OPINION
FEBRUARY 17, 2012
Politics should not come boforo our health
The Susan G. Komen for the Cure
foundation is one of the largest and most
well-known breast cancer organizations
in the United States. Widely celebrated
for its generous funding for breast cancer
prevention and treatment programs, the
foundation is dedicated to women's health.
Or at least, it was.
The foundation recently cut its financial
ties with Planned Parenthood affiliates,
which means less money for breast cancer
screening and education programs through
Planned Parenthood. The foundation has
since reneged its funding cuts.
According to The New York Times,
these initial cuts meant "$700,000 less for
Planned Parenthood, which performed
750,000 such screenings last year, many
thousands of them with money from the
Komen foundation."
The organization is supposed to be
committed to saving lives, not playing
political games.
According to The New York Times, the
foundation justified its move by citing
"a new policy against making grants to
groups under federal or state investigation
— in Planned Parenthood's case, an inquiry
into how it spends its taxpayer money by
Representative Cliff Stearns, a Republican
of Florida."
Stearns, along with many other small-
minded people in this country, hear
"Planned Parenthood" and immediately
think "abortion." These people are
stigmatizing a beneficial organization and
need to get their facts straight.
The New York Times reports that
abortions actually only make up about three
percent of Planned Parenthood's work.
Stearns and those like him are ignoring
all of the positive contributions of the
organization, such as the affordable
cancer screenings, treatment for sexually
transmitted diseases and sex education
programs.
The New York Times reports that the
Susan G. Komen foundation tried to "quietly
distance" themselves from "a politically
controversial organization that they feared
was costing them support and donations,"
according to a board member.
What a sad world we live in where people
act on behalf of other people's opinions, and
not based on that which is right.
If skirting a little bit of controversy is
the reason to cut funding for an extremely
beneficial organization, then the Susan G.
Komen foundation miscalculated. It has
caused more of a controversy than ever
now that they have cut ties with Planned
Parenthood.
You cannot just "quietly" walk away
from an organization that has been saving
lives for years. People get angry. And they
should be.
Once the foundation heard all of the
people's cries of outrage, it once again
changed its course of action.
According to the New York Times,
Nancy Brinker, founder and CEO of the
foundation, has now "reversed course and
restored Komen's relationship with Planned
Parenthood."
Brinker released a statement apologizing
to the "American public for recent decisions
that cast doubt upon our commitment to
our mission of saving women's lives." ^
Although this apology and decision to
support Planned Parenthood again are both
positive outcomes, the fact still remains
that the Susan G. Komen for the Cure
foundation prioritized politics and popular
opinion before its devotion to women's
health.
The game of politics is already a corrupt
and malignant leech that attaches itself onto
too many aspects of our daily lives. But
now, with its interference in saving lives, it
has gone too far.
It's simple: politics should play no role in
women's health or cancer research. Period.
Letter to the Editor
Hot topic: the Guilford College woods
I was, until last week at least, pretty apathetic about the
issue of bonfires and student-built structures in the woods.
Like most students, I did not open the email regarding a policy
change about student activities in the woods. This disinterest
lasted until I read The Guilfordian's front page stoiy. To say
I was left speechless would be an undemtatement. I was
shocked the administration had not done more to prevent me
and my fellow students from injuring ourselves in the woods.
To explain, I should say that I am one hundred and ten percent
behind the administration on this issue, particularly in reganl
to their stance on drugs and alcohol around the fire pits. It is
well known that fire and incapacitated people are a dangerous
mix, as are inebriated people and tree forts. This is why the
administration absolutely had to destroy every fire pit as
well as the two story tree fort. However, I do not think the
administration goes far enough in protecting students from
themselves.
I was strolling in the woods the other day and saw, by my
count, nearly two dozen trees with limbs that grow low enough
and are spaced at such regular intervals to make climbing quite
easy. These trees must be cut down, or at the very least be
trimmed so that no low-hanging limbs that can be used to start
climbing remain. These trees are extremely dangerous. Imagine
a drunk or high person wandering through the woods and
coming upon a climbing tree. Their defenses are down and they
care little for their own safety. So they scramble up the trunk
higher and higher until a limb breaks and they plummet back to
earth, injuring themselves or worse, landing next to a personal
injury lawyer. This is my nightmare and I will not have it
actualized! I call upon both the student and professorial bodies
to join me in taking this matter into our own hands. I will give
the administration two weeks from the day this is published to
remove all climbing trees from the woods. If by this time the
climbing trees are not gone, I will either alone or in conjunction
with others saw them down.
Furthermore, I call on the student body to put aside its
objections to this sanitization of our woods. Remember,
protecting you from every possible danger you might encounter
drunk, high or sober is vastly more important than having
a student body that can enjoy the woods. So, please pipe
down with your disingenuous arguments of community
strengthening and innovation and, remember that when the
school tears student creations apart, they are protecting us from
the woods' well-documented and extremely lengthy history of
being a place of drug-induced injury and sexual assault that
can only be magnified by having a "work of art" in our woods.
Lastly, on my walk through the woods, I noticed several
boulders and at least one slippery slope that should be made
safer as quickly as is legally expedient. Keeping student safety
in mind, I think the school also needs to tear down the student
party spot and haven of underage drinking known as "Milner
Hall," which was responsible for several hospitalizations last
semester in short succession. I would like to preemptively thank
the administration for acting on my proposal, but also remind
everyone that if the administration is content to continue with
its current half-measures, I will have to take the safety of this
community and lives of the climbing trees into my own hands.
Sincerely,
William Dobbins
Staff Ediforial
Dear reader,
We are all familiar with the extravagant
gestures of romance: chocolate, red roses,
singing telegrams, expensive gifts laid at the
feet of the beloved by the swooning smitten.
And while we might be secret suckers for
gooey-centered, heart-shaped amour, we,
dear Reader, are here to sing the praises of a
different sort of love.
It's a love that goes by many names but is
rarely recognized for what it is. Sometimes
we call it the daily grind. It's the teacher
who gets up tired in the morning after
spending the night with a stack of papers,
walks boldly into a classroom, and starts all
over again. It's the mother eating her kid's
leftover sandwich crusts for lunch as she
rushes from work in order to take him to
his basketball game. It's the cashier working
the graveyard shift, who has a word of
kindness for every bleary-eyed customer
who stumbles in.
There's no glory in it. It's just life. There
are no chart-topping songs written about
the devotion a parent feels for their child,
there are no greeting cards that express the
courage required to pursue a high ideal, or
the strength it takes to work a thankless job.
We have a holiday for the sweep-you-off-
your-feet, carry-you-to-Paris, throw-rose-
petals-on-a-big-bed kind of love. And while
that kind of love might be a picnic (pardon
the cliche), it's just that: a pleasant, but
comparatively trivial, diversion. (And yes,
a cliche.)
So why do we laud this one version of
love above all other emotions? Is it some
bizarre holdover from the Middle Ages?
Is it because (heterosexual) romantic love
is procreative, and we want to ensure the
survival of our species? Have we been
duped by greeting card companies?.^ ■
But we digress. We aren't here to defame
romance, we come in the spirit of love,
wishing only to share the wealth.
There is, and will never be, a holiday that
celebrates the everyday love that oils the
gears of the world. Perhaps the reason is that
we don't need a holiday; we do it anyway.
We get up, we go to work, we go to school, '
we extend kindness to strangers, we devote ■
ourselves to work and play. We are all great
lovers.
But we also get caught up. We forget;
the real reasons that we do what we do. In
honor of true love, we want to wear our
hearts on our sleeve, and confess our true ’
feelings to you:
We, The Guilfordian, love you, dear ■
Reader. Be you young or old, fat or thin. !
Be you bald of head or thick of hain Be you !
white chocolate or pure cocoa, spicy or
sweet, messy or neat. Be you skeptical or
starry-eyed, devoted reader or occasional
skimmer. We love you.
The editorial bw\rd of the Guilfordian consists of ,
FIVE SECTION editors, A PHOTO EDITOR, LAYOUT EDITOR,
^“WEB EDITOR,’" DIVERSITY COORDINATOR, ADVERTISING
; MANAGER, VIDEO EDITOR, EXECUTIVE PRINT COPY EDITOR,
^IXEOJTIVE WEB COPY EDITOR, SOCIAL JUSTICE EDITOR,
^MANAGING EDITOR, AND EDITOR-IN-CHIEF.
rfetECTiNG Guilford College's core Quaker values,
THE TOPIG AND CONTENT OF STAFF EDITORIALS ARE
r CHOSEN THROUGH CONSENSUS OF ALL 16 EDITORS.