DISCOURSE
- Student information continues to remain public Editorial
- Better access to condoms will lower STD rates Editorial
- PETA exposes animal researchers' cruelties Jamie Williams
- Rudy Giuliani moves from long-shot to top tier Daniel Weintraub
Student information continues to remain public
Editorial
Scoring that cute guy's or girl's digits might not be as tough as it once was: the University of North Florida is now in the business of selling your personal information to paying parties.
As students go about their daily lives, the administration is dishing out their contact information for use by credit card companies, insurance agencies and worse.
For a mere $50 fee, businesses can request what's called "directory information" about the UNF student body, which includes the names, addresses, phone numbers and academic information of approximately 20,000 past and present students.
Since the beginning of 2006, the registrar's office has handed over your personal information to three corporations and several branches of the U.S. military.
The only line of defense against forfeiting the details of your personal and academic life lies in something called a Request for Non-Disclosure of Directory Information form, which the school makes available at One Stop Student Services.
While no hard statistics are available, it's a safe bet that only a minute fraction of the 20,000 students losing their privacy each semester are aware this recourse is available to them - or, for that matter, that their information is even being shared with profit-seeking companies for a paltry sum in the first place.
The one aspect of the fiasco in which the UNF powers that be have been mercifully considerate of students is in refusing to supply vendors with the e-mail addresses of everyone in the student body.
Although they may legally share that information under the terms of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, they have seen fit to protect at least that much of their students' identities from prying eyes.
Evidently the $1,676.25 the average student pays per semester to attend school here doesn't entitle them to any kind of confidentiality that can't be broken for a $50 fee. The next time you're solicited by Herff Jones Inc. without having invited them to contact you first, be aware it's UNF, where students are the first priority, that gave away your information.
Better access to condoms will lower STD rates
Editorial
Duval County has the fifth-highest sexually transmitted disease rate in the state, and it's time for county officials to take some preventive measures and encourage residents to wrap it up.
The 20-24 age group has the highest rate of STDs in Duval County, and the leading diseases are chlamydia and gonorrhea. The consequences of these STDs can lead to sterility and even HIV. More than 7,200 of these cases were reported in 2006. With the rate of increase being around 4 percent last year, it's essential that Jacksonville officials take action to stop the spread of STDs.
Jacksonville's conservative leaders need to take some initiative and encourage its residents to practice safe sex. Other cities have taken a proactive stance toward the fight against STDs, but Jacksonville is still lacking in effective prevention measures.
With the rate of STDs in this city so high, action is needed. If not, Duval County could easily go from having the fifth-highest rate of STDs in the state to being top-ranked county in Florida. It's safe to assume that is a distinction Jacksonville officials and residents do not want to have.
New York City is one city that has actively attempted to slow the spread of STDs, including HIV. Its health officials recently launched a campaign to provide more than 26 million free condoms to New Yorkers. The health department began distributing condoms Feb. 14 in retail stores, subway stops, online, health departments and other locations around the city. Its goal is to make safe sex always possible to prevent its third leading cause of death, AIDS.
As students, we may take the availability of condoms for granted. Student Medical Services has a plentiful supply of free condoms that can be grabbed at any time, and it's not uncommon to be handed a condom while walking along the Green. This easy access to condoms is not consistent throughout the city of Jacksonville. Many of the demographics with the highest STD rates do not have access to condoms. Many are poor without the means to purchase condoms or lack the transportation to purchase them.
There has been opposition to the availability of condoms as a resource to combat the STD epidemic. Religious leaders and conservative politicians have questioned condoms, saying their availability encourages promiscuity. They say abstinence, not safe sex, is the only way to combat these diseases. But their views are skewed and out-of-date. Restraint, while effective, is unrealistic. To rely on that particular birth control method as the only way to fight STDs will not help the problem. It has always been an option of prevention and it's obviously not working. Diseases are more common than ever, and it's time to get over conservative opinions and try to help our society.
Jacksonville officials have overlooked these diseases for far too long. They can't ignore the statistics. Instead of discouraging people from having sex, Duval County should follow New York City's example and help prevent negative consequences that will inevitably occur as a result of risky sexual behaviors.
PETA exposes animal researchers' cruelties
Student Opinion
A recent investigation by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, exposed monstrous abuses to animals in laboratories at Columbia University. When Dr. Catherine Dell'Orto, a postdoctoral veterinary researcher at Columbia, stepped forward to tell PETA what she had witnessed, the investigation began.
The study found severe cruelty directed towards primates, poorly kept records, and unethical veterinary standards extended over a great length of time. Norfolk, Va.-based PETA is calling on Columbia to end these malicious experiments, which are of no sensible significance.
In a means to study the connection between stress and women's menstrual cycles, monkeys were induced with stress by surgically implanting metal pipes in their skulls. After the anesthetics wore off, the animals were given nothing but an aspirin. One monkey, left alone to recuperate from the repulsive implant surgery, was photographed with blood running down her face long after she had come out of anesthesia.
Baboons' left eyeballs were detached to reach and clamp a vital blood vessel to their brains and administer experimental drugs. A synthetic stroke resulted. Left
without the care of a veterinarian, the baboons were unable to chew, drink, or even lift their heads, and were instead left hunched over in cages, according to animal records.
For 20 years, the researchers have also pumped nicotine and morphine into pregnant baboons that are strapped into backpacks full of instrumentation and tethered inside their metal cages. While still in the uterus, their fetuses go through surgery. One baboon's severe bone
infection went untreated, and she lost 40 percent of her body weight.
Another baboon endured five gruesome surgeries, all of which Columbia's inadequate Animal Care and Use Committee approved.
Most recently the situation has come to light from recording artist and faithful PETA member, Nellie McKay.
In a song, entitled "Columbia is Bleeding" from her 2006 album, Pretty Little Head, she describes in vivid detail the horrors conducted on the animals. Lyrics such as "the
surgeon is in town and there you are; the clamp is comin' down, then a scream," and "the tube is fitted in and there you are; the tepid sedative, then a scream," portray the
dreadfulness.
But what hits home more than that is perhaps the simple, sarcastic tone McKay uses when she says "this is the Ivy League." Columbia University is regarded as one of the top universities in not only the
country, but in the world. Its alumni is highly regarded, along with
professors and researchers. So why did they allow this cruelty toward animals to start, much less continue?
Even though U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) investigators and the university's own domestic investigation have both concluded that Columbia failed to present
sufficient veterinary care, euthanasia to animals used in experiments, and even basic post-surgical care, the torment continues.
Please do your part as a citizen of our planet and help those we share it with. Get involved, voice your
opinion, and go sign the petition at http://www.petitiononline.com/CruelCol/petition.html.
Contact Jamie Williams at uspinnak@unf.edu -- PERMALINK -- TOP OF PAGE
Rudy Giuliani moves from long-shot to top tier
Only a few months ago, conventional wisdom throughout much of the political world was that former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani might make a competitive Republican candidate for president in a general election, but he could never win his party's nomination because conservative primary voters would reject him.
Now, suddenly, that wisdom seems to have shifted, and as Giuliani trouped through California this week, he was wowing conservatives with his charisma, his gift for sounding spontaneous on the stump and his call for bold national leadership.
"Rudy" - as he is known everywhere - has already been accepted as one of three top-tier Republican candidates, along with Arizona Sen. John McCain and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. With California and several other large industrial states set to move their primaries up to early February, Giuliani might be more formidable than ever.
"All three candidates have challenges when it comes to proving themselves to conservatives," said Jon Fleischman, a party activist whose Flashreport.org Web site is considered by insiders to be the voice of conservative Republicans in the state. "Giuliani has just as good a shot as the other two of trying to articulate to conservatives why, as they compromise to pick a candidate, it should be him."
Romney, though seemingly a favorite of social conservatives, has a shifting record on some hot-button issues, including abortion. McCain frustrated grass-roots types with his sponsorship of a federal campaign finance measure that has meant restrictions on campaign activity - and free speech - that hardly qualify as limited government. Giuliani, meanwhile, has his familiar record in favor of abortion rights, gay rights and some restrictions on gun ownership, not to mention an interesting personal past that includes a very public divorce.
Dan Schnur, a Republican communications expert who worked for McCain in 2000, says the field so far reminds him of the old joke about two guys who are out camping in the woods and see a bear approaching. As one of them puts on his shoes, the other one says, "You're crazy, you can't outrun a bear." To which the first one replies: "I know, but I can outrun you."
"These three candidates don't have to convince conservatives to trust them completely," Schnur said. "One of them just has to convince conservatives to trust him more than the other guys."
On that score, Giuliani has had a mixed performance in California. At the state Republican convention in Sacramento, he failed to show for a scheduled visit with the California Republican Assembly, a conservative grass-roots group, ticking off some activists who probably would not have supported him anyway, at least in the primary. But convention delegates responded warmly to his speech, which included a strong defense of President Bush's conduct of the war on Islamic terrorism. And his presence created a buzz in the hall that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has something of a love-hate relationship with party regulars, could not match.
From the convention Giuliani went to the Silicon Valley, where he attracted a crowd of 500 on short notice for a speech that was well received. And then it was on to Fresno for a fundraiser hosted by former state Sen. Chuck Poochigian, who is just one of many prominent California conservatives who have already joined the campaign.
Bill Simon, the Los Angeles financier who was the Republican candidate for governor in 2002 and is a former colleague of Giuliani in the U.S. attorney's office in New York, is supporting him. So are Curt Pringle, the mayor of Anaheim, and Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich. The not-so-conservative former mayor of Los Angeles, Richard Riordan, is also on board.
Giuliani clearly benefits from the aura surrounding his performance in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York, when he was seen as a strong leader in a crisis.
"I think he has broad appeal in California," said Kevin Spillane, a Republican political consultant who has been talking to the campaign about joining the effort. "Even people who disagree with him on social issues respect him and see him as a strong leader and believe he is an effective and competent and very substantive political figure. I think that's what people are looking for."
The plans of California, Florida, New Jersey and perhaps Illinois to shift their primaries to the first Tuesday in February should also help Giuliani because the front-loaded schedule would put a premium on political celebrity, which he certainly has. The schedule would also give an advantage to the candidates who can raise the most money to pay for television advertising in those media-heavy states. While the man some call "America's mayor" has not built a huge war chest yet, he is capable of doing so with most of the year still ahead of him.
It still seems difficult to believe that Republicans, even in California, will nominate a candidate for president who supports abortion rights and is comfortable around homosexuals. But these are strange political times. Maybe, like the gallows, the fear of another President Clinton will concentrate the collective Republican mind.
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