever difficulties she encountered. Citing "many instances of white women climbing the career ladder," Venkatesan believes that the discrimination she faced at DMS is "institutionally encouraged by the medical center, which does not promote the interests of minorities, much less minority women." She also told me that some South Asian medical professors have confided in her that they were mistreated. She says that even though she entered DMS with optimism, at Dartmouth, such a "positive outlook gets raped from you if you're a minority." Given such strong feelings about the institutionally racist nature of Dartmouth, it seems somewhat odd that she pursued a professorial career here. Regardless, she took a position as a lecturer in the writing department and began teaching a course on science, technology, and society in Fall 2007.

Though she describes her fall term as "relatively benign," she says that some red flags began going up. One of her students was "constantly correcting" her and "being belligerent." Venkatesan describes another as "inappropriately aggressive in trying to get me to look at her writing." Venkatesan continues: "I would try my best to give her my attention, but she was so demanding - every time I tried to explain something, she would counter with a trivial question, something she should have known for someone who got admitted to Dartmouth. She was the kind of student that needed to be spoon fed."

When the term ended, the latter student wrote what Venkatesan describes as a scathing evaluation: "30 sentences...it was like War and Peace." Though student evaluations are anonymous, Venkatesan says that the specific situations this student mentioned clearly revealed her identity. As such, Venkatesan plans on naming the girl in the suit. When she got wind of this evaluation from Thomas Cormen, the Chair of the Writing Department, she recalls first getting the impression that Cormen was "taking sides with the students." Venkatesan would get this feeling again.

She claims she went into the winter term "with a good attitude...looking for a better set of evaluations." Her attitude soon soured, though, when a female student in her morning class began uttering "very deprecating statements of the philosophers of the books we were reading, like Lyotard doesn't know anything." This was the same student who would later give Venkatesan an "evil look" during a lecture on bioethics. Then there was the nose-blower, who apparently teamed up with another girl in the class who was coughing all the time in order to disrupt class. Venkatesan claims that these "disciplinary problems" persisted in her morning class when another girl asked the spelling of Gattaca, a movie they were studying. This same student was the one who called Lyotard "cheesy." Venkatesan says she would further disrupt class by loudly proclaiming that Venkatesan's homework had been electronically inaccessible the night before or by asking the names of books that Venkatesan only knew the authors of off-hand (apparently, the student would then search the internet for the title and interrupt class again by loudly declaring it). A student in her afternoon class would engage in similar behavior, "who would incessantly ask the most trivial questions that in no way enhanced the quality of the class." Though the students began to perceive a reluctance or inability on Venkatesan's part to answer questions, Venkatesan insists that "the nature of (the) questions were like, 'How do you spell cat?' I wouldn't know how to answer them because to me they'd be apparent."

When these students "lacked good judgment of what to address" and asked "trivial, stupid questions that don't belong in a classroom of the caliber of Dartmouth," Venkatesan perceived disrespect and, eventually, undertones of discrimination. She looks back upon her experience as a student and remembers never wanting to do things in class that "should be done via Blitzmail," like asking about spelling or errors in the syllabus. Venkatesan believes that, had she been a white male, the students would have respected her time by asking questions and coming to her for help more selectively. She says she went to Cormen with these concerns, but he was unresponsive.

Most of the students have quite a different take on the situation. Many now claim that they asked questions of Venkatesan because the subject matter was complicated and foreign to them. Some maintain that, to this day, they do not understand the concept of "postmodernism," even though Venkatesan would apparently throw it around as a buzzword quite frequently. Things only became contentious, the students claim, when Venkatesan refused to coherently answer their questions about concepts like postmodernism.

The students were also highly dissatisfied with the level of feedback in the course. One student showed me two rough drafts of his essays (the only rough drafts that were ever returned to the class). On one, all that was written was the word "excellent," twice, once on each of the first two pages. Another was returned with four checkmarks, the word "progressive" circled, and a few sentences of praise for his ideas at the end. This student was thus dismayed when he received a B+ on one of these, and further yet, a B+ at the end of the course, even though the only other grade he was ever returned was an A. The students were also upset with Venkatesan's treatment of them in class, which they describe as often demeaning and patronizing. They take particular issue with an incident where she asked the students to applaud a fellow pupil for being so quiet (she was normally, according to an interview Venkatesan had with the Dartmouth Review, an obnoxious troublemaker).

During this time, Venkatesan was attempting to obtain a grant to continue her research on the connections between science and literature, research she says the students disrupted by wasting her time with trivial questions. She claims, though, that her grant requests were met with an unusual degree of resistance by Tom Cormen, who was required to sign-off on them. She alleges that Cormen inexplicably delayed her application by, like her students, taking issue with trivia. To prove this, Venkatesan forwarded me an e-mail from Cormen that, as she claimed, raised five seemingly trivial objections. First, he thought the National Science Foundation would not be receptive to her research, a claim Venkatesan refutes by saying that her contact at the NSF assured her that it would be reviewed by "science and society scholars" who, in fact, would be very interested in her research. Second, he stated that a building Venkatesan's proposal preemptively refers to as "new" would probably not be built by the time her grant ended. Third, he said that, while her budget lists three international trips, her "narrative" made no mention of them (Venkatesan counters that the trips accounted for an extremely small percentage of the budget). Fourth, Cormen claimed that the "budget numbers do not add up. Perhaps they do with the 5% annual cost increase, but you don't explain how you've factored that in" (an e-mail Venkatesan forwarded to me from Robyn Hadlock, the grant manager for the writing department, confirms, though, that the budget Venkatesan submitted to Cormen adjusted for 5% inflation in a manner consistent with how other grants are processed). Finally, Cormen objected that the office space Venkatesan listed on the application could not be confirmed for the next term, to which Venkatesan replied that the NSF would be highly unlikely to care about this technicality. Cormen concluded his email by saying, "Sorry to come off so negative, but I do have 15+ years of experience with NSF."

To Venkatesan, Cormen's interference was DMS all over again. Like Rachel West, he was constantly trying to remind her of the pecking order. Like Christine Richardson, he was showing contempt to her field of study and dismissing her endeavors because of it. Though Cormen granted an interview to the local Valley News, he unfortunately refused to comment for any student publications (it can be assumed, though, that Cormen would assert that he, like Rodwell Mabaera, did nothing wrong). Venkatesan claims that she was informed by Robyn Hadlock that Cormen's behavior, especially his request to see the content of her proposal and his subsequent objection to it, was highly unusual for a department chair. Venkatesan asserts that Hadlock found the situation so disturbing that she said she "lost sleep" over the matter. When reached for comment, though, Hadlock originally had no recollection of Venkatesan whatsoever (despite what Venkatesan remembers as detailed verbal interactions and several e-mail conversations that were subsequently forwarded to me). After some pressing, Hadlock referred me to Thomas Jack, the Chair of the Biology Department, whose sole relationship with Venkatesan was through his denial of her request to teach a course on the history of molecular biology, a rejection that Venkatesan perceives as yet another instance where she was given the bureaucratic runaround in order to stymie her efforts. Jack did inform me, though, that Hadlock's poor memory probably results from the hundred of grant requests she does yearly, and that any comments Hadlock may have made about the abnormality of Cormen's behavior stem from institutional differences between the grant process in the writing department and the biology department, for whom Hadlock does most of her work and faces much less involvement from the Chair. Eventually, Venkatesan's grant request was approved when she went over Cormen's head to Lindsay Whaley, the Associate Dean for Interdisciplinary Studies, who was apparently supportive, though Venkatesan describes him as "unapproachable."

In the midst of Venkatesan's grant battle, things spiraled out of control after an incident where the students of her afternoon class applauded one of their peers for raising a point of contention with a theory Venkatesan was suggesting. It may be the one thing Venkatesan and the students agree on. Though one student in the class described the question as the first coherent thing he had heard about the subject, Venkatesan was devastated. Feeling humiliated, Venkatesan says she left the room in tears and went to see a doctor, who recommended that she take off the following week in order to regroup from her "intellectual and emotional distress." Venkatesan sent the students an e-mail saying that since the class had "de-evolved (sic) into the Jerry Springer show." The students then received another e-mail from an administrator stating that the next few classes were cancelled. Looking back on the incident, Venkatesan says she "can't believe they'd clap against me after all I've tried to do for them. They don't even have a B.A., yet they were trying to break down a professor who is relatively well accomplished and well degreed. That was way crossing a line of respectful academic discourse. Tom Cormen did nothing."

After returning from her week-long leave, Venkatesan explained to her afternoon class how she had been hurt by their behavior. When they allegedly began arguing with her, Venkatesan asked the students to write an essay on "what respect means to them." When the respect exercise failed to produce a notable change in the classroom's behavior, Venkatesan prohibited the students from asking questions until the last five minutes of class. The students perceived this "change in methodology," when accompanied by Venkatesan's lack of feedback (in an introductory writing seminar, no less), as creating a classroom setting that was not conducive to learning. When Venkatesan referred to her afternoon class as "fascists" and "demagogues," the class went to Cormen with their complaints. Though Venkatesan denies that she was name-calling and insists that her comments about fascism were an attempt to describe the kind of culture that evolves when a group of people thinks it has "command of all knowledge without having any credentials to show for it," Cormen is alleged to have sided with the students. "I remember showing respect for my professors," Venkatesan says. "Maybe that's just Indian culture."

Venkatesan became very upset that the students went to Cormen with their issues instead of her. She says that only a quarter of the students showed up when she offered to meet with them one-on-one to get to know them and discuss whatever they wanted. Venkatesan thinks that the students' instinct to quickly go to Cormen stemmed from the fact that hers were the kind of students who "just wanted the grade and would do any kind of bullying tactic to get it." The students did eventually get the option to take the course for "credit" (meaning the grade Venkatesan assigned would not appear on their transcript), an extremely unusual occurrence at the College. They were granted a review of their final grades because the college made the rare judgment that the grades were arrived at in an unfair manner.

Venkatesan claims that if students had approached her with requests for more feedback or justifications for grades, she would have happily granted them, though she admits that she may have been somewhat less inclined to help students who she felt didn't respect her feedback. When one student asked for comments (via her preferred method of e-mail) on a rough draft, though, her February 21st (two weeks after her leave of absence) response was four lines long:

Strengths:
Good use of references
Weaknesses:
confusing thesis statement

When the same student asked for feedback for his third essay a couple weeks later, Venkatesan responded in a March 6th e-mail, "Do you have any specific questions I can answer?" When the student responded that he would just like the paper graded and returned, Venkatesan e-mailed the class that she "just realized you need feedback prior to handing in your last essay--so I will be returning essays on Wednesday." Venkatesan claims that her attempts to return the papers were stifled, however, when Tom Cormen demanded that she return her school-issued computer, which she had the essays on, two weeks before the end of the term; Venkatesan claims that she then lost the ability to return the essays (it is unclear why she did not just print them using the school-issued computer and grade them by hand). She says that she offered to buy the school a new computer and keep the school-issued one, but Cormen declined. Once the term was over, despite the fact that Venkatesan claimed she would return feedback, Venkatesan did not respond to a student's e-mail asking for grades and comments.

That's probably because, by then, she was beginning to concoct a legal claim against the College, the Medical School, and students at each for employment discrimination and harassment. The legal basis, at least for such a claim against the students, is shaky at best. Venkatesan practically admits as much when she professes her ignorance of the legal doctrine surrounding Title VII, the section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which she, in an e-mail to her former students, claims as the bedrock of her case. Though the media has so far been quick to denounce her legal acumen, it is hard for me to believe that anyone who has spoken with her actually thinks that, for Venkatesan, this is about the lawsuit. She consistently qualifies statements about the potential case by saying, "I don't know my legal rights here, I'm not a lawyer...I'm writing down these events and bringing them to the attention of an attorney, and it is his judgment whether I have a legal claim over discrimination in the workplace," or "I don't know the law in this regard, but my goal is just to pursue a legal claim; whether I have one or not is unknown." Rather, she thinks she is doing a "social good" to publicize her story, and one gets the impression that she thinks attaching a legal claim to her story is the best way for it to make it into the mainstream news (probably an accurate assessment - a disgruntled teacher is one thing; a disgruntled teacher suing her students is quite another).

She is writing a book about her experiences as well, but, to me, she does not give the impression that this is all just a publicity stunt. She seems to genuinely believe that her "civil liberties were trampled upon." Though her reasoning is unclear, she also claims that "the more I get my story out there, the less likely I will be to suffer from emotional distress." Perhaps this claim is related to her stated intention of showing other minority teachers that they are "not alone" in their struggles. Mostly, though, her lawsuit seems like a last-ditch effort to prove the validity of her field of study to the Christine Richardsons and Tom Cormens of the world once and for all: though she acknowledges that discrimination will be very difficult to prove in a courtroom, as she has few explicit examples of it, her claim centers around the kind of discriminatory behavior that is unintentional, "normed" into people by generations of instinctive racism. That is, just as she has tried to reveal how hidden social processes underlie supposedly objective scientific experiments, she is now trying to apply the same "narrative criticism" to the culture of the classroom and, subsequently, the law. The Postmodernist in the Laboratory is about to enter the courtroom.

Given such a philosophical approach to reality, it is thus no surprise that Venkatesan sees people out to get her wherever she looks. After all, Michel Foucault, one of the leaders of the postmodernism movement, describes his flagship concept of "biopower" as a kind of fluid power over life that works behind the scenes to influence every relationship we have. In Foucault's schema, the essential task of the intellectual is to, at every step, point to and reveal previously hidden instances of "biopower." It is clear that Venkatesan views herself as the epitome of Foucault's ideal intellectual, using discrimination as an analogue for "biopower" and uncovering the nasty relational structures that underpin Dartmouth College.

It is also clear that when Venkatesan hears a student call one of the pillars of postmodernism "cheesy," she takes this as a personal attack as well as an affront to intellectualism. So far, media coverage on this story has focused on funny typos in Venkatesan's e-mails and has made the "easy" conclusion that she is a nut who cannot handle criticism, with an unhealthy obsession with postmodernism to boot. Such a conclusion is reasonable given the facts surrounding the case. It would be a mistake, though, to ignore the ways in which Venkatesan might raise a valid point. As a lifelong scholar who has dedicated herself to upholding the legacies of thinkers like Lyotard, she naturally perceives flippant dismissals of Lyotard's work by students as flippant dismissals of her own work as well - after all, if Lyotard is a "moron," she must really be a moron for spending her entire life studying him. Furthermore, she has a point when she chastises students for thinking they gave her thesis a real zinger when really they were just making a relatively unfounded, anecdotal claim to put up against years of experience and scholarly research.

She is correct that it is antithetical to the goals of any institution of higher learning for students to assume that they have the capabilities to dismantle hundreds of years of Western philosophy in five minutes, pulling just from their anecdotal memory of history; she is further correct that such a belief in unfettered access to "pure knowledge" is the basis of fascism and demagoguery. This is not to say that she handled the students appropriately in these situations, or in any situation for that matter. But repeatedly trumpeting one's qualifications seems like a much more reasonable reaction when one feels like her credentials are constantly being challenged by administrators and students alike, and when, at the same time, one feels like she is institutionally being made to feel that she doesn't belong via subtle racism and sexism.

Furthermore, it is easy to see how she could have felt backed into a corner. Since the writing seminar consists only of freshman, a case could be made that the underside of easing the transition from high school to college is that students fail to realize that there is a distinction at all. Putting a bunch of same-aged teenagers together into an introductory course replicates the high school dynamic in a college classroom. Each individual's desire to feel oppressed, rebel, prove the teacher wrong, or be the class clown is magnified by the fact that the other people in the class are likely to express the same feelings, while there are no older students there to set an example for appropriate demeanor in a college-level course (in any other class, chances are that there are at least a couple of students pursuing a major or minor in the subject and thus are interested in maintaining a fairly serious and intellectual environment in the classroom). The applause from the students was inappropriate by any measure and is the epitome of the mob-mentality that young students can exhibit when lumped together. One might disagree with Venkatesan's conclusion that "things are going on in this school that are very troubling and disturbing," but one certainly should be able to at least understand how Venkatesan came to the conclusion that a class may have been more wary of applauding a student who argued with a white male professor. It seems reasonable that we should at least make an attempt to understand what caused an alumna to want to change all her prior publications to list her current institution, Northwestern, instead of the College she once loved.

That being said, those that approach Venkatesan's story with more skeptical eyes are not without good reason. She claims she is "not trying to be vindictive," yet, during my interview with her, she wasted no time giving the names of the offending students, even though I did not ask for them; in this way, she certainly lends credence to those who think that she is using a frivolous lawsuit to garner press attention which she can then use to badmouth certain students. Furthermore, the implications she has drawn from certain interactions are absurd, to say the least. When the student asked her how to spell Gattaca, Tom Cormen was visiting the class, and he informed the student that it was spelled with "two t's." In an interview with the Review, Venkatesan insisted that this was Cormen's subtle way of reminding her that she was not a "tenure track" professor. In an interview with the Valley News, Venkatesan claims that Cormen once brought up the subject of racism in baseball to remind her that she could not play baseball because of her race or gender. Before seeing this interview, I had not been aware of Venkatesan's apparent aspirations to play Major League Baseball.

Doing possibly the most damage to her credibility, though, is the on-again-off-again nature of the lawsuit. In addition to frequently changing her mind about who the subjects of the suit are, she issued a statement to The Dartmouth saying that she was withdrawing her claim, but then retracted this statement only hours later. Before she retracted her statement, I e-mailed her asking if she had anything to say to wrap up the case. She e-mailed me back soon after, informing me that she had changed her mind and was pursuing legal action after all. Nine minutes later, before I could even reply to this turn in events, she sent me another e-mail, the full text of which was, "Who are you?" Confused, given that I had been interacting with Venkatesan over the phone and e-mail for several days, I responded simply with an ellipsis ("..."), the online equivalent of a blank stare. A couple hours later, I received one of the most cryptic, confusing e-mails that I have ever gotten, where she accused me of helping her case against Dartmouth and "reporting" (with the quotation marks). I later learned that she was apparently reacting to an off-handed remark I made about the Review's unfavorable coverage of her. I still am at a loss for why she reacted the way she did to a tongue-in-cheek comment that was unquestionably harmless, even though I would not repeat it if I had the luxury of going back in time armed with the knowledge I now have. The final line of the e-mail, which is the last thing I have heard from her, seems to encapsulate her entire story in a nutshell: there might be a point in there somewhere, but she isn't doing any favors to anyone trying to figure out what it is. Here it is:

You have helped my case tremendously. Now let's hope the Attorney General doesn't come after Dartmouth, but lest we forget, they are appointed by Bush, so you may have an ally in corruption. The sorry state of our world:-( Cheers, Priya

On April 3, Texas authorities raided the Eldorado compound of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), a "splinter-sect" of Mormonism known primarily for its espousal of polygamy. Acting on a tip from a frantic 16-year-old mother who alleged that her 50-year-old husband had physically abused her, state troopers staged a dramatic foray into the heart of the community by breaking into the temple and ultimately seizing 416 children. It quickly became the largest child welfare operation in US history.

The raid has drawn the attention of the national media: the FLDS church now graces the front pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post, while CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 has provided regular updates on the case and Larry King Live recently featured a discussion group exploring different perspectives on the issue of plural marriage. Although the loaded question of polygamy may now be making its nationwide debut, it has been smoldering in the Beehive State for over a century.

For the most part, it seems that American perceptions of polygamy and Mormonism are both negative and completely uninformed. The media has rarely provided thorough background information on the subject, preferring to focus on abnormal spectacles like the Eldorado operation. The issue is complex enough, however, to warrant a little more explanation than what Anderson Cooper tends to give.

Mormonism was established in upstate New York in 1830 by a young man named Joseph Smith. A self-proclaimed prophet and revelator, Smith produced the Book of Mormon, which he claimed to have translated into English from a set of ancient plates buried near his home. The work constitutes Mormonism's holy text and is often subtitled "Another Testament of Jesus Christ." He called his religion "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints," often abbreviated simply as "LDS."

Smith was remarkably charismatic and attracted numerous followers. Under his guidance, the church gradually migrated westward to Independence, Missouri, where he envisioned building a "City of Zion," a Mormon capital of sorts. Though the early history of the LDS church mirrored that of other developing Christian sects of the time, Mormonism soon took on a life of its own. LDS culture was insular and secretive; the Missouri locals found it baffling and disturbing. Following a series of armed conflicts, the Mormons were forcibly expelled by order of the governor.

They didn't receive a much warmer welcome in Nauvoo, Illinois, where the growing community attempted to re-settle. In 1844, a local newspaper published a story accusing Joseph Smith and other church elites of practicing polygamy. Smith ordered the paper's printing press destroyed in response, which sparked a violent uproar. After a tense standoff with state authorities, he agreed to stand trial for "inciting a riot" in nearby Carthage, Illinois, and reported to jail there. He met his demise soon thereafter when an angry mob assembled at his jail cell and shot him.

Smith is indeed believed to have practiced polygamy, along with a few close associates, as early as 1833. Though it was initially kept secret, the theological basis for plural marriage was formally announced after the church moved westward under the leadership of Brigham Young and founded its new capital in the Salt Lake Valley. To loosely paraphrase, the Mormons believed that, if their marriages were properly "sealed," one's family remained united for eternity. The size of a person's family, among other factors, helped determine the level of "exaltation" they attained in the afterlife. Modern Fundamentalist Mormons still believe plural marriage to be essential to entering the highest sphere of heaven.

In the coming years, LDS society would flourish in the wilderness, though the Mormons would also face mounting pressure from the federal government. Lawmakers in Washington were unsettled both by polygamy and the Mormons' apparent aspirations of establishing a sovereign nation in the Utah Territory. Federal troops were eventually stationed in garrisons throughout the state to keep an eye on church activities.

As the 19th century wore on, it became increasingly difficult for the church to keep itself as sequestered from civilization as it had been in the past. Leaders eventually came to see the benefits of reconciling with the government and gaining statehood for the Utah Territory. Their requests for statehood were repeatedly denied, however, due to the polygamy issue. Finally, in 1890, LDS President Wilford Woodruff issued a decisive manifesto suspending the practice indefinitely. A 1904 manifesto, issued by his successor, ended official sanction of polygamous marriages altogether. Congress finally approved Utah's petition for statehood in 1896.

During the 20th century, the LDS faith sought to normalize its culture with the outside world. Its efforts were largely successful. Today, most of Utah is indistinguishable from the rest of mainstream America; mainstream Mormons, who account for 60% of the state's population, do not practice polygamy.

As a matter of fact, the modern LDS church abhors plural marriage and considers it an excommunicable offense. Church historians and scholars recognize its contribution to Mormon heritage, but it is widely considered a closed chapter of LDS history. If my experience with Mormons in Utah is any indication, ordinary Mormons resent being mistaken for polygamists. Many are uncomfortable when confronted about the now-forbidden custom; still others see it as a blemish on the exceedingly "normal" image they now try so hard to project.

Compounding this "identity crisis" are the numerous Mormon splinter groups that have emerged since the 1904 Manifesto. They continue many of the traditions of the old church, including polygamy, and believe that the church in Salt Lake was corrupted in its pursuit of outside approval. These groups, including the FLDS, established numerous enclaves throughout Utah. The Salt Lake Tribune estimates the current number of polygamous Mormons in Utah to be approximately 37,000.

Though a few brazen polygamist families have set up shop along the metropolitan Wasatch Front, most of Utah's polygamist sects have moved to isolated communities in the state's southern deserts. Most of these communities are small and unassuming, but some, like Hildale, Utah (home of the FLDS church) and Colorado City, Arizona (Hildale's "sister city"), have populations in the thousands. The inhabitants of these cities have proven to be just as reclusive and misunderstood as their ancestors in Illinois and Missouri, and they have drawn almost as much scrutiny from the outside world.

Lawmakers and the general public have taken issue with some key aspects of polygamist life and culture. The first is the legality of the plural marriages themselves. As a condition for statehood, a provision specifically forbidding polygamy was written into Utah's constitution. Although this provision used to be strictly enforced, to generally turns a blind eye to polygamist families as long as they do not seek legal recognition for multiple wives. However, polygamist households manage to reap certain financial gains by claiming sister-wives as dependents on their tax returns. Arrests for tax evasion are common in polygamist communities as a result.

The second is the unique social structure of fundamentalist Mormon enclaves. Large, prominent sects like the FLDS church operate under a kind of communalism with rigid organizational hierarchies. In Hildale, Colorado City, and the Eldorado compound (known by its members as the Yearning for Zion Ranch), for instance, the FLDS church monopolizes local business and government. FLDS members do not own property of their own - the church distributes housing and jobs subjectively, taking into account members' age and relationships to church leaders. The church prophet exerts authoritarian control over the community and can evict families at will.

Even more controversial is the role of women in FLDS society. Mormon culture, both fundamentalist and mainstream, is characteristically patriarchal. Wives tend to be considered property in certain respects, as they can be distributed and re-distributed by the prophet. A family patriarch who upsets his superiors may find himself evicted from his home, stripped of his belongings, and separated from his wife and children, who are then placed in the care of another member. The polygamist lifestyle also creates a surplus of eligible young men in these communities, who are sometimes banished for minor religious offenses in order to make room for their older, better-connected counterparts.

FLDS enclaves are relatively cut off from the outside world, making intervention in these practices difficult. Members tend to be closely interrelated. Inbreeding is so common that Hildale has the world's highest local incidence of Fumarase deficiency, an inherited birth defect that causes severe mental retardation. FLDS children are taught at home or in church-run schools and have no television or Internet access. Their concept of the outside world is stiflingly limited. FLDS youths may be told that the outside world is hostile to them or downright evil.

Perhaps the most contentious aspect of FLDS culture is the group's underage marriages. In keeping with the patriarchal nature of their society and the relatively low autonomy given to members, girls in the church are expected to begin their reproductive careers early. The suppression of younger FLDS men means that brides (who can be in their early teens) typically wed men much older than them. The frantic 16-year-old who called authorities in Texas and sparked the Eldorado raid was one such case, though it is unknown how widespread such abuse occurs in these relationships. Authorities have nevertheless tried to curb this practice and have apprehended numerous FLDS men over the years on charges of statutory rape. Church elites like the recently jailed FLDS prophet Warren Jeffs have similarly been tried for overseeing and conducting such abusive or underage marriages. Building cases against them is difficult, however, in the absence of a compliant local police force. The vast majority of offenses go unreported, and most adolescent sister-wives pass quietly and obediently into adulthood.

As the American public learns more about the inner-workings of the FLDS church and other fundamentalist Mormon sects, the sense of outrage is sure to swell. Polygamy is now inching closer and closer to becoming an issue of national concern. But no matter how unsettling these revelations may be, Americans need to make some objective decisions about intervening in polygamist affairs.

To what extent is plural marriage a question of religious freedom? And to what extent is it the responsibility of the government to protect people from their own culture?

To be sure, fundamentalist Mormon customs will insult the sensibilities of many ordinary Americans. But we should remember that radical polygamists are living in another century, and really another world altogether. It is up to us to bring them home to the present?

So far in Utah, the answer has been a resounding "yes." But to be fair, the Beehive State's halls of government are filled with conventional Mormons whose views are biased by their religion's history. A solid majority of them could probably point to multiple polygamist ancestors in their own family trees--underage wives and mothers included. The desire to confront this chapter of their history has led the LDS mainstream to take an overzealous, ham-fisted approach to solving the polygamy problem. With Mormons' long history of persecution, you would think they'd know better.

When Warren Jeffs transplanted his FLDS community from Hildale to Eldorado in 2004, he may have been hoping to move the church into a domain where his sect could operate in relative obscurity. With the April 3 raid, such a goal is no longer possible. But now that the issue is being examined by a wider, presumably neutral national audience, a fairer answer to the polygamy question may be in the works.

Primeval World Diorama
Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln
The Carousel of Progress

If you are a distinguished scholar of the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair--or simply have access to Wikipedia--you would know that these were three of four attractions transferred to Disneyland parks after the event had closed its doors to the public.

The fourth? An attraction relatively unknown at the time, called It's a Small World. If there is anything that those half-adorable, half-creepy singing animatronic children have taught us, it is that contemporary societies are cognizant of the fact that globalization is putting more and more people into contact with each other. Distance is becoming less of a problem in today's world politics. It is now quite common to hear of mayors from Taiwan grabbing lunch with Argentinian senators in Buenos Aires coffeehouses. Whereas foreign policy may have been of secondary importance to governments of the past, it is no longer a simply a manner of binary states of war or peace, but intricate affairs that affect all levels of everyday life.

The Bush administration encounters incessant opposition both at home and abroad. As a result of the deterioration of civil dialogue with other countries, the American public is placing added significance on the country's relationship with global markets and foreign relations. Political pundits have gone so far as to call the 2008 presidential race the "foreign policy election."

Echoing Americans' concerns with foreign affairs in the upcoming election, foreign nationals all over the world are also concerned about the consequences of the election. Ever since Republican candidate John McCain secured the party's nomination, they have been polarized in their support for the remaining Democratic candidates, Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Interest in the contentious race has reached such fervor that a Belgian newspaper suggested that the rest of the world should be allowed to vote as well. From Swaziland to Sweden, internationals are taking sides as the entire world seems to be divided into Obama and Clinton countries.

The Colombian newspaper, El Colombiano, runs lengthy editorials expressing that country's near-unanimous support for Senator Clinton. Colombians tend to associate the Clinton name with the progress of their nation's economy, the War on Drugs, and a $1.3 billion U.S. aid package known as "Plan Colombia" from 2000. The Wall Street Journal reports that some Latin American citizens gravitate towards Clinton's foreign policy platform because they argue Obama's overly diplomatic stance may accentuate "security concerns."

Like Colombia, China also looks upon the Clinton name favorably. Even though Hillary has ratcheted up her rhetoric against the PRC in the wake of its response to Tibetan protests, she still has myriad Chinese benefactors and supporters behind her who hope that she will follow her husband's lead in free trade policy. Additionally, many Chinese citizens oppose Senator Obama because of his allegedly protectionist leanings.

While China and Colombia are overwhelmingly in favor of Clinton, countries such as Mexico are split down the center between the two candidates. The Los Angeles Times has reported that Clinton tends to carry the more affluent north and central-western regions of Mexico, while Obama finds his fan base in the nation's poorer heartland and southern regions.

Although Hillary appears to have a stranglehold on many East Asian and Latin American nations, Obama carries significant political support in Africa. To many, this comes as no surprise considering the Illinois senator has Kenyan roots. During his visits to the East African nation, he has been greeted again and again by roaring crowds packing streets and alleyways from Nairobi to Nasuru. Although some Africans may support Obama in the hope that America can reach the historical landmark of electing an African American president, others hope that if he were to win, he would foster a renewed interest in the African continent.

Obama's popularity is not merely contained to Africa; European nations like Germany have also been gripped with Obama-mania. Obama's opposition to the Iraq War echoes the sentiments of many Germans and other Europeans. Even recent comparisons between him and former President John F. Kennedy in national newspapers have stuck. John F. Kennedy has remained a figure oft-admired in Germany, especially in Berlin. Papers from The Berliner Morgenpost to the tabloid Bild have run recent headlines declaring Obama "The New Kennedy."

When comparing international support for the two Democratic candidates, it seems that the rationale remains questionable. It comes down to a simple problem that has plagued many American voters: they haven't thought things through. For example, Obama's protectionist stance may actually hurt many of the African nations that overwhelmingly back the Illinois senator. Most of their support seems to be based on blind association, from the nostalgia associated with the Clinton surname to Obama's ethnicity.

Some are blinder than others, however. The small fishing port of Obama, Japan has recently gained coverage both nationally and internationally for sharing the Illinois senator's name. Its residents seem to share the same enthusiasm that many of Americans have for his candidacy. Around the town, everything - from fish burgers to chopsticks - is sold with his name. Many of the residents of Obama, Japan hope the senator will choose to visit their town someday. Unfortunately, when asked to give their reason for supporting the senator, it's simple: the fact the candidate is their namesake could increase the town's revenue from tourism.

In America, we are experiencing some of the highest voter turnouts in decades for the candidates vying for the Democratic nomination. Unfortunately, Americans are relying on these insubstantial criteria just as much as their international counterparts. For example, some have argued Clinton has received a lot of support simply because of her gender. Others rationalize voting for Hillary on the basis that: "If we get Hillary, we get Bill."

Obama-maniacs are not exempt from criticism either. Recently, there was a collective national gasp when the president of the California branch of the NAACP expressed his support for Hillary Clinton. When confronted about their surprise, many revealed that they had simply assumed that Obama's race would give him unanimous support from African American voters. It's disappointing that so many Americans and internationals alike base their opinions on such meaningless things.

While some of us may remember childhood visits to Disneyland attractions like It's a Small World during our early years, we also may remember that during our childhood years we first came into contact with student government elections. As the 2008 presidential race proves, some things never change. The current race seems to resemble an elementary school popularity contest, where platforms are irrelevant and superficial qualities and affiliations trump actions.

It may be worrisome that onlookers from the outside world are using empty rationale for their support. But Americans are doing the same thing. In November, people around the world will follow American politics. Regardless, if we want to place the blame on a country when political matters go wrong, we better point fingers in front of the mirror.

At an April 14 meeting held by the Chair of the Board of Trustees, Ed Haldeman '70, and the Chair of the Presidential Search Committee, Al Mulley '70, students were asked to give feedback on the qualities they would like to see in Dartmouth's next president. Discussion centered on future challenges to the College and the leadership qualities required to solve them.

While student attendance was meager (an estimated fifty students overall), many of those who did attend expressed strong opinions over Dartmouth's future. These opinions varied widely; as such, the students offered Mr. Haldeman and Mr. Mulley a number of contradictory petitions.

One source of contention was the role of the Greek System. Early on in the meeting, one student urged the Search Committee to find a president that was already familiar with Dartmouth's social environment and committed to upholding it. Soon after, Nafeesa Remtilla '09 argued that the Committee should instead choose a candidate focused on changing Dartmouth's social system to make the College more "gender-neutral" and racially diverse. She placed particular emphasis on the current dominance of white fraternities and sororities on campus.

The theme of tradition of versus innovation also showed itself in questions about what the next president's background should be. While Mr. Haldeman stated that the Committee wishes to "cast a wide net" in searching for Wright's successor, several students argued that Dartmouth's next president should already be intimately acquainted with the College.

While Mr. Mulley assured the students that any presidential candidate would "fully understand the Dartmouth community," he nevertheless emphasized a contrasting viewpoint, stressing the importance of looking beyond a candidate already connected with Dartmouth. Mr. Haldeman added that, while a local candidate would certainly carry advantages, a president must also have the ability to move Dartmouth forward beyond certain traditions.

Lastly, discussion over the relationship between the next president and the Board of Trustees foreshadowed a likely source of conflict during the selection process. When one student asked whether a petition candidate would be put on the Search Committee, Mr. Mulley quickly stonewalled the question by refusing to comment. While this response was also given to a number of other questions, some students noted the particular efforts by the gentlemen leading the meeting to avoid the issue of the Board.

The question about the petition candidate once again revealed the current friction between the administration and the Board, the two bodies centrally responsible for Dartmouth's future. Recent lawsuits aimed at changing the Board's balance of power between administrators and alumni have already damaged Dartmouth's reputation both locally and nationally. Will the selection process magnify the struggle between the College and the Board and unleash another flood of lobbyists fighting to gain the president's support?

Some students have already expressed concern over the direction of the alumni parity discussion. Tyler Brace '11 said, "Our next president needs to be someone who is conciliatory and fair-minded and one who doesn't pander to activist groups, regardless of their agenda. This problem won't go away. We need someone who is bridging the gap. Based on the April 14 discussion, I'm not sure that that's what they're going to look for."

At the April 14 meeting, Mr. Haldeman assured the audience that "the next president will work to balance alumni relations... a huge asset to Dartmouth." Nevertheless, recent history has shown that alumni relations have been more than difficult to manage. The past five Board elections have resulted in the selection of petition candidates, a sign that the College-nominated candidates are failing to find support on the Board. Furthermore, President Wright's frustrated efforts to influence the issue through constitutional amendment have sparked protest from certain alumni groups. As the next president will have the potential to impact the balance of power on the Board, the selection process may set the stage for a struggle.

Together, the debates over control of the Board, the future of the Greek System, and the long-term expansion of the College reveal that Dartmouth is facing an internal struggle between tradition and progression. While most changes in leadership, great or small, raise this issue, Dartmouth's relationship with its past ("Lest the old traditions fail!") suggests that the selection of Dartmouth's 17th president may be a particularly arduous process.

As shown on April 14th, deeply rooted structures like the fraternity system and the College's identity as a small, liberal-arts college can be a double-edged sword. Dartmouth prides itself on the power of its traditions, yet these same traditions are proving to be a source of division over social spaces, expansion funding, and alumni influence. As such, the upcoming presidential selection process should be watched carefully.

Though the search for our next president is just beginning, opinion is already sharply split over the role of Mr. Wright's successor. While Dartmouth's traditions are central to its unique identity, these same traditions are sparking a debilitating battle between students, faculty, and alumni. Whether the selection process will provide a new opening point for lawsuits over Board parity is anyone's guess, but at the very least, Dartmouth's past appears to be once again proving an issue for its future.

This semi-recession began when credit was dispersed a bit too freely to those who could only have repaid their mortgages if the housing market had continued to grow rapidly. When the market began to slow down, many of these borrowers could not repay their loans and wound up defaulting, which resulted in increased foreclosures. Thus the housing market began to waver and houses depreciated in value. This credit disaster means that not only will those who defaulted on their repayment suffer, but also those who lent money and those seemingly uninvolved in the problem. Businesses and individuals with good credit may face tougher standards for short-term loans, without which funds they will be hard pressed to meet their usual level of economic activity. On a larger scale, insecurity in the housing market has led to decreased confidence on Wall Street among investors as well as a general cutback in spending among consumers, especially on non-essentials such as retail.

What does this slowing economy mean for graduating seniors? Those looking for employment in specific regions may have a difficult time achieving success immediately after graduation. For example, AT&T announced in early April that it would be decreasing payroll by 1.5 percent, thereupon cutting 4,200 jobs. Citigroup, which experienced large losses due to the decline in the credit market, also announced that it would be adding 9,000 cuts this quarter to the 4,200 made in the last quarter of 2007. In the first quarter, a total of 230,000 jobs were lost. Mark Vitner, a Wachovia economist, predicts that the market will see 300,000 more jobs lost in the second quarter.

However, there is still some hope for those wishing to remain in the Northeast after graduation. The decline in job opportunities in the Northeast has been less drastic than in other parts of the country, namely the East South Central and Pacific regions. Still, the northeast experienced a 9.3 percent decrease in help-wanted advertising from January 2007 to March 2008. One Dartmouth senior expressed her discontent with the options available to graduating seniors, stating, "I haven't found a job yet, so I am attributing that to the slowing of the economy, not to my lack of skills." The label of Ivy League for which so many students worked with some expectation of a guaranteed job after graduation may no longer be so dependable.

Companies have also been driven to trim expenses by slashing jobs because of increasing prices in commodities. The rising cost of oil, which hit a $119.90 trading high, has dramatically increased expenses in many industries. In order to compensate for increased costs in necessary commodities, companies usually increase prices for consumers. Consumer prices increased 4.3 percent by the end of 2007 according to reports by the Labor Department. Many individuals have cut back on spending, especially on nonessentials such as clothing and even on things such as cell phone service - something that many have come to take for granted. This net decreased spending is fueling the economy's ride toward legitimate recession.

With the current trends in job loss and inflation, it may seem that competition for jobs will be brutal for graduating seniors. However, some industries that have actually reported increases in hiring include utilities, accounting, the government, energy, agriculture and healthcare. One example of a company that has continued to expand its workforce is Google, which hired 2,300 additional employees in the first quarter. Melissa Lokensgard '09 expresses an optimistic outlook when considering her job options: "Personally I think I will be able to find a job somewhere. Fortunately, my major and experience lends itself to being able to work in a variety of different settings. It may not be my dream job, but I'll be able to work...on the other hand, I was planning to go to med school, and I think the economy will have an impact on whether I make that decision sooner rather than later." Her concerns regarding whether or not "the debt associated with [medical school] is worth it" is a question that many pre-medical students face as they near graduation.

Those who have less common majors may be more immune to the current slowing of the economy. As one Dartmouth '08 theater major, explained, "I think theater is one of those small parts of the job market where there will always be work for those crazy enough to do it." Similarly, Kaitlin Gallup '09 feels confident that her major will lead to preferable job opportunities: "I am a Japanese major. I have just finished an internship search and have found quite a few positions for myself. I haven't thought much about the economy, because in truth, the increasing importance of Japan in the global economy (as well as China) is helping me in the long run...I think I will be fairly well set to get a job...after graduation."

Whereas the opportunities available for graduating students are far from overwhelming, one can hope that the high quality of education received at Dartmouth will still carry weight with potential employers. It may mean, however, that students might have to decide between waiting for their dream job and just being happy to have one.

Although it seems that this idea will come to fruition, the monetary unification has not been without its setbacks. Its first major bump came in 2006 when Oman declared it would not be ready to adopt a common currency by the deadline. Despite this, the other five nations agreed to continue on schedule. All of the Gulf states have pegged their exchange rate to the dollar for decades, which implicitly means they are pegged to each other as well. A state's joining a currency union is to some extent a mere formality. In May 2007, however, Kuwait broke from its historical peg to the dollar and is now pegged to a basket of currencies, which suddenly put plans for a common currency on uneven footing.

Earlier this month, as the dollar hit a record low against the Euro and the US Federal Reserve slashed interest rates, there was talk by some Gulf countries about revaluing their peg to the dollar. Although they quickly retracted their statements and reaffirmed their commitment to the peg, it was another sign that the developing world is losing confidence in the dollar.

The GCC is facing record inflation from two sources due to their exchange rate policy: matching the Fed's interest rate cuts and rising import costs from the falling exchange rate. In response to the credit crisis the Fed is attempting to spur growth by printing money, which lowers the interest rate and also spurs inflation. Countries pegged to the dollar must adjust their monetary policy to be in line with that of the United States, thereby effectively "importing" US inflation. Moreover, being pegged to a falling currency means that the cost of imports is rising. Inflated costs are dangerous for a region so dependent - especially during a time of booming growth - on foreign goods. Several of the Gulf countries are attempting to institute measures such as price controls and subsidies to control or offset the inflation, but these are ineffective policies that will only harm them in the long run.

The other option - dropping the peg to the dollar or reevaluating - would have several consequences. Although this move may ease inflationary concerns, it would likely peg to a basket of currencies or the Euro, which means they would still not possess monetary autonomy. Besides, if the all the GCC did not adjust their peg in the same manner, it would cause their proposed monetary union to be only more difficult to achieve. The political pressure on the GCC is also considerable, as widespread Gulf revaluation could precipitate a US dollar currency crisis. Completing a currency union in the near future, however, could give the GCC exactly the opportunity it needs. None want to unilaterally revalue their currency against the dollar; however, when they declare their new currency, it can be set at a revaluated peg. The only downside is that the GCC countries hold a combined $500 billion in US dollar-denominated assets, the value of which would decline with a revaluation.

At the other end of the spectrum from a currency union, they could all adopt individual currencies with floating exchange rates. A currency union has distinctive benefits and costs, and it is important to weigh them against each other to see whether this is a beneficial step for the Gulf states. Floating exchange rates would allow them to have monetary autonomy, giving them more control over their economy, but at the possible cost of instability.

Floating exchange rates would solve many of the temporary problems the GCC faces. By relinquishing their peg to the dollar, they can gain control of their own monetary policy. They can choose their own optimal level of inflation and interest rates, which are much better suited for their rapidly developing economies. However, this step also allows the government to print money freely in order to finance itself with the resulting seignorage, which leads to runaway inflation. If the government cannot be trusted with monetary autonomy, maintaining a peg essentially ties the hands of the central bank. A floating regime also exposes firms and individuals to the risk of exchange rate fluctuations, which can produce future income uncertain and discourage investment.

Essentially, a currency union is a stronger version of a fixed exchange rate between the member countries, regardless of whether they have a fixed or floating rate against other world currencies. A currency union will result in increased trade and decreased transaction costs between the Gulf states, but the extent of these benefits is highly dependent upon the average level of integration between the countries. Although estimates vary, it is believed that a currency union can double the amount of trade between a block of countries. The average level of trade as a percent of GDP with other member countries is an important measure of how much there is to gain from a currency union. For the Gulf states, this figure is less than half that of the European Union.

It is also important to have few societal barriers between the countries in order to maximize the gains from economic integration. For example, lowering the legal barriers on labor and capital movement is meaningless if there are still linguistic or cultural barriers. In this regard, the Gulf states are very well positioned to reap the rewards of economic integration: they all speak the same dialect of Arabic and have similar cultures. Therefore, there is a great amount of mobility between the countries, and so labor and capital can move easily to where it is most productive. This serves as a contrast to the European experience, in which one has to learn a completely new language in order to work effectively in a new country.

The major cost of a currency union is in the loss of monetary policy as a method of controlling the economy. Suppose that one country needs a monetary contraction while another needs a monetary expansion. While they share a common currency, both cannot occur simultaneously. The best measure of the cost of a currency union is the correlation of economic shocks between member countries. This has proved to be a substantial problem in the EU, where very different economies have been forced to endure the same monetary policy. Luckily, the Gulf states are more homogeneous than European states. They have in common the reliance on oil revenues to finance their current investment boom. Still, it is conceivable they will have different economies in the future.

The GCC is hardly the only group of countries seeking increased economic integration. The United States struggled with NAFTA and CAFTA, and there are several coalitions of African countries seeking some form of integration. However, such unions require very specific conditions to ensure there will be sufficient gains from integration that outweigh the costs.

In the post-EU frenzy, trading blocks around the world are creating radical economic proposals, many of which are unfeasible. From language to culture to economy, the Gulf states share several similarities: this in itself is the most important factor in determining the success of an economic union. Many proposed unions are of dubious benefit. The GCC, however, has the necessary conditions for success. Given their earlier establishment of a customs union and a common market, a currency union is logical and powerful next step.

Widely known fact: All world leaders are freakin' nuts.

A few days ago, after I set the monkeys of Moore free, I took a quick midnight stroll through DHMC. By my keen detective wits and wild drunken stumbling, I came upon a room! It was not just any room: it was a room grander than the Taj Mahal, more wondrous than the setting sun, and dark enough so I was able to pass out in it. When I finally woke up in this wondrous room, I discovered its common function. I had stumbled into the psychiatric chart room. Naturally, my first reaction was to search for my dignity, but I soon found myself thumbing though the names on the files. Lo and behold, I found some very high profile patients. Now I will share with you a sample of my findings. In order to maintain the utmost standards of doctor-patient confidentiality (accursed HIPAA, you foil me again), I will use discreet nicknames that would make "Dear Abby" proud.

Vlad "The Impaler" Putin (Russian President 2000-2008)

Vlad is a textbook case of a narcissist. This was demonstrated in the very first months of his first term as President, when he placed the 89 sub-federal territories under seven presidentially appointed "plenipotentiary representatives". Vlad's narcissistic tendencies were also seen through his interaction with the Russian media. Although Vlad has shown little tolerance for dissent, he has demonstrated a unique tolerance for kissing random boys on the stomach. In July 2006, Vlad spoke of the need to connect with other people: "People came up and I began talking to them, among them this little boy. He seemed to me very independent, sure of himself and, at the same time, defenceless so to speak: an innocent boy and a very nice little boy... I tell you honestly, I just wanted to touch him like a kitten and that desire of mine ended in that act."

Junichiro Koizumi Presley (Japanese Prime Minister 2001-2006)

It is quite apparent that Mr. Presley, as he likes to be called, has dissociative identity disorder (DID), also known as multiple personality disorder. Due to a stifling childhood and overwhelming pressure to follow in the family legacy of public service, young Ichiro turned to the uplifting, yet sinfully gyrating, music of Elvis Presley. Since Ichiro and Elvis were both born on January 8th and it is a widely documented fact that DID is primarily caused by the folding of time-space such that individuals born on the same day seven years apart can exchange personalities, Elvis was a natural candidate.

This clearly explains Ichiro's many public appearances in gold sunglasses and attempts at singing some of Elvis's classics. Ichiro's case of DID also explains his six visits to the Yasukuni Shrine. Because individuals with DID attempt to repress outward appearances of having two personalities, Ichiro's Elvis personality, which did not realize the controversy of visiting the shrine, was simply clarifying that he was truly "Ichiro Koizumi, Prime Minister of Japan," by doing what Elvis would consider a traditionally Japanese thing. Additionally, his contradictory support of Japan's military pacifism and sending troops to Iraq is due to the more proactive philosophy of "Elvis" and pacifist tendencies of Ichiro.

W! (American Bad-Ass 2000-2008)

Classified Information: anyone with possession of this information, knows someone possessing, knows who does not possess, or does not know what said possessor is or is not possessing will be immediately airlifted to Camp Gitmo.

~Cheers, Your Friendly Homeland Security Department

Lil' Kim (Chairman of the National Defense Commission, Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army, and General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea 1994-Present)

Normal. Well adjusted, with healthy hobbies. Overall sweet dude. Mild lack of self-esteem. Nothing else to report.

President Mahmud Ahmadinejad [Who's to say that's even his real name if President Bush (Ooops, W!) can't pronounce it?]

Mahmud exhibits the telltale signs of a persecutory subtype of a delusional disorder. Individuals diagnosed with this disorder often attempt to seek justice through government institutions or resort to violence in response to imagined persecution or harassment. For many years, Mahmud has had the delusion that the Holocaust is a European myth used to oppress Muslims. Furthermore, Mahmud's repeated appeals to the UN for "rectification" of these wrongs and his interest in nuclear weapons definitively places him within the persecutory subtype.

Colonel Q (Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution, i.e. Libyan Dictator 1969-Present)

The patient has a clearly manifested Oedipus Complex. This is most evident in his "Amazonian Guard," the patient's elite all-women team of at least 200 personal body guards. The patient is attempting to recreate the libinal investment of his mother by surrounding himself with hundreds of women, whose job is to protect him. The Amazonian Guard are entrusted with nurturing the patient. Furthermore, he figuratively eliminates a paternal rival by allowing himself to be protected by only women.

When Bill Clinton passed "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT) in 1993 as a compromise between those who wanted to maintain the ban on homosexual military service and constituents who wanted it lifted, he couldn't truly have believed a middle-ground would hold for long. The policy, which stipulates that homosexuals can serve in the military as long as they remain closeted (at least to their fellow service-members), temporarily assuaged the competing interests pushing him to act. It did not, however, resolve more fundamental questions concerning the relationship between the military and society-at-large when it comes to matters of social justice.

Now, fifteen years later, debates over gay marriage have ushered the culture warriors back into the spotlight. Gay rights activists, the Religious Right, and everyone in between have resumed arguments about the degree to which the military should reflect societal attitudes and vice versa. While opponents of homosexuals (or open homosexuals) in the military shirk at the notion that we should craft military policy on anything other than strategic calculations, some still hope that the institution we charge with defending our values can also help shape them.

The crucible

Because the racial integration of the military preceded the heart of the civil rights movement, some historians have openly wondered whether the armed services served as a "crucible" for change - a microcosm of society in which shared goals and a culture of fraternity washed away prejudices that culture taught the soldiers on the "outside." Perhaps, when these soldiers re-entered society, they came armed with the knowledge that their diverse peers were perfectly capable fighters and good companions, and given the respect that veterans command, these ideas began to diffuse throughout communities. Eventually, society as a whole caught up to what the troops learned in the military - when all that's standing between you and death is the soldier at your side, it doesn't particularly matter what race he is.

Given a different metric, though, the military may have been more reactive to growing racial tolerance than it was active in promoting it. After all, African-Americans were granted the right to vote (at least formally) nearly a century before they were allowed to serve in the military. Women were not meaningfully integrated into the military until the advent of the All-Volunteer Force in the mid-70s, decades after they achieved suffrage. Though homosexuals have the right to vote, the potential parallels are clear: perhaps they just have to wait their turn on the timeline of social progressivism. Since women and blacks had to wait for society-at-large to deem them equal participants before they were allowed to serve in the armed forces, it may take a stronger push for gay marriage before homosexuals have any chance of being part of a more institutionally tolerant military.

Guilty until proven innocent

If the military is a mirror of societal values, though, a very scary picture comes into view. Although DADT has a third, less-discussed component - the "Don't Harass, Don't Pursue" clause - it hasn't stopped homophobic interests within the military from taking the law as a tacit acceptance of their behavior and a license to commit egregious acts of hate. Even if military homophobia preceded DADT and would likely continue after a repeal of it, the policy has specifically enabled dehumanizing practices like "lesbian baiting," where women, already in a historically marginalized position within the military, are presented with a choice: have sex with their superior or be accused publicly of being a lesbian.

Beyond lesbian baiting, DADT forces homosexuals to keep their sexual identity a secret. This central mandate of the law tells homosexuals that it's OK to be gay - just as long as they're the "right kind" of gay: the kind that keeps it on the inside, doesn't participate in gay rights advocacy groups, and defines sexuality in purely heteronormative terms, where homosexuality is never a social practice that requires its public projection but is rather a mere physical act that can be kept private. If you wouldn't mind watching your straight officers have relationships while you are prohibited from having one yourself and must live in perpetual fear of being found out, then the military might be the place for you.

Ironically, a seemingly opposite problem is also relevant: service-members who don't view their homosexuality as a central aspect of their lives don't really have the option of keeping it to themselves. To submit a claim for relief under the "Don't Pursue" provision, a soldier might have to come out. Additionally, there are examples of soldiers being discharged as a result of officers uncovering their off-duty "gay activities." The burden of proof is always on the accused (a number of people have been discharged on mere "suspicion"). If a service-member is "charged" with homosexuality, he or she is put in the bizarre position of having to prove that he or she isn't gay. One can easily see how traumatic an experience this could be if the accused individual actually is gay.

DADT encourages an atmosphere of suspicion that forces the gay service-member to make sexuality a central part of his or her life even if he or she intends to remain closeted. The constant fear of being "out-ed" means that the gay service-member will have difficulty going very long without thinking about his or her sexuality. Homosexual soldiers might feel compelled to develop strategies to conceal their secret - for instance, they might learn to pick their words meticulously, lest they be betrayed by a slip of the tongue. Soldiers can feel intense paranoia even if they are not under an immediate threat of prosecution. The gay soldier is thus reduced to a purely sexualized being; nay, a purely sexualized object.

Don't ask, don't tell, don't think

Those who support DADT are very fond of the anecdote, for they have little else to support their oft-repeated, rarely substantiated assertions that DADT promotes morale, unit cohesion, and overall operational capacity of the military. In fact, the statistics and multiple examples suggest just the opposite.

Most importantly, there are already a number of openly gay service-members, out of the closet because of the good fortune of being paired with a particularly tolerant commander. This is not an isolated phenomenon, either - critics of DADT have some anecdotes of their own, usually consisting of interviews with soldiers who find it inconceivable, given their experiences with gay compatriots, that a repeal of DADT would have any effect on cohesion. Such anti-DADT anecdotes are usually supported by poll data, though, that suggests that a repeal of the law would engender little backlash from within the military. Critics of the policy are also quick to point out that units with openly gay soldiers have faced few to no apparent problems.

Furthermore, American police and fire departments, which mirror many of the structures of the military (including the close barracks), have many openly gay members, yet no apparent problems. Israel, which undoubtedly has an even more militaristic society than the US (and thus one even more sensitive to anything that might hinder its armed forces), proudly allows homosexuals to serve openly; they have encountered few negative repercussions as a result. Israel's decision to allow open homosexuals to serve was accompanied by vocal opposition that closely mirrors the rhetoric from today's proponents of DADT - yet Israel's transition, like the US's 1948 integration of its military, went smoothly, proving that proponents of DADT rely on an a-historical logic.

DADT may actually be severely hampering our military's ability to fight and win wars. Some of the military's top Arabic specialists have been discharged under DADT, while countless numbers of qualified personnel have been deterred from joining altogether. Given the overstretched state of our military, we don't have the troops to spare. While many experts have suggested that lifting DADT could immediately allow the armed forces to recruit 41,000 additional soldiers, the policy has remained firmly in place, forcing troops to participate in extremely long tours of duty that have devastating effects on their morale. The constant troop rotations necessary to sustain such an under-equipped military also have negative consequences for cohesion, as soldiers don't have enough time to gel with their units before they are shipped out again. Readiness is also affected since the time for training and rest is drastically reduced.

Additionally, DADT creates communal suspicion that undermines the harmony of units. According to some experts, in a phenomenon called "immunosuppression," forced closeting generates such high levels of stress that gay soldiers become exponentially more likely to contract communicable diseases. These diseases can then spread throughout the barracks and further undermine troop readiness.

Finally, DADT means that our soldiers don't have the experience to know how to deal with homosexual members of foreign militaries (like NATO) during joint-training exercises. In an increasingly globalized world, any harm to military interoperability could have devastating consequences (though the fact that such joint-training exercises still go smoothly might be further proof that lifting DADT would have no discernable negative effect). Given these realities, DADT seems like a pretty poor military "strategy."

One small step for [gay] man...

Repealing DADT would certainly not be a panacea. Just like any state-based approach to change, it must be supplemented with grass-roots efforts to promote tolerance if it is to have any effect on the prejudices of society as a whole.

Getting rid of such a disastrous policy is, however, a necessary start. How do we expect society to move forward when our military proclaims that homosexuals make inferior soldiers? DADT serves as a blemish upon our nation for its logical faultiness and its inconsistency with our constitutional ideals of equal protection and due process. Even our commitment to the separation of church and state is in question, as many legal scholars argue that the only conceivable basis for DADT is religious in nature (DADT is based on the logic that, faced with sporadic flare-ups of intolerance between straight and gay soldiers, we should remove the factor of the gay soldiers to keep the peace. Thus, DADT relies on the presumption that homosexuality is inherently immoral, for in what other situation is the victim of intolerance identified as the problem?) If America wishes to rekindle its image as a beacon of intellectualism and progressivism, a society where logic and tolerance trump hate and divisiveness, it has no choice but to do away with "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

History of the issue

For nearly four thousand years, the emperors of China realized farmers' crucial importance to the social stability. Those who work in the fields of rural China with traditional tools have always comprised the majority of the Chinese population; currently, two thirds of Chinese citizens are still farmers. When an emperor ignored the farmers, he lost his power. Since 206 BCE, every regime change in China has been caused by farmer revolts - from when Qin Shi Huang (and his terracotta army) came into power up until Mao's communist revolution in 1949.

Since Mao's death and the subsequent "open and reform" policy of the 1980s, China has been transitioning from Mao's communism to the new "market economy," a market system familiarly dubbed as "Chinese socialism." In spite of the progress made in cities, the rural areas of China remain much as they were 50 years ago. Consequently, most of the farmers of China are still poor. As the urban population becomes richer, farmers are actually become poorer. In today's China, to say someone is a farmer almost equivalently signifies that this person is uneducated and poor.

The main restriction on a farmer's freedom comes from the "household registration" system, which dates back about three thousand years to the Zhou Dynasty. A revised system was established in 1958 during the "great leap forward" with the main purpose of prohibiting the migration of people. Every household has been classified as a "rural" or an "urban" household. Furthermore, the only way for farmers to become legally part of the "urban population" is to go to a college in the city; however, they face tough competition because there are unequal quotas for "rural students" and "urban students."

Unlike the urban population, farmers have no minimum wage, no education nor any medical stipend. Most farmers cannot obtain a decent education. After high school (although many of them cannot even afford high school), they either work in the fields or local factories (to produce the cheap goods you see at Wal-Mart), or flee to towns and cities to acquire temporary jobs - such as construction - that are "too menial" for city residents. From the day a farmer is born, he faces heavy discrimination.

The current initiative

The injustice of this policy is clear. Policymakers have been trying to decrease the level of discrimination that the average farmer endures, because a immediate and sustained mass migration from rural areas to cities might damage the local rural communities and therefore destroy the economy, the current hierarchical system is difficult to change. In order to alleviate this problem, some villages are testing local self-governance and migration limits are gradually being lifted.

Another major problem for the rural population is their lack of financial capital. Farmers do not own any land, so they cannot mortgage, rent nor sell their land. They also have little financial credibility; hence, borrowing, and thereby increasing productivity is unfortunately unlikely.

The question of whether land should be privatized is a hot debate in China, and the government's take on this problem is unclear. Currently, the government must approve every real estate transaction; the selling of farmland is under the strict control of the local government. The government is in fact deciding the fate of people's lands - often farmers will lose their land with hardly any compensation, for most of the money paid for the land is snatched by village officials. Most of these land buyouts are for factories and include the condition of hiring local laborers. Ironically, the people who buy the land often employ those farmers who lose it.

The third pertinent problem faced by Chinese farmers is the lack of basic facilities in rural areas. Many Chinese villages do not have roads. Most schools and hospitals are in poor conditions and the standard of living is almost identical to that of their ancestors generations ago. Such deficiency is a direct result of the government's policy of concentrating on developing industry. The government focuses its resources on cities with large industrial output, while the countryside - with its little productivity - is neglected. Of course, farmers would prefer to live in the better-maintained cities, but their movement is regulated by the household registration policy, which forces them to remain in neglected villages.

The solution to all of these problems calls for the removal of the centrally planned economy. All three aforementioned problems are in fact the result of the prohibition of the free flow of capital and labor. The Chinese government realizes that trapping farmers within the countryside is not a smart way to maintain their happiness. The emerging question is how reforms should be paced. If initiatives are implemented to quickly, China may lose too much of its huge farming population; if changes occur too slowly, farmers will lose faith in the government. The Chinese government must act wisely, because the fate of 900 million farmers will affect not only the magnitude of gubernatorial political power, but also potentially the life of every human citizen of the world.

Anonymous message boards do provide a good outlet for expressing anonymous thoughts or questions that could be uncomfortable to ask for privacy concerns. There are posts by individuals who are stressed or depressed or both, and all the "agree"s that their comments receive must be a relief on a campus in which everyone says they are "stressed" but rarely discusses the substantial negative impacts that stress has on students' personal lives.

Sincere questions about sex can be asked under anonymity as well. For example, a female student, in one post, wrote that she is "dying to lose her virginity" but wants to lose it to a guy that she "at least likes as a friend" and asked whether there are others who have the same problem at Dartmouth. This individual obviously has no intent of profanity. She is asking a question that would be impossible for her to ask the public without some type of judgment that will likely result in her personal humiliation. Sex is a part of human life, but it is a difficult topic to discuss openly due to its profoundly personal nature. Even the following post, though explicit, does not have to be demeaned as mere profanity:

anonymous | 11/22/07 08:46:07 pm girls will you not give an uncut guy head?

While we consider ourselves sexually experienced and knowledgeable, there is still a lot that we do not know and BoredatDartmouth allows us to ask these questions, if not for the sake of knowing them for purely practical reasons.

In many cases, topics such as psychological health and sex require anonymity. Responsible practices of anonymity include satisfying one's curiosities on useful sexual topics or calling out to an otherwise silent population that faces serious issues.

The problem with the site is that some abuse the protective mechanism in order to target and attack specific individuals. In this sense, anonymous sites promote the abrogation of responsibility. Freedom of speech exists to protect people from censorship, not to deny the accountability of an individual when he or she makes a comment. If you tell a girl that she is a whore to her face, she might get upset, cry or perhaps slap you. An anonymous posting calling the girl a whore would deprive her of the opportunity to show any of these possible responses towards the party responsible--she is in effect blocked from opportunities to which she is entitled. Furthermore, this protective shield of anonymity can also embolden people to humiliate the accused in a public arena to a more severe degree than in the case of a face-to-face confrontation. This tendency is reminiscent of online bullying, through which mainly pre-teens and early teens, bolstered by the faceless computer screen, are able to direct horrible comments towards their peers. In fact, BoredatDartmouth and anonymity allows us to re-enact high school.

It is tragic as it is that many Dartmouth students have failed to practice anonymity in a responsible manner. The true tragedy, however, is that, despite the want of intellectual or serious discussions most schools' "Bored-At" sites, BoredAtDartmouth is largely unique in having posts that are personal attacks towards specific students, often in the form of acrimonious and sexually explicit insults. Why is Dartmouth different?

Looking at the "BoredAt" sites of other schools, there is much similarity to Dartmouth's site among many of the topics. Most schools' sites consist mainly of postings on the Presidential election, the campus sex scene, funny links, random observations, sexual solicitations, and campus organizations and/or sports teams--just as Dartmouth's. However, BoredAtDartmouth seems to be the only site that contains the names of individual students on a regular basis--and in doing so, the postings are generally unflattering if not demeaning.

Dartmouth students, it seems, are less capable of engaging in responsible anonymous undertakings online than students at other schools with "BoredAt" sites.

This viciousness on the part of Dartmouth students has several possible explanations. However, the most significant explanation may be that the overall structure of Dartmouth is not conducive to mature and responsible behavior. The Greek System is the biggest contributor to this trend. Greek Houses are essentially cliques that hinder social interactions with people who are unlike members of one's house. By joining a house, members can enjoy a bubble within the notorious Hanover Bubble, further isolating themselves from real world interactions with a truly diverse population. The Greek System also fosters a collective culture of binge drinking and general debauchery. The college, having chosen to engage with the Greek System rather than fight it, does not encourage anonymous online students to behave as responsible adults. Given the campus climate, it is not surprising that students using BoredAtDartmouth fail to comprehend the responsibility and maturity that anonymity demands and instead use the site to perpetuate high school culture. In this way, BoredAtDartmouth becomes the bathroom stall, filled with vicious rumors and illicit sexual accusations.

The principle behind donating blood is that the American Red Cross collects donations and uses them in times of need. This process may occur after a natural disaster such as an earthquake, or following what the Red Cross calls "quiet disasters." An intrinsic and controversial part of donating and receiving blood, however, is that neither the donor nor the recipient knows each other. Since blood is a necessity and is readily available if enough people donate, there is no need for either party to know each other. To the same end, some people are uncomfortable with the anonymity. Some may fear that, despite the Red Cross's precautions, the blood may still contain some hidden risk, while others may cringe at the purely anonymous nature of donating blood. "I just don't like the idea of giving my blood to anyone, and while if I needed blood, I wouldn't be able to deny it, I'm not even comfortable with getting someone else's" says one '11.

Beyond the constraints of anonymity, certain religious or personal beliefs may prohibit some from donating blood. For example, in Islam, Shariah law considers the body to be sacred and therefore human blood - and so many Muslims interpret this to mean that altering the body by donating blood - is not allowed. However, an '08 Muslim shared this:

"I think donating blood is an important act, and I am proud to donate my own blood when I can. Charity and the preservation of human life are important elements of Islam, and giving blood integrates both. One verse of the Qur'an reads, 'If any one saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of all mankind' (Al-Ma'dah: 32). Giving blood is a very simple way in which we can all help save another person's life. Muslim scholars unanimously agree that donating and receiving blood for medical purposes is allowed. Furthermore, there is a push in many Muslim countries to educate the population about the virtues and importance of donating blood."

But what about populations who want to donate blood, but aren't allowed?
The American Red Cross's website features a long list of regulations regarding the donation of blood. For obvious reasons, those infected with HIV/AIDS are not allowed to donate blood. Both are those who are on certain medicinal treatments (i.e., insulin injections) and those who have recently traveled to countries where malaria is present are also prohibited. In addition, those who might be considered at risk for sexually transmitted diseases, specifically HIV/AIDS, are not allowed to donate blood. Yet the Red Cross goes further in stating that those who are at risk, and therefore cannot donate blood, are males "who have had sexual contact with another male, even once, since 1977" (http://www.redcross.org/services/biomed/0,1082,0_557_,00.html#hiv).
This statement automatically assumes that having homosexual sex puts one at risk for HIV/AIDS, even if both partners are HIV/AIDS free. "It basically stigmatizes a whole group of the population implying that they have 'dirty' blood," says an '08. Perhaps the issue would receive more attention if, based on current rates of new HIV/AIDS infections, heterosexual men or women of a specific racial minority group, for instance, were barred from donating blood. Given the Red Cross's dire need for blood donations, the organization should simply enforce the more general regulation that anyone who has had sexual contact with someone infected with the HIV/AIDS virus should not donate blood, regardless of whether they are homosexual.

In a world of technology that grants every citizen the potential to save a life, some choose not to do so, and some are simply not allowed to do so. Yet the role which anonymity plays in donating blood allows some questions to go unanswered--men who have had homosexual relationships do not have to disclose such information, nor do those who have traveled to malaria-ridden countries. To this end, the Red Cross plays a tricky game and people's lives are in the balance.

"We could probably clear it," I said, as Kyle and I gauged the obstacle. The water was just shy of a foot deep at its most perilous point. I had driven the Fiat across a very wide swath of this very wide country, sometimes through hamlets where children and chickens ran amok in the streets, sometimes up dirt-paved mountain switchbacks with no guardrails.

"I don't know..." Kyle's apprehension was also well founded. The car was a rental and Kusadasi, the city we had rented it in--the city we had to get back to--was six hundred miles away. The car also had a manual transmission, which I had learned to drive three days earlier as Kyle and I prayed our way out of Kusadasi, using the appropriate apologetic driver gesticulations whenever we stalled at a busy intersection or in a roundabout. We did not learn "reverse" until our second day on the road, when a local demonstrated it for us as our car foundered in a driveway. Kyle and I both now imagined the Fiat swirling dolefully downstream into the Mediterranean. Neither of us was quite sure how to proceed at this juncture.

Junctures, both physical and cultural, are a common feature of Turkey. Most towns cluster around one or two intersections, more often teeming with vendors, goats, and other peripatetic specters of town life than cars and vans. Bazaar-keepers exist at the confluence of a millennia-old method of hawking wares and a twenty-first century inventory: DVDs, checkered blazers, and strips of Cialis pills. And of course, they'll meet you in the middle of their highball prices and your lowball return offers. The Turkish language matches an Arabic tongue with a Latin script. Turkish culture has crisscrossed Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman, and Western European paths. And, of course, there sits Turkey itself, one foot in the West, the other in the East, flanked on one side by Greece, on the other by Iran.

It is at this nexus of Europe and the Middle East that Turkey has always found itself situated, a stance rendering it rarely comfortable, but always crucial, in world affairs. Indeed, Turkey is poised to become one of the most pivotal nations in the geopolitical power theater of the twenty-first century; Istanbul, astride two continents, is literally at the fulcrum between East and West. Fast-growing, well-armed, modernizing, and in the "developed" camp according to the CIA, Turkey is a dynamo in almost every measurable way. Right now, Turkey is in the laborious legwork stages of joining the European Union, having first applied for full-fledged membership in 1987, back when the EU was called the European Community. But Turkey--try this analogy on for size--has stalled on the banks of EU accession, much like me, Kyle, and our brown subcompact car hemming and hawing along the Demre River crossing. Turkey has been at this juncture for twenty long years, watching smaller and poorer countries apply for, sing and dance for, and finally gain admission to the EU in far less time.

In this position, Turkey will either bridge the divide and enter, effectively, Europe, or be sent swirling back to its inescapable Middle Easternness, rejected and deflated. And yet there is, of course, a third option: Turkey could eschew the whole EU process and go it alone in pursuing the bright goals of its future.

The Onion's Our Dumb World atlas waxes satirical on a number of Turkey's peculiarities, but none more so than its desire to be in the EU: grouped in with other Middle Eastern countries, the Turkey entry's subheading reads "Totally Out of This Atlas Section as Soon as the EU Accepts Them," and the citizens are described as "on their best behavior." Though the humor is in the exaggeration, Turkey is indeed entwined in numerous EU trade and travel arrangements, in addition to being a founding member of NATO. By many accounts, the people of Turkey want to be a part of Europe, or, perhaps more accurately, want to be European. In recent decades especially, the Turkish people have cast an Occidentalizing lens on their neighbors to the west, creating in popular Turkish discourse a myriad of Europes that are as much mirage as truth. All of these impressions of Europe are intensely colored by the Turkish perception of the European perception of Turkey. As Graham Greene wrote, "How strange it is to be liked. It automatically awakens a certain loyalty." Some Turks have exerted such loyalty prematurely, in the hope that the being liked part will follow. Nobel Prizewinner Orhan Pamuk, the most prominent international voice on the subject of what it is to be Turkish, describes the phenomenon:

"An expression I've heard in my upper-middle-class Westernized family since childhood: 'This is how they do it in Europe.' If they're drafting a new law on fishing, if you're choosing new curtains for your home, or hatching an evil plan against your enemies, utter these mysterious words, and you can bring any discussion of method, color, style, or content to an abrupt end."

He elaborates on the attitude: "'If a European saw this, what would he think?' This is both a fear and a desire. We are all afraid that when they see how we do not resemble them, they will castigate us." Pamuk wryly compares the obsession with Europe to Dostoevsky's impression of his fellow Russians. "Of Russians who read newspapers and magazines, who does not know twice as much about Europe as Russia?" And so in this spirit it was with great enthusiasm that most Turks greeted the initiation of EU membership talks in December of 2004.

The second time I visited Turkey was in November of 2005, while the pink cloud of finally achieving tangible progress toward EU accession still settled over Istanbul. A colleague and friend of my father's met me and the two other students I was traveling with at the Dolmabahce Palace, the seat of the Ottoman Sultanate from 1853 until its deposal in 1922. (The palace is a study in the sumptuary excess of absolute rule, but unlike its predecessor, Topkapi Palace, it is not an architectural mélange of Islamic and European styles; rather, its adornment is lifted almost exclusively from the baroque and rococo playbooks, and it very much resembles Versailles.) My father's friend, an enthusiastic and generous man, is not a typical Turk, as he is affluent, cosmopolitan, and at the head of an aerospace company with many international ties--as Western as they must come, I figured. And so I was caught off-guard when he told me, as we dined at a way-out-of-my-league restaurant, "Many Turkish people do not think that joining the EU is the best course of action for Turkey's future."

His statements then have only become more realized in Turkish sentiment since. As Turkey's efforts to join the EU have been hampered by, among others, Greek Cypriots upset at Turkey's longstanding refusal to recognize Cyprus's sovereignty, French and Austrian Christians, and semantics-haggling humanitarians demanding that Turkey call a genocide a genocide (that is, the Armenian genocide, which predated the rule of the modern Republic of Turkey), poorer and less developed countries have gained access into the fold. Bulgaria and Romania were admitted into the EU in January of 2007. Bulgaria has, of course, a lower GDP than much-larger Turkey, but also even a lower per capita GDP. And Romania has staked the better part of its tourism industry on the glorification of a bloodthirsty tyrant who terrorized his kingdom with an impaling rod! (And les