Upon telling all of my friends and peers that I’m graduating a year early, I always get the same reactions. Usually I’m asked “why,” followed up with a reminder that I’ll be “missing out on an amazing year of my life.” My response is always the same: overwhelming student debt paired with the credits to graduate early left no doubt in my mind that saving myself another $70,000 was more important than making memories in the fourth year of college.

Although I was lucky to be supported by my parents throughout the process, who paid for some of my college and cosigned on my loans, becoming financially independent earlier than most of my peers at a wealthy institution has been a difficult journey. Regardless, now less than a month away from graduation I should be feeling the normal mixture of pride and anxiety of ending a comfortable chapter of my life and starting a new one. However, at this point in the semester I am instead finding even more financial burdens that are overtaking the feelings of excitement I should be feeling about my accomplishments. Financial barriers to graduation are unfair and directly burden economically disadvantaged students over their more financially dependant counterparts.

Though I work three on-campus jobs — including as a managing editor for the OGB, a student-athlete tutor and a fitness attendant at the gym — I have struggled to keep up with all of the graduation requirements in the past few weeks. First, I was notified that I had a hold on my graduation until I paid off a $100 parking ticket and a $35 fee for replacing a student ID after studying abroad. For someone working minimum wage, on-campus jobs, $135 exceeds more than my weekly salary. This was an extremely stressful, burdensome email to receive. The second financial burden related to graduation caught me more by surprise: ordering a cap and gown. Just the basic, black cap and black gown, is $50 plus $15 for standard shipping to my home in Illinois. $75, again, for a minimum-wage paid student in debt is not a small fee. Again, to fit in with my peers at graduation I am required to wear a cap and gown during the commencement ceremony. This requirement was difficult for me to fulfill.

While these are direct financial burdens upon me, my family is also facing similar strains. Flying three people from Chicago to North Carolina and staying in a price-inflated hotel for three nights is not cheap. Including meals and activities during the day, this will be an expensive weekend. Though I am beyond thankful for my family coming to support me, I simultaneously understand the trouble this puts on them. Graduation weekend is celebrated differently by all families, and some have much harder times dealing with the non-celebratory moments.

My experience with debt has been a frightening, stressful one, but is in no way unique. Students at Wake Forest and around the country increasingly struggle with student loans as the price of a college education increases relative to minimum wage jobs. My working three jobs on campus allows me to get a few meals off campus and fill my car with gas; 50 years ago three jobs made a substantial dent in one’s college tuition. While I recognize that this is in no way unique to my experience, I also recognize that my relationship with debt is better than many of my peers, as my parents helped cover some of my tuition over the past three years and lent me money when I really needed it. I am graduating from college with an overwhelming amount of debt, but am not alone in this position.

Though this piece is in part a way for me to express my overwhelming stress about my financial situation of graduating in three years and being financially independent, it also acts as a call for awareness for the university and other students. While graduation is a time of celebrating achievements, some students have more difficult experiences at this point in the semester due to financial imbalances in the student body. The university must work to make graduation a more fair, accessible process for economically disadvantaged students to be able to celebrate as easily as their peers.

Admittedly, I am jaded. Sarcasm has taken precedent over authenticity in my life. The massive and lurching System — the lethargic modes of oppression, the structures of authority — has worn me out. At some point, being genuine in the face of a blind and cold bureaucracy was not worth it. Engaging in good faith is exhausting, especially when the other side is not. All of this is to say: I have little-to-no confidence in institutions.

So, when I got an email from the (notoriously risk-averse) Office of Communications regarding the sixth circle blogpost, I cannot say I expected to see anything shocking. Therefore, when I read the diatribe, I was surprised to find some kind of manifesto. The edgy font, the allusion to Dante, the patronizing rhetorical questions, the subtitle “Welcome to Hell, Heretics,” someone going by the name “Lucifer.” It is easy to simply not engage, to disregard the writers as fringe, to laugh off the aesthetic the way we satirize Tumblr blogs titled “~~Welcome To My Twisted Mind~~.” But, I think, much of the blog is worth engaging in because there is a sentiment of dissatisfaction here that is reflected more broadly in the student body (even if particulars are not).

The problem with dissatisfaction, however, is that there is rarely an easy fix (or any fix at all). The first couple of lines lay out the thesis of the blog post: “We cannot scream about injustice … the grindstone of our academic work … [or the] depressive cycles of our social lives.” Academic work is mentally and emotionally exhausting. Being a social creature can also be fatiguing. Injustice is maddening. So: what to do about all of it?

If I had the answers, I would probably not be an undergrad. But, with this in mind, let’s engage with some specifics brought up. The rolling of the quad, decried as “wasteful,” is exactly how the bloggers describe it. To anyone thinking critically about the matter, throwing toilet paper on trees is obviously wasteful, even more so than simply throwing it in the garbage, because we need to pay people to get ladders and clean the mess up. The reason it endures is also obvious to anyone thinking critically about the matter: Wake Forest is run primarily off of private donations, nostalgia is a powerful fuel for those private donations, and the rolling of the quad is a tradition that reminds donors that the Wake Forest they are supporting is the same Wake Forest that they went to. In the same vein, I suspect (but have no way of confirming) that Wake Forest has a strong financial incentive to sustain Aramark’s “monopoly over our dining and catering options” that the bloggers disparage.

This is to say that institutions hate change and that moving them requires so much. I would not be surprised to learn that Aramark and Wake Forest exploit their workers in ways alleged in this blog post. I would not be surprised to learn of systemic sexual harassment in fraternity lounges. Similarly, I don’t doubt that groups like THRIVE are too weak to deal with sexual assault; but here, I arrive at a stop, a place I must part with the bloggers. More people are acting in good faith than they allege. People that work at Wake Forest legitimately want to stop sexual harassment. The “figureheads” in charge of various political groups on campus genuinely believe they are doing good. The “diversity and inclusion” circles, despite their failings, were created because Wake Forest needed diversity and inclusion circles.

The bloggers are dissatisfied, even furious; they want to “break free” of the myriad bureaucratic institutions at Wake Forest. They criticize the “boring mediocrity” of the OGB, the “holier-than-thou farce” of the democratic socialists, and the “paralyzed” college political parties. The problem, however, is that by criticizing but not engaging with organizations on campus (and their criticisms are not without ground), they open themselves up to similar criticism. By enumerating the reasons that everything else is not good, they establish themselves as a structure (something like “The Anarchy Bloggers”) that they claim is good. I do not want to say that these bloggers do not make good points, because they do, and many changes can and should be pursued. In a sense, however, they have become the thing they hate: an organization that refuses to listen to the outside. In another sense still, by writing a post and establishing a “they,” they fail themselves: they build a structure for something structureless, an organization for an emotion that cannot be organized.

Some final, scattered, thoughts (because it is taxing and worrisome to engage with a post titled “You Are Not Safe Here”): we have not “lost the ability to care for each other.” This represents a romanticized view of history (not too long ago, this country was in a civil war); instead, we are angry as we have always been (sympathy is an ideal to continually strive toward). I am an advocate for real, genuine conversation, but discourse cannot save humanity. The OGB is, in fact, boring at times; that boringness is intrinsic and valuable in a campus newspaper. I went to a well-attended talk a couple of weeks ago about a feminist view of women’s participation in the labor market in the Global South. And, finally, be cautious of including rhetorical questions in your blogposts — you may be assuming too much about your reader.

Absurd, combative, impractical — these (among many more) are descriptors that I’ve overheard on campus for the recent manifesto published by the Sixth Circle. In the blog post titled “You Are Not Safe Here,” the authors detail their antipathy for the culture and institutions at Wake Forest and clarify certain ‘demands.’ Among these demands are the democratization of campus politics, freedom of ideas, better treatment of service people on campus, the end of Greek life and an overhaul of the current curriculum. While the manifesto does bring up numerous relevant issues, the way in which the authors present them undermines the potential cogency of their argument. I think the best adjective in describing the article is misguided.

  Do not get it confused, I do believe that the authors bring to light numerous areas where Wake Forest has an opportunity for improvement. The service people need to be treated better — one only has to look at their recent struggles for adequate transportation and job security to see that their safety and wellbeing are not appropriately prioritized. Sexual assault is an issue and needs to be addressed in a frank and transparent manner, involving students, faculty and administration. Unfortunately, various elements of their argument(s) undercut the change the five authors want to see. Ad hominem attacks, aggressive rhetoric and anonymity severely weaken the authors’ purpose behind the article and make individuals (especially individuals within the specific circles criticized in the blog post) turned off to a constructive conversation that could improve the dynamics mentioned in the article.

  Throughout the blog post the authors engaged in personalized attacks that diminishe the legitimacy of the arguments provided. Objectively, criticizing the content of OGB does nothing to serve the stated goal of facilitating the broadening of nuanced political discussions on campus. Furthermore, essentially calling the staff at The Wake Forest Review racist is unproductive concerning the authors’ proposed demands and is borderline libelous. Even with the many issues I have with The Wake Forest Review, I commend them for creating an alternate medium for opinion. Maybe a better way of addressing the issue of the stagnant and unrepresentative politics of our campus would be to establish one’s own publication or submit your own opinion to the OGB or WFR, instead of using ad hominem attacks on those who are actually fostering civil discourse on campus.

   The anonymity of the blog post is also a glaring issue. These ‘demands’ were made without direction. To whom can someone open to a dialogue go and converse about the concerns raised? A reoccurring motif in the manifesto was the varied use of ‘scream.’ What does screaming look like? I would like to know, but have a feeling that this question will not be answered. Look, I realize that the intended purpose was to facilitate conversation, but at the same time history tells us that solely starting a dialogue is not enough. Dialogue followed by suitable action is how change happens. With the anonymity and reclusiveness of the authors, this will prove to be difficult if not impossible.

  The rhetoric used is also hindersome. An aggressive and uncompromising tone rarely makes an opposing party embrace discussion. Instead, it polarizes individuals further, making change that much harder to come by. Additionally, allusions to Hell and the vague threat that the authors come in “relative” peace give the complaints an ominous tone that distracts from the general message. Most importantly, the pairing of playing the part of the victim while engaging in the previously-mentioned aggression misses the mark. When these two traits are paired it damages stated beliefs and turns them into a list of complaints.

  I am and will always support anyone who publicly states their convictions, but when the conditions of identification aren’t met, in my opinion the gravitas of an author’s argument is lessened. The use of personal attacks furthermore delegitimizes convictions and the antagonistic rhetoric is useless in a practical sense. The issues raised by “Heretics of the Sixth Circle” aren’t unfounded. In fact, they raise numerous points that the university and students should strive to improve upon. Regrettably, the arguments listed in the manifesto are misguided and counterproductive.

Rolling the quad is one of Wake Forest’s most important and visible traditions. Since the 1950s, students have been rolling the quad to celebrate marquee wins, ACC and National Championships, and beating some of our most fierce rivals like UNC, Duke and NC State.

The tradition is very unique and brings the students on our diverse campus together. It is a simple celebration that any Wake Forest fan can perform by snagging a roll of toilet paper and arriving on the quad. It connects alumni and current students and has turned into one of the most pleasant and positive sights to see for anyone connected to Wake Forest University.

Seeing the quad rolled elicits a sense of pride for Wake Forest students and alumni. We think that environmental impacts should have a bearing on continuing campus traditions, but we do not feel that there is a significant environmental impact caused by this tradition for two reasons: the toilet paper used across campus is biodegradable and rolling the quad does not happen after every win. Thus, rolling the quad only occurs about two or three times each semester. Compare this statistic to Auburn’s “Rolling the Corner” to see a larger area of land being rolled after almost every Auburn football, basketball, baseball, and soccer win, which tolls to about thirty times each semester.

We have given some thought to the potential environmental impacts of this tradition, in addition to researching an article on this topic written by the university’s Office of Sustainability. This article shows how low the environmental impact is of this beloved tradition.

There are many practices on campus that are far more wasteful and harmful to the environment, such as the amount of food waste generated in the Pit, the amount of printed materials required for the average class and the University’s shuttle system, which is not green transportation and is very harmful to our carbon footprint. The toilet paper blows in the wind in pride for a few days, and then is often cleaned up by facilities.

Because most of the toilet paper is biodegradable, this environmental issue is not nearly as damaging as other campus-wide practices that are listed above.

We believe that this tradition should never end. It will always hold a special place in the hearts of past, present, and future Wake Forest students. It is many students’ favorite campus tradition and will never truly be replaced, even if someone were to come up with another idea. Rolling the quad is simply that special.

While we do not want to see this tradition replaced, there could be some helpful implementations which would make it an environmentally-better tradition. To take you back to our Auburn example, the following morning students and facilities help remove the toilet paper from the limbs of the trees.

Instead of allowing the toilet paper to stay on the trees for many following days or just have facilities clean it all up, perhaps we could enact a system where students, faculty, fans and facility team members take the toilet paper off the following day as they walk by the quad.

Perhaps this would instill feelings of respect and significance towards both our environment and this beloved tradition.

Go Deacs!

Ben Weekley (18’), Forest Richardson (18’), Andrew Kennedy (18’), and Ellie Caldwell (19’)

Traditions Council Co-Chairs

In a larger sense, it isn’t about rolling the quad with toilet paper, is it? In response to an OGB editorial taking us to task for raising the issue, we would like to offer several observations. As we can see on the national level, we get farther in solving problems when we engage them on the merits rather than ad hominem. We are here in a community — some for four years, some for a professional lifetime; there is a sacred, even transcendent, quality to our time together. We owe it to each other to take our concerns seriously and to engage them (and one another) with candor and good will.The process is always more important than the product because it is in the process that we define and enact our values.

Back to the quad briefly. The notion that the toilet paper deteriorates quickly stands in stark contrast to the material still to be found in branches or wrapped around limbs. Surely there are issues of forestry and ecology here but aesthetics is in play as well. What do visitors and prospective students make of our quaint customs? Where does litter — intentional or otherwise — fit into a campus so shaped around natural beauty and humane values? At the very least, until full-scale change comes, shouldn’t we be offsetting the harm here with some sort of philanthropic effort?

Wake Forest has a laudable history of adapting to (and sometimes even leading) cultural progress: women in the student body, racial integration, dancing on campus. At some point, perhaps very soon, Wake Forest students will decide that rolling the quad no longer represents their environmental ethic or their aspirations for their university. We would welcome a student-led effort to craft another, more satisfying celebratory ritual. In the meantime, let’s keep talking in the spirit of Pro Humanitate.

Sincerely, Professors Randall Rogan and John Llewellyn, Department of Communication

There’s a clock-like regularity to which members of Donald Trump’s administration undermine exactly the institutions they have been chosen to lead. Lately, Trump is also jettisoning anyone willing to try to restrain the president’s worst and most impulsive instincts. It’s little surprise, therefore, that he would nominate John Bolton, the most anti-diplomacy diplomat to ever see the light of day, to be his new national security adviser.

The firing of Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster was only the latest in a long string of departures by those I used to consider to be the adults in the room, their far-right views notwithstanding. To be sure, National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn resigned in protest after Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum; now, tariffs on China are in the works as well. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was ousted thanks to a fraught relationship with the president further marred by disagreements on foreign policy issues involving Iran, North Korea, climate and trade. Suspiciously, his firing immediately followed Tillerson’s tough words on Russia about the nerve agent attack in Britain.

But Bolton, Trump’s third national security adviser in just 14 months and a hawk among hawks, is the one who has me the most concerned. There are few people more likely to lead the country into war. Grave concerns about his diplomatic ability are longstanding, as he couldn’t win confirmation as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during the Bush administration, even from a Republican-controlled Senate. He got the job anyway through a recess appointment, and because national security advisers don’t require Senate confirmation, the five months the Senate took to decide whether he should go the the U.N. in 2005 remain the only extensive examination of his record.

That confirmation battle took place during the early years of the Iraq War, a conflagration that Bolton defends to this day. He was a key advocate of the Bush administration’s main justification for the invasion: that the President of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, possessed weapons of mass destruction that posed a threat to the U.S. This claim was later shown to be false and based on defective intelligence. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee also had copious testimony that, as undersecretary of state, Bolton pressured intelligence analysts into cooking up evidence that Cuba had a biological weapons program. Confirmation hearings revealed that his penchant to subvert the facts in pursuit of his and his allies’ agendas isn’t limited to the aforementioned. “Thousands of pages of documents revealed Bolton, an ally of Vice President Dick Cheney, to be a volatile, aggressive infighter,” wrote The New York Times. “[He] seemed willing to cherry-pick intelligence, steamroll analysts he did not agree with and end-run his State Department bosses in pursuit of an agenda considered bellicose even among Bush administration hawks.”

All signs suggest that Bolton hasn’t changed. In firing Tillerson and McMaster, Trump silenced some of the voices that had tried to mute his more perilous foreign policy impulses, particularly in regards to the Iran nuclear deal. But what he will hear from Bolton will most likely be closer to what Trump himself has advocated. The result? North Korea is probably first on the list of countries with which he is eager to tangle. In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, he made the case for a pre-emptive strike: “Pre-emption opponents argue that action is not justified because Pyongyang does not constitute an ‘imminent threat.’ They are wrong.” With Tillerson and McMaster out of the equation, any theoretical talks with Kim Jong Un are much more likely to go badly wrong and result in a bloody-nose strike or worse.

Bolton is also agitating for airstrikes on Iran. He has urged Trump to scrap Barack Obama’s nuclear deal, which blocked Tehran’s path to a nuclear weapon and prevented an arms race in the Middle East. But more generally, it’s likely the mercurial Trump will befuddle and frustrate allies and adversaries even more with contradictory stances on important issues within hours of each other. Instead of Tillerson and McMaster as somewhat stabilizing influences, he will have Bolton as an encourager-enabler. 

Bolton and his unilateralist nationalism are almost certain to accelerate isolation from our allies and the rest of the world. Congress can’t stop his appointment, but must speak out unequivocally against it and reassert its Constitutional responsibility to authorize whether the country goes to war.

As the opinion editor for the Old Gold and Black, it is well within my authority to admit that my section has what some would call a flaw. Namely, we receive and therefore publish many more left-leaning articles than we do conservative ones.  Campus conservatives, like the ones who write for the Wake Forest Review, often like to point out that liberals create echo chambers for themselves and shut conservative opinions out of the media.  Sometimes they are right.  This very issue is why The Review’s founders felt it necessary to create a conservative echo chamber of their own. 

I am very weary of allowing my section to turn into fodder for conservative students — to become another example of a once fine publication that, in their eyes, reached its untimely demise due to its incapacity to withstand the evil grip of “leftist” ideology.  Sure, campus conservatives may disagree with articles written by my liberal counterparts and me. I encourage the dissent. However, an overarching goal of mine is to ensure that students respect and understand that my section is a haven for opinions of all political stripes. Therefore, as a resident liberal at the OGB who cannot help but assert his left-leaning opinions in his articles but does not want his section to be characterized as an echo chamber, I took it upon myself to ask my good friend Anthony Palumbo, who happens to be the Editor-in-Chief of The Review, to call upon his writing force to submit a few articles to the opinion section of the OGB.  One of the topics on which I was most eagerly awaiting an article was gun policy.  Fortunately, Review writer and gun enthusiast Owen Pickard delivered me a conservative opinion on American gun policy.  Unfortunately, his article amounted to nothing but pedantic drivel, half-truths and poor logic in an attempt to discredit the articles my colleague Amanda Wilcox and I had written about gun policy one week earlier.  I don’t have the space to point out all of the fallacies presented by Pickard, but I will do my best to showcase some of the most egregious ones.    

Pickard begins his onslaught by asserting that “a semi-automatic rifle, by definition, cannot be an assault rifle.”  If this were true, it would mean that the assertion in my original article, that the AR-15 used in the Parkland shooting was an assault rifle was wrong. However, Pickard chooses to define assault rifle with a confined definition devised by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), a trade association funded by gun manufacturers for the sole intent of selling more guns.  Their definition states that “an assault rifle is fully automatic,” and of course the Parkland shooter’s AR-15 was not fully automatic.  However, Pickard conveniently leaves out the point that the law of the federal government is inconsistent with the NSSF’s poorly- concocted definition. In its assault weapons ban, the federal government itself defined assault rifle as “a rifle with semi-automatic capabilities [is] an assault weapon if it could accept interchangeable magazines and has at least two of these characteristics: a telescoping stock, pistol grip, bayonet mount, a flash suppressor or a grenade launcher.” The AR-15 used in the Parkland shooting fits squarely within this definition, and is, by all legitimate accounts, an assault rifle.  Likely, Pickard knows this fact but chose to cherry-pick a weak definition of assault rifle concocted by the gun lobby in an attempt to keep killing machines like AR-15’s legal and nefariously embarrass and debase my heavily-researched argument.

Another frustrating point made by Pickard can be found when he suggests that I am right that “the violence issue in America ‘is a problem exacerbated by American men,’” but that “The root issue, [as Bahar suggests] however, is not ‘hyper’ or ‘toxic’ masculinity. It is a complete and utter lack of what true masculinity should look like.” Perhaps this is a legitimate point.  It leaves me curious though, wondering what Pickard thinks true masculinity actually looks like. Unfortunately, he fails to provide an example.  I would ask Pickard, though, if he thinks “hyper” or “toxic” masculinity are not examples of “a complete and utter lack of what true masculinity should look like.”  I contend, and I think most rational readers would too, that hyper or toxic masculinity are not healthy types of masculinity for men to express.  Pickard, interestingly, seems to disagree.  In fact, it seems he loves expressions of hypermasculinity so much that he closes his essay by boldly proclaiming, “America needs more masculinity, not less.  Long live hypermasculinity.” 

Another shocking point made by Pickard can be found when he claims, “Girls may be less drawn to guns as firearms are stereotypically considered masculine (ie. the piece I am currently referencing). Could this be due to the inherent differences between the sexes? I would ask your biology professor about this, not your Women’s Gender Studies professor. (One of these things is not like the other.)”  I was tempted not to even comment on this seemingly outlandish claim — that men are somehow more genetically inclined to embrace guns than women.  However, as I am a prudent student reporter, I decided to take Pickard to task.  Thus, I asked USC geneticist Hooman Allayee, PhD to comment on this claim.  According to Dr. Allayee, “From a biological point of view, it is true that males are the more aggressive sex throughout most of the animal kingdom, including humans.  But when considering a social problem, one cannot simply use a biological argument.  It is very likely that the problem of gun violence involves both nature (males’ propensity for agression) and nurture. There are other countries (take in the Middle East or South America) that can also be considered ‘hypermasculine’ or macho but do not have the [same] level of gun violence as the US.  That is environmental since guns are controlled there (for the most part).  There are also counties that may not be perceived as ‘hypermasculine’ but in which guns are allowed.  Look up Switzerland for example.  They have nowhere near the gun violence as the US and that’s likely because of their culture on guns.  In both cases, genetics or biology is not different between males from one country or the other.  So to argue that males are drawn to guns as an explanation just demonstrates his utter naivete.  It’s the combination of both biology and environment.  And clearly in civilized societies, environment can easily overcome any perceived biological wiring or genetic predisposition.” 

It seems that Allayee respects the job of social scientists and finds Pickard’s comments about his profession laughable.   

One of the most eye-opening criticisms Pickard makes of my article comes when he claims: “In mentioning the disparity between men and women who die due to the use of guns, the author fails to mention that almost two- thirds of gun deaths in America are suicides. The author repeatedly uses the phrase ‘killed by guns,’ seemingly in an attempt to take responsibility away from the people who pull the trigger and to be able to include suicides in his statistics through the use of this incredibly broad phrase.”  This point unveils a startling revelation.  Namely, it seems that Pickard does not view suicides to be equivalent to other gun deaths.  However, when people kill themselves with guns, they literally die because a bullet has been released from the chamber of a gun into their body.  That is definitively a gun death.  Suggesting that it is lesser is not only extremely insulting to the families of gun-suicide victims, but also inconsistent with reality. 

In another remarkable paragraph, Pickard attempts to dismantle my colleague Amanda Wilcox’s point that the founding fathers could not have conceived of the firepower that exists today when they wrote the second amendment, because a weapon called the “Puckle Gun” had already existed for years when they were writing the Bill of Rights.  Pickard enjoyed discussing the limited knowledge Wilcox and I have about firearms in his article.  However, after watching videos of the “Puckle gun” online, and reading about its size and functions, I wonder if Pickard has any idea what this weapon looks like or how it operates.  It is massive, sits on a tripod or a sled like a cannon would, and takes an extremely long time, along with some expertise, to load and fire.  Comparatively, the technology in an AR-15 seems lightyears ahead of the “Puckle Gun.”   If the “Puckle Gun” really was the closest thing to a modern Assault Rifle in the late 1700’s, then Wilcox was on-point when she claimed that it would be difficult for the founding fathers to “conceive [of] the technological advances” that occurred to produce a modern AR-15. 

Pickard chooses to conclude his article with a final jab.  He invites Amanda and me to “go up to anyone outside of an isolated academic institution and tell a normal Joe that the problem in America is too much masculinity.”  If we try, he says that we would “get laughed out of the room.”  He then takes his point a step further, when he writes, “Or try Fort Bragg. I’m sure the 82nd Airborne soldiers will get a nice kick out of you telling them that they’re too masculine and that toxic masculinity is hurting America.”  Obviously, neither Amanda nor I think that the 82nd Airborne soldiers at Fort Bragg are too masculine and are therefore hurting America.  That’s absurd.  However, the greatest takeaway from these points is that Pickard does not think that “normal Joes” and 82nd Airborne soldiers are capable of having a nuanced conversation about American gun policy, where all opinions are considered.  This is where he and I fundamentally disagree.  If a “normal Joe” or 82nd Airborne soldier wants to discuss hypermasculinity and how it relates to gun policy with me, even if he just plans on laughing in my face, I’m more than happy to have the conversation.

“Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.” St. Matthew 7:5 provides us with sound advice. Before criticizing others, we should be aware of our own faults. I am not writing to claim perfection or to ascribe to others wickedness; I am writing to promote the truth. Continue reading “Readers Should Respect “The Wake Forest Review”” →

There’s a sticker on my laptop lid that speaks to my liberal fantasy about a Washington that is more progressive, more intelligent and more fair than real life — it reads “Bartlet/Hoynes ‘98,” a tribute to the fictional administration spotlighted on Aaron Sorkin’s beloved television show The West Wing. Continue reading “A Tribute “The West Wing”” →

The March 15 edition of The Old Gold and Black published several articles on gun control that were filled with blatantly false claims surrounding guns and gun violence. Continue reading “Hypermasculinity Does Not Beget Gun Violence” →