"They teach us to OBEY but not to CHALLENGE" NADER speaks

Paper Paper Reporting:

Ralph Nader, the attorney, activist, public speaker, author, defender of the constitutuion, and sometimes presidential canidate, came and spoke at Tulane this week. Under the guise of running for president, Nader stopped in New Orleans long enough to remind a packed auditorium about the ideals that the country was founded upon and the prevailing threats that assail them right now.

In terms of his political aspirations my friend Joey described him as "The exterminator who is running for the top position among vermin." It takes a serious man to take on such a foolhardy task and to keep up a doomed mission.

But make no mistake, Ralph Nader is getting results. This here is proof.

His speech was informative and rallying. From illegal wiretapping, to student loan inflation, to privatized prison systems there is no scandal this man is not keeping score on (just like he did when he first took the auto industry in 1965). Which is good! Because somebody has to stay alert. Or has he would explain, we all do. Its our civic duty to stay informed and from there keep the government in check and under our thumbs.

That is why every four years he traverses the country, going to all 50 states, to deliver speeches to people so that they don't forget the state that the union is in. He's 74 and still full of passion, anger, and hope for this country and its ability to make a u-turn away from the course it is currently on.

However, only if we all decide to grab the wheel.

(here are some notes with electronic paint)



"The american people can have anything they want but it seems as though they want nothing much at all."

"Better to vote for the thing you believe in and lose than to vote for the thing you don't believe in and win"

-Eugene Debs (his hisotrical role model)

On the current educatuion system:

MEMORIZATION TO REGURGITATION TO VEGETATION; THEY TEACH US TO OBEY BUT NOT TO CHALLENGE

(Now excuse me while I go update my account on facebook)

Tommy hits it

Generally I don't find much in the Hullabaloo that I agree with but this week was different. I've known Tommy since we were both freshmen on the same hall in the Wall residential college and I've got a lot of respect for his opinion, though I certainly don't always agree. He is one of the least weird locals I've met and I'm pleased he is now in charge of the campus paper.

I'm glad to see someone speaking out against the ridiculous hype machine that is Tulane University. It seems to me colleges have become far too obsessed with there PR and selling themselves to potential customers AKA high school seniors. Tommy sights highlighting only good news as the reason Tulane would again 'forget' the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, one of the most cataclysmic events of the city and country in modern times.



He makes a good point that while 'they' (read:the school administrators) won't commemorate the disaster, they will eagerly pay lip service to the campus' community service efforts. While 'community service' is a noble cause, I personally feel the term has begun an overused buzz word that gets tossed around for the purpose of self-promotion, by both prospective students and universities trying to attract them. This is partially to blame for the undue stress put upon high-school students to boost their 'resumes' and appear like a super citizen so they can apply to 'quality' universities. Thus beguns a stupid back and forth between student and school with each one unintentionally whoring themselves out to the other via waste of paper in the mail:


Student letter: "Here's my community service record and a picture of me holdings hands with an elderly person and saving a sick puppy from a tornado. Did I mention I also LOVE to play Mozart on my cello?"

University brochure: "Look at our photoshopped campus with its neon green grass quads. Here is a bench under a shady tree where a group of students consisting of a black guy, an asian dude, a cute sorority girl just happened to be engaged in a rousing conversation, you can tell by the way they're smiling. Did we tell you about the new food court we installed in the UC? Who doesn't like a taco bell with a salad bar?"
So the two finally meet and after orientation the romance inevitably ends. The student quits the charade of helping for the sake of his fellow citizens and focuses on drinking and chasing tail, while the administration quickly forgets about them in the sea of already ensnared students and sets its sights on the fresh new blood it can attract to its web.

So universities, like Tulane, reveal there true intentions as a buisness rather than an school, when they do things like promote themselves on paper but fail to commemorate Hurricane Katrina, an event that still continues to impact the lives of its students and civic neighbors daily.

Gustav inspired art

It has been a very harrowing week. Tulane's decision to close down the school forced my decision to evacuate which I had hoped I wouldn't have to do at the beginning of my senior year, just as I had had to do at the beginning of my freshmen year.

I drove back to Nashville with my friends Ted of New Jersey and Patrick of Evanston. Having my friends there and going through all the strife and worrying with them helped tremendously and along with our other friends Ned and Justin we we weathered the evacuation together.

Since this was the first major storm since Rita, there was a lot of uncertainty and theorizing about if the near future would play out like it had 3 years before. News of the storm arrived around the three year anniversary of Katrina, as I'm sure you know, so that left a lot of us on edge. The entire time I just didn't even want to hypothesize about what I would do if school closed down again for another semester.

So since I refused to even think about that possibility my mental energy had to be directed somewhere else. Thinking positively and holding out hope for the future became my only option. Over the last week I've remembered the importance of having faith (in anything mind you). Its just so important to have idea in your mind you can believe in to keep your worst fears and anxieties at bay.

Admittedly, I didn't do an incredible job of this. My faith was often shook and I drank and smoked a lot over the past week because I didn't know how else to cope. I was not down on my knees, begging to god all week but shaking my head, unable to imagine an alternative for this place that has become my home.

This is still very hard for me to make sense of. I'm really grateful that our levees held and that we can only come together again back in New Orleans. I'm also really grateful for everyone outside the city that expressed their concern for what might've happened to New Orleans.

Here are some things I drew during the week. I had the template already done up (and in fact it is already screen printed on the next issues back cover)

"There is no why"

MAN ON WIRE

Everybody who can should check out this awesome movie about Phillipe Petit, a man who set up a high wire between the two world trade towers and walked across it. It is showing at the Belcourt Theatre in Nashville and the Landmark's Century Centre Cinema in Chicago but nowhere, unfortunately in New Orleans. Petit didn't act alone; the help and planning of his friends and accomplices was absolutely essential and it took them years to plan before they executed the feat in 1974.



The movie is an in-depth documentary about the whimsical, bizzare nature of Petit that looks at his other high wire accomplishments such as spanning the Notre Dame Cathedral in his native country of France. There is ample footage from his entire life that the film makers had to work with, which is not all that surprising when you think about what kind of showmanship it must take to inspire someone to balance thousands of feet above a concrete carpet. Petit does things to be seen and this movie serves that purpose.

But ultimately what he accomplished is more whimsical and inspiring than egotistical and showy. Some of the people watching him that day were moved to tears and even the policeman who later arrested him can't hide the awe and admiration in his voice as he describes what he saw.

Check it out here and then check it for yourself.

Takin 'em to Church: The Dre Show

High school is a strange and awkward time as anyone who cares to reminisce will attest. Consistently the most painful and excruciating time each week at school was the assembly on Wednesday. After we piled in to the auditorium and begrudgingly sat on floor we would start to heckle any of our peers who dared to take an enough interest in the greater community to stand up and make an announcement at the front of the room. It was a tough crowd that made no attempts to conceal their desire to be anywhere else and we let speakers know it.

Essentially, there were only two ways to win the crowds favor. The first was to cave into the passive aggressive peer pressure from the sea of bored stares and attempt to make your announcement as quick as possible. In theory, this would insure that later on no one could fault you for talking too long and keeping them there any longer than was necessary. (We were teenagers after all, so you can imagine the very important, very pressing things we had to do in our free time). This tactic usually backfired as people inevitably became nervous which lead them to ramble on and then forget how to talk in to the microphone. Eventually the meek, mumbling wreck that only moments before had been a freestanding freshman girl with confidence and a cause (Bake Sale for Sick Puppies, Friday afternoon in the commons) would be at the brink of tears with 400 hundred exasperated faces glaring at her and eventually lead off stage by the vice-president.

The other, more successful way to avoid the crowd's disdain was to get us to laugh. Obviously this was a riskier and more difficult venture. However there was one man among us who repeatedly stepped up to the plate, deaf to our jeers, unafraid of striking out, and who could crack through our collective apathy long enough to get us to laugh at him.

Andre Churchwell was more than just a class clown. He was a bold comedian who put himself in the line of fire simply to get us to laugh, week after week. It was a foolhardy, selfless, and often futile attempt but he kept at it so that by the time I graduated I didn't know anybody who didn't consider him hilarious.

What he did took balls and still does. This is why I was glad to learn that he's still doing it. Earlier tonight I ran into him and he told me about his first recorded show, now on YouTube.

His act was part of a SCAD talent show and it is rather rough. He gets no help from a listing microphone stand but the crowd stays with him through out it. His imaginging what the world would be like if black people were in power certainly has potential (the KKK would be the Kunta Kinte Klan) and reminds me of my other favorite blog: stuff white people like. com Also his tale about a guy lighting his OWN tie on fire is funny to imagine.

Check it out here for yourself and give DrePants 3000 a pound the next time you see him. I know I'm glad he's still at it.