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Collective bargaining benefits all workers

By The Observer · Monday, March 7, 2011

Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that "Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his [or her] interests." In the U.S., we seem to have forgotten that the ability to bargain collectively is an internationally recognized right of all people, rich or poor, in the public or private sector. While workers depend on employers for wages, employers depend on workers for the labor that produces the goods and services that create profit. The two parties are co-dependent. Therefore, the working class is an indispensible part of our economic system and should have the ability to voice its needs and concerns in the only legal form available: unionization. Collective bargaining allows both workers and employers to have a voice, pursue their interests, and come to a compromise. Sounds like democracy to me.

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Green Madness

By The Observer · Monday, March 7, 2011

Sunday March 13, 7p.m. Where will you be? I for one will be glued to a TV somewhere in SoCal anxiously awaiting the announcement of ND's NCAA tournament seeding. That's right, the GreenMan is obsessed with something other than the environment –– college basketball. Since I've been finding myself checking ESPN.com more than my email, I thought an examination of the green aspects of March Madness might be an appropriate topic for this column.

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We are one

By The Observer · Monday, March 7, 2011

My Contentious Politics course took an unexpected turn last Wednesday afternoon. Instead of meeting, like we regularly do, in Debartolo 214 to discuss current controversial events, we met in a small seminar room at the Kroc Institute for Peace Studies to engage in an informal conversation with an undergraduate Palestinian student, now living in Jordan. "What would I learn from a student my age?" I thought to myself as I walked to the Kroc building. I had never met anyone from Jordan before, which seemed really interesting, but what else was I to expect from this casual conversation among us students?

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Credit due

By The Observer · Monday, March 7, 2011

Fiddler's Hearth also donated food to the Dance Marathon this weekend. Terry Meehan, owner of Fiddler's, attended the event, and was very generous by donating sliders and veggie trays for the last meal. I just wanted to make sure they received some recognition. They were missing from the article posted about Dance Marathon this weekend.

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Necessary conversations

By The Observer · Sunday, March 6, 2011

After watching the performance of Loyal Daughters and Sons on Thursday, I was stunned. Not by what I had seen — I know the horrors of sexual assault at Notre Dame only too well — but by the fact that afterwards no one was talking. After it ended everyone was either silent or started talking about more light-hearted subjects like their plans for the evening. If one in four college women are subjected to sexual assault, this means that over 1,000 women currently at Notre Dame have experienced it. How are we not talking about this?

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Rules and maxims for safe dining hall navigation

By The Observer · Sunday, March 6, 2011

It can be hit and miss. It's sometimes repetitive. It can be a drag. But most importantly, 6:15 rolls around each day and navigating through the dining hall is like driving the Loop in rush hour. There are traffic jams, crashes and a fair share of road rage. Everyone's felt a love tap from someone in the steamed veggie line or had someone cut them off in the drink area. If you're a Northy, walk in/out any of the side rooms and you run the risk of your clothes absorbing more food than your stomach. Oof.

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You define our work

By The Observer · Sunday, March 6, 2011

I was required to attend a live showing of the National Theatre's performance of "King Lear" at Browning Cinema Thursday night.

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Re-inventing the parasite

By The Observer · Sunday, March 6, 2011

My freshman year at Saint Mary's college, an Observer comic referred to Saint Mary's women as parasites. Some people, including my friends, were quite offended by this, but I didn't really care. I couldn't attend Notre Dame, even though I was in the top five percent of my high school class, scored well on the ACT and had a nice repertoire of activities that encompassed academics, athletics and fine arts. I simply couldn't afford it.

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A nationwide epidemic

By The Observer · Sunday, March 6, 2011

I've noticed a few articles in The Observer these past few days concerning the non-athlete shirt and there were a few issues I feel compelled to address.

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The MR degree

By The Observer · Sunday, March 6, 2011

The Viewpoints "The anti-MRS" (Mar. 1) and "MRS degree is alive and well" (Mar. 3) have both left me furious. It is the 21st century! What happened to gender equality, Title IX, the Equal Pay Act? Why is the MRS degree getting all the attention while the male equivalent MR degree remains on the sidelines? It is time that we raised the level of public discourse to the point where women's and men's issues are both discussed civilly. It is time that we recognized the MR degree as every bit as prestigious as the MRS degree.

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The topic of all topics

By The Observer · Sunday, March 6, 2011

In pondering the next Notre Dame issue I would tackle for this week's column, I could not help but realize that I had yet to enlighten the campus on my thoughts concerning the ultimate topic at Notre Dame — gender relations. Now, there are several facets of this topic that I could touch upon — freshman-year relationships, the supposed hook up culture, long-distance relationships, the incorrect definition many have of a feminist, the incessant need for a relationship versus the incessant need to avoid relationships, the hypocrisy with which many men treat women and so on. But if I have learned one thing from my professors here, it is to be concise and narrowly focused when writing.

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Please be courteous

By The Observer · Sunday, March 6, 2011

The last few days at lunch have been frustrating for me in one way: I haven't found a Chicago Tribune anywhere. Not at 11 a.m. and not at 1:30 p.m. Only last week there were a good four or more sitting in the return tray!

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Thank you

By The Observer · Thursday, March 3, 2011

When we use this space to talk about our work at The Observer, there's a tendency to focus on the nuances, if not the nuisances, that make the publication of a daily college newspaper a unique challenge.

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Return the respect

By The Observer · Thursday, March 3, 2011

I want to believe that you wrote in with good intentions, but I found your letter to the editor ("Let's be fair," Mar. 3), far more condescending than helpful. In your letter you explain that Saint Mary's students do your "premier university" a disservice when we equate the two schools, as "Notre Dame students have performed simply extraordinary feats in academics, community service, athletics and other areas." Claiming this as a point of distinction between our two schools is as inaccurate as it is intellectually dishonest. The women of Saint Mary's College have also accomplished "extraordinary feats," and we continue to carry over this tradition of excellence into our college years and beyond.

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Let's be real

By The Observer · Thursday, March 3, 2011

When I announced that I would be attending Saint Mary's, I was surprisingly often met with the response, "Isn't that the imposter Notre Dame?" Simply put, Saint Mary's is not Notre Dame nor should it be. The schools are indeed similar in their use of brick and their goal to achieve education of the mind without sacrifice of the heart. However, they offer vastly different academic opportunities with one school's style and efforts not inherently being better than the other's.

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Why can't we be friends?

By The Observer · Thursday, March 3, 2011

Let me assure you ("Let's be fair," Mar. 3), that if you were attempting to write an article that does not slight "the intelligence or effort" of Saint Mary's women you have failed miserably. Here at Saint Mary's we hold the same values and work just as hard if not harder than our neighbor across the street. Saint Mary's women equate the two schools because the schools are extremely similar. To say that I belong in a different league than you is demeaning and incredibly wrong. Just because you go to Notre Dame does not mean that you are any better than me. You don't know me and it's obvious you don't anything about the women here at Saint Mary's. When you arrogantly refer to Saint Mary's as the Fighting Illini and Notre Dame as the Chicago Bulls you are overlooking just how similar our learning institutions actually are. What you fail to realize is that we are in the exact same league; in fact we should be on the exact same team. I love both Notre Dame and Saint Mary's and I am proud of our historical connection. Only once everyone starts to accept the fact that both learning institutions are incredible prestigious can we all move forward.

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The freedom to be an ideological hypocrite

By The Observer · Thursday, March 3, 2011

The U.S. Supreme Court this week handed down an almost unanimous landmark ruling in Snyder v. Phelps. The 8-1 decision upheld, as First Amendment protected public discourse, a small church's hate-filled shouts and picketing at the funeral of a Marine killed in Iraq in 2006. The Westboro Baptist Church's leader, Fred Phelps, led many protests in which he and followers sullied funerals of fallen warriors with signs like "You're going to hell" — a perverse hypocritical religious profession that death in war is God's way of punishing the U.S. tolerance of homosexuality. It is difficult to find even the most ardent advocates of free speech who are delighted that the court approved such a classless ploy as protesting at private military funerals. The venomous tactics Phelps, a so-called church pastor, employs reeks with hypocrisy in the face of the overriding Christian tenet of love.

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