Congress: raisin’ the roof since 1960

21 Jul 2011, Posted by Chinmayi Sharma in News, 0 Comments

Today’s national forecast: hot, dry and divided.

As Americans suffer a devastating heat wave, Congress faces its own heat as tempers flare and party crevices grow. The United States now faces approximately $14.5 trillion of debt, a sum that exceeds the debt limit of approximately $14.3 trillion, and so the government must decide whether or not to raise the amount of debt that the U.S. Department of Treasury is allowed to issue (for a rousing game of “how high can you count?”, feel free to visit http://www.usdebtclock.org/).

This, however, is a misleading summary of the current state of events.

According to a Civitas poll, only 39 percent of North Carolinians support raising the debt roof with deep cuts in federal spending, and 47 percent oppose it. 16 percent of the polled individuals oppose deep cuts in federal spending. 31 percent polled oppose raising of the debt roof at all, yet this group may not understand the history of U.S. debt management.

Should Congress fail to raise the debt limit, the U.S. government will essentially cease to function. This means that every federal branch and all of its subsidiary departments will theoretically shut down, which would be unprecedented in American history. According to the Treasury’s website, we have raised the debt roof 78 times since 1960 under administrations of both parties.

The treasury has imposed an August 2 deadline to raise the debt ceiling, a time-bomb for President Obama, Congress and the country as a whole. The most pressing question of the hour is not whether or not the ceiling will be raised but how will the U.S. eradicate the massive debt it has accumulated to prevent a future crisis.

Although not the most accurate description, this does express the dire need for Congress to come to a compromise. While the situation can be called a debt crisis, it by no means rivals the Greek debt crisis. Should Congress fail to compromise, federal officials will not pack up their bags and head home, shutting off power on Capitol Hill for good. Rather, the Treasury will have to prioritize items to be paid until a compromise IS reached.

The top of the laundry list is servicing interest payments and refunding maturing bonds, which can be covered by tax revenues. This is just a temporary solution, however, much like band-aiding an amputated limb.

President Obama and Speaker of the House John Boehner R-OH have had their hands full laying down a bridge between their divided parties. As usual, the discrepancy is deeply involved and esoteric but long story short: Republicans think that Democrats want to impose higher taxes, and Democrats think that Republicans want drastic budget cuts primarily for social programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Both parties have proposed their own versions of bills incorporating their respective agenda but, as of today, none have gained enough bi-partisan support to pass.

This situation has not boded well for Obama’s national popularity. Civitas took North Carolina’s temperature and found that Obama’s approval rate dropped from 51 percent to 44 percent.

With the 2012 elections approaching, both parties have stakes in the outcome of this predicament.

It pays to go to Duke

21 Jul 2011, Posted by Melissa Dalis in News, 0 Comments

Dukies, on average, rack in the 7th highest mid-career salary ($113,000) of students at any university, according to PayScale’s 2011-2012 Salary Report published today.

Princeton University’s students had the highest mid-career median salary of $130,000, followed by California Institute of Technology, Harvey Mudd College, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dartmouth College, Duke, Polytechnic Institute of New York University, Colgate University and Stanford University.

Coming out of college, however, Duke students aren’t doing as well as students from many other universities. In the starting median salary category, Duke only ranked 33rd with $54,400. Engineering schools like MIT, Caltech and Harvey Mudd scored best in this category. Other schools ranked surprisingly low—Harvard at 37th, Columbia University at 49th, Dartmouth at 59th and Yale University at 73rd.

In the Top 10 Southern Colleges by Salary Potential category, Duke has the highest mid-career median salary but follows Georgia Institute of Technology for the second highest starting carerr salary.

Last year Duke ranked 9th on the Highest Median Salaries list, but actually made $4,000 more on average than this year—blame it on the economy?

New course numbers now available on ACES

20 Jul 2011, Posted by Melissa Dalis in News, 2 Comments

Either I just got a lot smarter and am suddenly taking insanely difficult classes, or ACES just changed on me.

Although the new course numbering system will not affect courses before Fall 2012, all of the new numbers are now, as of today, visible in the planner for classes placed in the Fall 2012 and later terms. They are not available on the course catalog under the registration tab since the catalog currently only includes classes through 2011.

“[The new course numbers] were intentionally updated to allow everyone—faculty, staff, guests and students—to see the future numbers,” said John Campbell, Associate Director of Student Information Services and Systems (SISS). “For students planning their schedule in advance, they will be able to choose the new classes to add to their planner.”

Courses taken through 2011 will, however, remain unchanged on students’ transcripts.

“If we did that every time we changed a number, we’d have to change thousands and thousands of transcripts,” Campbell said. “Think of a transcript as a legal document—once you changed something you don’t go back after the fact.”

As reported by The Chronicle in March, the current numbering system only includes four distinct levels of classes: introductory (0-99), advanced (100-199), senior and graduate (200-299) and graduate-only (300-399). The new system will include six distinct levels of classes: freshman-only (0-99), introductory (100-199), undergraduate above introductory (200-399), advanced (400-499), graduate open to undergraduate (500-699) and graduate-only (700-999).

Students no longer need to worry about very low course numbers appearing on their transcript for introductory courses—Psychology 11 is now Psychology 101, Economics 51 is now Economics 101, Engineering 53L is Engineering 110L and Public Policy 55D is now Public Policy 155D.

“There’s something scary about seeing 300-level computer science courses in my planner,” said sophomore Peggy Li.

Since Economics is the most popular major at Duke, I played around with the Planner and pretended to be an Economics student who would take Economics 51, 55, 105, 110 and 139 as core classes and 153, 181, 187, 195 and 225 as electives. Under the new system, courses taken after 2012 will be numbered 101, 201, 205, 210, 208, 353, 381, 438, 390 and 673—that sounds much better to me (and probably employers, too)!

An email sent this afternoon from SISS to students, faculty and staff said that ACES will not be accessible from July 22 to July 25, but this is not related to the new course numbers that have been entered, Campbell said.

“This weekend we’ll be putting in some new changes that don’t really affect the look and feel,” Campbell said. “They affect how things work in the background.”

DUMC ranked 9th best hospital in nation

19 Jul 2011, Posted by Melissa Dalis in News, 0 Comments

Duke University Medical Center is the 9th best hospital in the nation, according to the U.S. News & World Report 2011-2012 rankings published today. DUMC was ranked 10th in the 2010-2011 rankings.

In the specialty rankings, DUMC ranked 5^th in geriatrics, 5^th in pulmonology, 6^th in orthopedics, 7^th in cardiology and heart surgery, 7^th in ophthalmology, 8^th in neurology and neurosurgery, 8^th in urology, 9^th in gynecology, 9^th in kidney disorders, 11^th in cancer, 12^th in rheumatology, 13^th in gastroenterology, 16^th in psychiatry, 26^th in diabetes and endocrinology and 27^th in ear, nose and throat.

Here were the top 10 hospitals ranked on the Best Hospitals Honor Roll for 2011-2012:

1. Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore
2. Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston
3. Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota
4. Cleveland Clinic
5. Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles
6. New York-Presbyterian University Hospital of Columbia and Cornell, New York
7. UCSF Medical Center, San Francisco
8. Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston
9. Duke University Medical Center, Durham
10. Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

The silence of our friends

18 Jul 2011, Posted by Michael Shammas in News, 0 Comments

On January 26, a spark caught fire in Syria. It was kindled by the past transgressions of that country’s brutal leadership—the Assad regime—and now, despite months of killing, Bashar al-Assad has yet to contain that fire. He has failed to understand that every Syrian father, mother and child he kills is fuel for the revolution’s persistence. Yet even the most stubborn protestors must succumb to force eventually. Even the loudest rally is no match for bullets. And as I watch the videos of peaceful crowds being mowed down by Syrian soldiers and government thugs, my heart sinks. Without help, these people will fail; the flawed doctrine of “might makes right” will prevail. And although much of the world claims to champion freedom, and therefore to be friends of these activists whose sole desire is democracy, the international community has so far met the protestors’ demands with silence. It is a silence of hypocrites.

In large part, the government crackdown can persist because the West has not firmly expressed concern. Assad knows he can commit atrocities without facing consequences, as he would if the international community threatened force. But as someone with Lebanese roots, I am deeply concerned. For three decades, Lebanese civilians suffered torture, intimidation and terrorism from the Assad regime. Now Syrians are being murdered in their homes by the same government.

Enough is enough.

Background

In late January, Syrians took to the streets to call for the same political and civil reforms other Arab nations were demanding. Their government met these protests not with an open ear, but instead with intimidation and force. Families were sundered as activists disappeared from their homes at night; snipers stationed on rooftops shot protestors at random; prominent lawyers and journalists were tortured to death. Despite all this, the revolution rages on. On March 18, activists marched through several Syrian cities and chanted, “God, Syria, Freedom”—a slogan undoubtedly challenging the traditional pro-regime slogan, “God, Syria, Bashar.” The protestors’ implicit demand was that Assad must step down.

But no despot yields power easily. Since the protests began, Syrian forces have besieged Deraa, Homs, Baniyas and Hama. Army tanks are shelling residential areas. Thousands of refugees are still pouring out of Syria and into Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. Hundreds have been estimated dead, and thousands—many of whom were likely swooped from their homes by the Syrian secret police—are missing. In the meantime, the West has done little but impose narrow sanctions; Russia and China, whose interests align with Assad’s, have kept quiet; and with the exception of Iran—a nation that actually supports the thug—Middle Eastern nations have merely twiddled their thumbs.

A Silence of Hypocrites

So here we are. People are dying for the simple reason that they yearn for democracy, yet the West—despite intervening in Libya on the behalf of armed rebels at a time when fewer had died—has done little but watch as Assad murders unarmed protestors. How can we, or anyone else in the world, call ourselves champions of democracy if we watch and do nothing? The Syrian revolt is now a fire, a flame, but unless the protestors receive a boost from the world now when they need it most, it will inevitably dwindle to just a flicker. We need only remember the tragedy that occurred during the Hama protests in 1982, when Bashar’s father Hafez used tanks and aircraft to slaughter 20,000 of his own people. If the West remain silent, who knows how high the death toll could climb? If Assad believes he faces no consequences for his actions, he will continue to do whatever he thinks he must in order to keep power.

Yes, we have interests in Syria; yes, those interests could be helped—or hurt—by intervening. But simple humanity calls for us to do something. We don’t even need to send in missiles; no, sending words would do. But the words we send must be more potent than what has already been said; we—the West—must demand rights for the Syrian people, that Iran cease its intervention and that Assad step down. Only then can we bolster a people who have been treaded on for so long.

The Syrian protesters are a ragtag group of rebels demanding freedom from oppression. Their situation is not unlike that of the American rebels of the eighteenth century—poorly equipped citizens fighting for freedom from a vastly more powerful force that refuses to represent them. Yet even our ancestors had help in attaining liberty—and unlike the Syrian civilians, they were armed. They could fight back.

All the protestors are asking of us now is to know that we care—to know that the world cares. Even if democracy wins out in Syria, I fear that later our inaction will bear heavily on the minds of those who have shed blood to attain liberty. In the words of Martin Luther King Jr., “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” Not all Syrians consider us friends, but Assad has never been our friend. And now we have this one chance to show the people who could replace him that our defining ideology—freedom—is not only an ideal, but a reality, and a reality that extends to all people, regardless of race or religion.

Eventually, Assad or his sons must cease power—history teaches that no repressive regime lasts forever. But how long until the family falls? How long until “might makes right” is replaced by morality, until the pen and law and human decency really do triumph over the sword? How much longer can the world stand by and do nothing while democracy-loving, decent people are tortured so much that their bodies are mangled beyond recognition? I’m done standing by. We must act. We must do something.

Silence is murder. As of today, the entire world is silent. The world is, by sheer complacency alone, on Assad’s side. It is the Syrian protestors versus the world.

They don’t stand a chance.