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Counterpoint NOV & DEC 2010

VOL. 33 / ISSUE 3

THE WELLESLEY COLLEGE JOURNAL OF CAMPUS LIFE

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C O N T R I BU T O R S

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Editors in Chief HANNAH ALLEN ‘12

SARIKA NARULA ‘11

Layout Editor MYRIAM TAIBI ‘12

Artistic Director JEAN M. KIM ‘12

HANNAH ALLEN ‘12, ALEXANDRA CAHILL ‘11, ANTHEA CHEUNG ‘12, ANNA COLL ‘12 CHRIS-TINA GOSSMANN ‘11, SARIKA NARULA ’11, RACHEL SALMANOWITZ ‘12, MARGARET VAN CLEVE ‘11, SHA-RON TAI ‘13

JULIA GALL ‘12, JEAN KIM ‘12, ANNA PRENDELLA ’11, KARIN ROBINSON ‘12, VICTORIA ROYAL ‘11, SHARON TAI ‘13, JAMI-LIN WILLIAMS ‘11

MATT BURNS MIT ‘05, KRISTINA COSTA ‘09, BRIAN DUNAGAN MIT ‘03, KARA HADGE WC ‘08, EDWARD SUMMERS MIT ‘08

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Managing Editor CHRISTINA GOSSMANN ‘11

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The Wellesley College Journal of Campus LifeNovember & December 2010Volume 33 / Issue 3

C A M P U S L I F E

A R T S & C U L T U R E

A!!"#$%&' (" J)* D%+%(4HO LUM KWOK

P O L I T I C S

9 O,# -+!%(-$ .#"/-00"#0 )&$ ),("!#)(%! 1-)$-#0

CHRISTINA GOSSMANN

Introduction to macroeconomics

Returning to a 2001 Rolling Stones Article

B)!2 %& (3- $)*Alumna Desiree Rogers comes back

5SARIKA NARULA

13 P#". 45LOUISA MEURY

"e Legalization of Marijuana

11 55 6"((1-0 "/ 6--# "& (3- 7)11MELISSA EVANS

Oktoberfest in Munich

M%00 8)&&-#0Manners: Do we use them here at Wellesley?

7MISS MANNERS

counterpoint / nov & dec 2010 page 3

GO FORTH

Photo / greenchange.org

counterpoint / nov & dec 2010 2010page 4

how much she craved me and what she’d be like in the sack.” Another male ex-change student from Connecticut College reported feeling like Tom Cruise because of his popularity. Although there’s unde-niably an inverse relationship between the number of options one has and one’s level of desperation (can’t argue with psychol-ogy), it is not immutable. Desperation decreases with self-respect, which fortu-nately, Wellesley Women radiate with. I often discover that men have di9culties grasping this fact. To any younger MIT or Harvard David Kent(s) who plan on attending future Wellesley parties—don’t, because chances are, we aren’t “craving” you. Not even close. To make these as-sumptions are to insult a woman’s intel-ligence, dignity, and self-respect.

I :nd myself avoiding Wellesley par-ties precisely because of such assump-tions. Men arrive at Wellesley with an in;ated ego and an extremely misguided perception of how desperate and sexually frustrated Wellesley women are. <ey act obnoxious, conceited, and expect us to surrender without :rst bribing us with wit or charm. <is is also why I avoid look-ing at men—exchange students, friends, boyfriends, or shameful regrets—around campus. I go on Wellesley BroSpotter lat-er to see what I missed. I refuse to indulge their self-;attery and ego.

Jay Dixit is an old enemy, and what with Duke’s new sex scandal, Wendy Wellesley the badass is back to being Wen-dy Wellesley with the pearls. But being at a women’s college means we will continue to face irritating assumptions about the choices we make. Since this seems like an incurable situation, I cue the silver lining: if this is the cost of living in my pajamas without being self-conscious, roaming the halls half naked, and talking with my mouth full during dinner without shame, then “slutty,” I will be.

Returning to a 2001 Rolling Stones Article

Rolling Stones. <e article, true to its title, investigates the sex culture at Wellesley, which I realize, is an oxymoron for some. He points to alleged confessions by pro-fessors and testimonies of male exchange students to argue that Wellesley women are beyond sexually liberal, verging on in-decent and for the lack of a better word, slutty. Salacious rumors of professors hav-ing sexual relationships with students, individual accounts of the sexual bene:ts that came with being a male exchange stu-dent at Wellesley, and stories of romantic relationships between students and din-ing hall sta=, all make for a juicy article. <e question is: how accurately or better yet, inaccurately does it depict the real sex culture at Wellesley?

I don’t plan on being sued for defama-tion, so I will not go as far as accusing Dixit of false reporting. However though, I highly doubt the validity of his report-ing, his depictions of Wellesley do some-what accurately re;ect the common mis-guided assumptions that men, or should I say boys, impose upon Wellesley women.

In his article, Dixit quoted David Kent, a male exchange student at Welles-ley in the late seventies, “I became inca-pable of talking to a girl without thinking

In no real, alternative, or imagined universe, now or in the future, will Wellesley ever be “badass”—unless

one is referring to our intellectual caliber, the rugby team, or the way people get destroyed on community for being politi-cally incorrect. But according to Jay Dixit, “badass” we are. <e girl with the pearls and the preppy top might be an annoying Wendy Wellesley in class, but in Dixit’s world, she lives a secret life dedicated to sexual promiscuity, preying on male ex-change students, and self-degrading des-peration. I kid you not, there is honest journalism for proof. Before I continue with my tirade, I must acknowledge that I’m digging up a buried hatchet. Except wait, did we even bury it in the :rst place?

For those who just read nonsense, yes my brain is a little fried from midterms and :nals, but it’s also because you haven’t read “<e Highly-Charged Erotic Life of the Wellesley Girl”. If you think Kristen Dunst’s annoying character, Julia Stiles’ bad acting, and the weak plotline in Mona Lisa Smile was an insult to Welles-ley, you might want to turn the page. Back in 2001, Jay Dixit wrote an article titled “<e Highly-Charged Erotic Life of the Wellesley Girl” that was published in

C A M P U S L I F E

According to Jay DixitB Y H O L U M K W O K

Ho Lum Kwok ’13 ([email protected]), is a badass, though she is not on the Rugby team.

Phot

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Rol

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Ston

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001


Photo / observer.comMost Wellesley women, if they

don’t know her by name, are at least familiar with Desiree

Rogers’s most recent job: social secretary of the White House under the Obama ad-ministration. When I :rst heard that she was coming to campus to give a lecture, I immediately remembered the Commu-nity thread of less than two years ago, an-nouncing that another Wellesley woman

had been appointed to serve President Obama. Among the outpouring of sup-port for this alum (Wellesley ’81), there was also a decent amount of criticism thrown into the mix. Not criticism of Ms. Rogers, but rather a critique of the posi-tion she was o=ered—some sco=ed at the position of social secretary, wondering if it was an insult that the job of “planning parties” was o=ered to a woman, and one

of great intelligence to boot. I pondered this, but soon after that somewhat cliché critique was shot down, the original post-er being told that the position of social secretary entailed much more than plan-ning parties, including curating the White House, and that even the job of planning parties well was one that required a brain.

After hearing Desiree Rogers speak on Wednesday, the 6th of October, it is clear

Back In the DayAlumna Desiree Rogers Comes Back to Visit Wellesley

B Y S A R I K A N A R U L A

C A M P U S L I F E

counterpoint / nov & dec 2010page 6

Sarika Narula ’11 ([email protected]), though a pensive senior, is de!nitely not a frowner.

that no matter what she did under the Obama administration, she certainly pos-sesses a brain as well as an incredible pas-sion for life. Despite (or maybe because of ) her impressive list of credentials—Wellesley alum and Harvard MBA, CEO of Johnson Publishing, the :rst African American social secretary—she also has a playful outlook on life. She began her speech that night, but stopped to take a sideways step and show the audience what she was wearing, joking that her choice of clothes must have been the main ques-tion on our minds. She then joined in the audience’s laughter, saying, “Some-times it’s good to make fun of yourself. In fact, a lot of times it’s good to make fun of yourself.” She reminisced about Wellesley, something I was very curious to hear about. It’s certainly one thing to hear any alum reminisce about this place, and describe how it was ‘back in the day’, but when it’s a famous alum, you sud-denly want to know everything about their experience, and freakishly compare it to your own. She was alternately serious and playful, describing how she fervently avoided any exercise at Wellesley, and the fun she had throughout college, but also how Wellesley stayed with her after graduation, through the support of the alumnae network.

Although Rogers knew what a sup-portive community of women meant be-fore she came to Wellesley, having grown up with positive female role models around her. She described how, although her grandmother was only schooled up to the eighth grade, she started a daycare business, which grew into a community of women that Rogers could look up to, and aspire to be a part of. <ough she has been part of several female communities through the years, she found something unique about Wellesley, stating that she had never since duplicated this amount of concentrated female intellect in one place.

Interestingly, however, she followed her discussion of Wellesley with one on gen-der equity. Ms. Rogers rattled o= several statistics—the usual on how women get paid less for the same job a man does, and how the better educated the woman was, the larger that gap was. At this point, I was starting to wonder where the title of Ms. Rogers’s talk, “<e Making of a Woman,” would show its relevance. <at was when she surprised me. <ough she acknowl-edged that the world was approaching its goal of gender equity, she was surprised to :nd that as we approached this goal in the workplace, the life satisfaction and happiness of women was decreasing. She posed the question, has advancement of the gender opened up other issues? Are we liberated? She could not answer these questions, but instead of analyzing them decided to pass on her wisdom to the gen-eration of women seated before her.

<e way Ms. Rogers chose to do this was through examining what was success-ful and meaningful in her own life. She separated these events into larger points of life, most of them clichés or things we already inherently know (Carry your-self with con:dence, savor everything in life, creating change is rewarding) but also things we tend to forget in our busy, stressed-out lifestyles. <ough at :rst I was extremely eager to hear more about her position as social secretary, I found that in the end hearing about her over-all experiences and wisdom were more rewarding than her discussion of her job at the White House. Every story she told about her various jobs and life experiences were with the objective of urging people to follow their gut, do their best, and challenge themselves, while also remain-ing true to themselves. But this theme of remaining true to oneself, or indeed :gur-ing out who one is, was not an easy one to maintain, and Ms. Rogers acknowledged that, stressing that she always made time

for herself. Indeed, she told us that she makes time for others as well, :nally shar-ing her most di9cult and personal experi-ence with us: her diagnosis of cancer ten years ago. As she :rst said that shocking word, “cancer,” there was a collective gasp from the crowd. It was clear there were questions in everyone’s mind—what type of cancer was it? How was she treated? <ese questions, however, didn’t matter; what actually mattered was her experi-ence, and that she shared it with us. She urged us to savor everything in life—ev-ery relationship, every experience, even every day, encouraging us to “Smile at the person next to you. If they don’t smile back, who cares? At least you don’t have to be a frowner.”

By the end of Ms. Rogers’s talk, I felt that I had heard a lot of clichés and tested wisdom, but none of it seemed truly re-petitive. Especially as a pensive senior in her second to last term at Wellesley, it sounded like good advice that many of us often disregard. Ms. Rogers’s last piece of advice, asked during the question and an-swer session at the end, was in fact geared towards graduating seniors and recent al-ums. When asked for advice on :nding a path in life, she smiled as if to reassure everyone in the audience. She started describing how her ‘path’ had not been conventional or easy to come by, and that there were many paths out there that could lead to success. In the end, how-ever, all she needed to say was contained in these words: “Take a deep breath. It’s going to be ok.”


C A M P U S L I F E

Miss MannersManners: Do we use them here at Wellesley?

When thinking about famous alumnae, people often men-tion our predecessors who

have moved on to become much ac-claimed politicians or journalists. One alumna who is often forgotten is Judith Martin, the celebrated author who is bet-ter known as Miss Manners. Her column for "e Washington Post, among other newspapers and publications, allowed readers to write in with etiquette ques-tions ranging in topics from the proper glass for red wine to the right hostess present for the :rst meeting with a fu-ture mother in law. Of course, many of the topics she wrote about pertained to high society, but since we’re all college students, we :gured it was better to write about Wellesley-speci:c etiquette ques-tions. Our trial run will hopefully prove

fruitful and if you enjoy our advice, let us know so we can continue writing for you.

Dear Miss Manners,I have been seeing a guy for a couple

of weeks now. Since I like the escape of getting o= campus, I’ve been exclusively traveling to his place. I am now starting to grow weary of the commute and would like him to come here; I also feel com-fortable enough with the relationship that I can display him publicly. I am nervous about proposing this because it would be a drastic change in the status quo and I’m afraid about his reaction to a place like Wellesley. Furthermore, can I subject him to dinner in Tower on his :rst visit to Wellesley? What if he doesn’t want to come here?

Sincerely, Tired Traveler

Dear Tired Traveler,First of all, it is very reasonable for

you to ask him to make the trek. After all, feminism means both sexes are equal, right? You could perhaps mention to him that epithet about women and men be-ing equal, in order to persuade him with an intellectually based argument. Yes, Wellesley can intimidate boys, but I’m sure he will survive a visit. If you have reservations, maybe its best to ease him into the overwhelming experience of an estrogen-:lled dining room. Perhaps have him come over for a movie and popcorn, and then after a little while he can happily join you for dinner? I am sure a quality gentleman would be happy to visit you, so ease your mind!

Staff Art / Jean M

. Kim

‘12


Dear Miss Manners,My next door neighbor listens to a lot

of really obnoxious foreign pop music, and only seems to want to play it late at night, when I’m either frantically trying to :nish a p-set, or trying to sleep. Part of my problem is her music is just awful, it’s like poison in my ears. I literally cannot stand a single thing she plays; if it were something better, I might be more forgiv-ing. How can I tell her to stop?

Sincerely,Musically aware and Annoyed

Dear Annoyed,Your best bet is to kindly remind your

noisy neighbor of the campus-wide quiet hours. If she does not respond well or con-tinues to be rude, you could remind her, or perhaps talk to your RA about other solutions. I would suggest that you refrain from commenting on her music taste; that might not be the best way to encour-age her to cease the music. If the problem persists either send her part of your mu-sic catalog or buy earplugs. Communal living has the misfortune of things like these; I’m sorry for your challenges.

Dear Miss Manners,Recently I had an unusual and upset-

ting experience in the Clapp Library. I was studying for my second econ mid-term on Monday night around 7pm. I was very clearly working hard and I was by myself at a small table, meant for may-be three people at maximum. <is girl, who I had never met before, decided to sit down at my table without even acknowl-edging me, nor asking for permission to sit across from my seat. I was surprised by her manner in sitting down without any sort of recognition of my presence, and for the fact that she sat down despite there being multiple open spots all over the library. She did her work quietly, and seemed to be completely unaware of my existence, despite my multiple glares at her. I ended up moving, because I felt as though her presence was interfering with my cost bene:t analysis; in fact, her pres-

ence was costing my studying more than I was bene:ting from it. Do you feel like this mystery student was behaving appro-priately or that I was overreacting, and do you think I would be within reason to ask her to leave, and if so, how?

Sincerely,Wendy Wellesley

Dear Wendy,I do empathize with your situation- it

is challenging to be productive in a dis-tracting environment, and I know how important your midterm is to your suc-cess in your future, and for the rest of your life. So yes, you have every right to be upset. I would like to remind you that tables are for the students in general and this student’s error was not in sitting down with you, but the fact that she did not ask you prior to just making herself comfortable. Unless she has a good rea-son for sitting with a perfect stranger in a very close space, it’s a little bit bizarre to share a table with someone else. If there are other tables available, you could move, or you could tell her that you have friends who are on their way, and imme-diately text your friends, asking them to join you, although that is not necessarily a fool proof solution. You could ask her to leave, but there is no way to do that politely, unless you say that you have OCD and are incapable of working unless you’re alone. <ere is no good solution, unfortunately, unless you want to work in your room and hope that your roommate stays away. Good luck, and perhaps you can prevent such future attacks by taking up the whole table with your papers and other materials.

Dear Miss Manners,Last night was my roommate’s birth-

day. We had made plans with a few close friends to go out to dinner at the Cheesecake Factory and then an hour before dinner, one of her friends sent me a brief text message saying she had a lot of homework and didn’t think she could make it. I asked her if she was sure, and if

perhaps she could spare a few hours. She never responded and we went without her, there was en empty space at the table. My roommate was visibly upset, but we still managed to enjoy ourselves. I know it is a sort of situation that can’t always be prevented, but I was rather upset, mostly on behalf of my roommate. I’m upset enough to tell her friend that she was out of line, and I only wish that I could have convinced her to change her mind prior to dinner. What can I say to defend my roommate and make her friend realize that she made a mistake?

Sincerely,Concerned Roommate

Dear Concerned,You are very sensitive and sincere and

your roommate is lucky to have you in her life. I’m sorry that a friend had un-fortunate timing. Yes, her friend was out of line for canceling last minute and for the way in which she cancelled so casu-ally. If she had been able to give you more of a warning, maybe some hurt could have been prevented on behalf of your roommate. It is typically unacceptable behavior to cancel last minute in other areas of life-can your doctor cancel your physical last minute? Can you decide to not go to an interview because you don’t feel like it? No. Yet this same logic is rarely extended to important social gatherings. As much as you would like to convince her friend otherwise, you cannot be the powerful force who determines her be-havior and choices. I’m sure she did have a lot of work, and I hope she managed to :nish it; it’s a shame she was unable to attend the birthday party, but cancel-lations do happen, and you can’t always prevent them. Perhaps you can convey to your roommate’s friend that her absence was palpable, but that’s all you can really do. I guess you know who not to invite to the next soiree.Miss Manners knows which fork is used !rst.


When I took Econ 102, Intro-duction to Macroeconomics, in the Spring of 2008, I :rst

encountered the extremely rational, ob-servatory and sometimes morbid side of Economics – and absolutely fell in love with it.

“<is is the best time to take this course!” an excited Professor Malhar Na-bar would proclaim in front of the board, next to his neatly stated daily class agenda. He threw his arms up in the air. “We got hyperin;ation in Zimbabwe and we got the :nancial crisis hitting the world!”

<ose are a true economist’s words. Many things have changed since then.

Professor Nabar left that same year to join the fun in D.C. at the International Mon-etary Fund, the recession has o9cially ended, and Zimbabwe’s in;ation is down from 79,600,000,000% (second place in

the world’s hyperin;ation record books) in 2008 to 5% this year.

While Professor Nabar is hopefully retuning soon and much attention and critique has been awarded towards the o9cial recession end and uno9cial lack thereof, I would like to look at little closer at the case of Zimbabwe. Besides viewing it as an interesting and unfortunate case study, I had not paid too much attention to it – until this past summer, when I spent several months in South Africa.

South Africa has been shaken by vio-lent xenophobic attacks in May of 2008. <e attacks were directed towards black African foreigners and within-South Af-rica migrants, but mostly against Zimba-bweans. In a matter of weeks, the attacks spread from a township in Johannesburg to the entire country; 62 people died and over a hundred thousand individuals were

displaced. In 2010, one could still feel the ten-

sion that had caused the attacks and was simultaneously perpetuating itself.

Phrases such as “<ose Zimbabweans cause this country’s problems! Why don’t they go back to their country? <ey work for peanuts because they have no unions. <ey take our jobs! We have enough problems of our own!” were sometimes openly stated among South Africans but much more often were muttered behind closed doors.

It is not easy to take a side. Since 1994, when Nelson Mandela was elected presi-dent, inaugurating the country’s demo-cratic era, tens of thousands of newcomers have been pouring into South Africa, in particular into the greater Johannesburg metropolitan region. In the late 1990s, the number of newcomers exceeded twen-ty thousand per month, despite progres-sive deindustrialization and urban unem-ployment rate of almost forty percent in Johannesburg alone.

But what exactly had happened in Zimbabwe to force its citizens to migrate?

Zimbabwe gained independence in 1980, when Robert Mugabe and his party, the Zimbabwe African National Union, were elected. Since then, Mugabe has been the autocratic head of state. Naturally, not without strong opposi-tion. However, whenever oppositional movements dared to manifest themselves, they were violently taken down. <e ci-vilian population continuously protested against declining living conditions, but they were ignored.

<ey were so discouraged in their political freedom that during the 1990 elections, the voter turnout was down to 54%, and, with Mugabe’s reelection, liv-ing standards declined further. By the late nineties, 25% of the Zimbabwean popu-lation had been infected by HIV. <ings were looking bad and the population was desperately urging the president to do something, to bring some kind of change, equality.

<e so-called equality came in 2000.

On Excited Professors and Autocratic Leaders

B Y C H R I S T I N A G R O S S M A N N


Introduction to macroeconomics

Photo / timeinc.net


Land redistribution had been a topic since the liberation movement; although they made up only 1% of the population, whites owned approximately 70% of the most optimal land for large scale farm-ing. In 2000, the government attempted to pass a new constitution that would have enabled compulsory land acquisi-tions without compensation. When this constitution failed to pass, the “Fast-track resettlement program” originated. <is gained land was then “redistributed,” but unfortunately, in a corrupt manner, re-sulting in hundreds of thousands of black farm workers losing their jobs and homes.

<e international community and press were outraged, sanctions were im-posed, Zimbabwe suspended from the Commonwealth of Nations and charged of human rights violations during the land redistributions. With little e=ect, it seems.

Of almost 280,000 whites who once lived in Zimbabwe, approximately 12,000 have remained, reports <e Economist. <e hundreds of thousands homeless and jobless farm workers settled in slums, rap-idly emerging around towns and cities. Criminality and illegal trading increased.

Mugabe’s solution to the informal settlements was “Operation Muranbats-

vina,” an huge-scale eviction e=ort. With-out alternative housing provision, shan-ty-town populations became homeless overnight. In 2006, the United Nations World Health Organization declared life expectancy in Zimbabwe as the lowest in the world: 37 years for men, 34 for women.

Another presidential election came around in 2008 and although the opposi-tion Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) gained majority of seats, Mugabe declared that MDC’s Morgan Tsvangirai had fallen short of the required 50% to take o9ce.

For the :rst time in decades, Mugabe was seriously threatened politically. And he was furious. <ousands of villagers, thought to have voted for the Mugabe’s opposition, the MDC, were displaced, tortured; hundreds were murders.

<ree months later, Tsvangirai with-drew from the run-o=s. Instead, “global political agreement” (GPA) was put into place: Tsvangirai became prime minis-ter, while Mugabe remained president. He still has pretty much the full political power.

<is is why Zimbabweans leave their country. <e Zimbabwean exodus is es-timated at 3 million, and many emigrate

to neighboring, booming economy South Africa.

Mugabe’s reelection was followed by the nation’s highest hyperin;ation ever. A government that can no longer raise enough taxes to cover government ex-penditures, will print more money to pay for the national bills. <e controversial land reforms and Zimbabwe’s increasing isolation from the international commu-nity caused the public lose credibility in the government’s ability to :ght in;ation e=ectively; and in;ation expectation, as Professor repeatedly emphasized during those sweet Spring days of 2008, is the most substantial cause of in;ation. If your people no longer believe in your currency, you might as well stop printing it.

Finally, after Zimbabwean currency lost its value, it was abolished and replaced by the American dollar in 2009. Since then, it seems, conditions have improved, thanks to the drastic in;ation drop and Tsvangirai’s political presence. <is year, nearly 420,000 of those Zimbabweans who had ;ed from their country, have re-turned. Although 80% of the population are jobless, the economy is growing for the :rst time in years.

What comes next is really what mat-ters. Zimbabwe is supposed to have an-other general election by the end of 2011. Mugabe plans to run for election, and he is determined to succeed.

But there is hope that the MDC will actually take over the government next time; after all – mind the morbidity – Mugabe is turning 87 next February.

Christina Gossmann ‘11 ([email protected]) economic writers can be mor-bid too.

!"#$#%&%'()*+,-$($./,0./12),/#*

I had wanted to go to Oktoberfest ever since my layover in the Munich Air-port two months ago. Oktoberfest

hadn’t even begun and the airport was packed with enticing memorabilia. We tried :guring out how to make it hap-pen, but it was all rather complicated. We could take a German or Austrian train, but then we would be left homeless for the night. All of the hotels and even hostels in Munich are sold out months in advance. Our next game plan was to stay in a tent. Oktoberfest is so popular that people pay 50 Euros a night for a four-person tent in a :eld. However, I was uneasy about the safety of an un-lockable tent in a :eld full of drunken Germans. At the last minute it was looking like my dream was not going to be realized, when we discovered that Erasmus had a trip planned. <e Erasmus

Student Network is an organization that holds events for international students in Europe. <ey provide great opportunities to meet people, and learn about the cul-ture of your new home country.

Suddenly my free time became con-sumed with :nding the perfect dirndl to wear to Oktoberfest. Super:cial, perhaps, but I wanted to take my cultural expe-rience to the next level. For those who don‘t know, a dirndl is a traditional Ger-man or Austrian dress. It has a :tted, low-cut bodice, full skirt, and a little white shirt that goes underneath. It’s also usu-ally worn with an apron and knee high socks. In America we often see question-able versions of these on Halloween. <e real thing is not exactly cheap though, and I basically spent an entire month’s food budget on Oktoberfest. Probably

not a bad thing considering that eating and breathing are both di9cult activities in a dirndl. <e Trachten Outlet, where I bought my dirndl, was run by an ex-pert. In my opinion, it was tight enough initially, but she kept on repeating “Ein Dirndl soll eng sein,” (A dirndl is supposed to be tight.) until I caved and let her take it in even more. She also emphasized the importance of the apron bow. <e bow of one’s apron should be tied to the left if single, and the right if taken. Once prop-erly out:tted I was prepared for anything.

Erasmus had their own seven-car train, which departed from Vienna at the stroke of midnight on a <ursday. Amusingly enough, all the student dorms’ move-in day was that <ursday. After frantically moving all of my possessions into my new dorm room, I rapidly pulled on my dirndl

99 Bottles of Beer on the WallOktoberfest in Munich

B Y M E L I S S A E V A N S



Photo / davidglobalvagabond.com

Melissa Evans ’12 ([email protected]) would like to live in a Gingerbread house and wear a dirndl every day.

and ran to the train station. <e running probably wouldn’t have been necessary if I hadn’t spent so much time chatting up my new Austrian roommate trying to convince her that I wasn’t an insane American. Spending 20 minutes braiding my hair probably didn’t help either.

Making sure that over 200 interna-tional students were checked in was cha-otic to say the least. Eventually the train was :lled with international students and we were on our way. <e ESN train is af-fectionately known as the “Party-Train” and it has, as you can probably guess, a disco car. Blaring music, tables bolted to the ;oor and free alcohol all night long. It’s likely the best and simultaneously most dangerous pre-gaming of Oktober-fest in its history. Wearing a dirndl in a train full of drunken students was an interesting experience. Generally it just meant that I had to take pictures posing with half the train. Because the train was moving everyone got slammed into every-one else at random intervals and most of us got drenched in beer.

Some people were more responsible than others, but many arrived at Oktober-fest praying that they would never have to drink again. <at day a friend of mine came up to me and asked if I knew where he spent the previous night, because he couldn’t seem to remember. <e beauti-ful thing about Erasmus is that nobody knows anyone in the city, and everybody is willingly to make new friends. We all bonded through our shared Party-train experience, and I spent Oktoberfest with the people from our compartment that I had just met.

Oktoberfest has a bad reputation in Europe for rapidly turning into a drunken disaster. A German guy I met in my new dorm told me that he went to Oktoberfest last year and was shocked by the debauch-ery. He said that last year it was still warm outside and as a result everyone got sick all over the place. What I observed didn’t live up to the hype of crazy drunken esca-pades, but the amount of dirty old men was unprecedented. We were sitting in a

section full of Erasmus students and were constantly plagued by two older far-from-gentlemenly men who kept proposition-ing any girl who sat next to them. Our newly found Dutch friend dubbed one of them “<e Greasy Man” not only be-cause of his slimy behavior, but because of his awkward comb-over which was com-prised of no more than a few strands of hair. In most instances our large pack of students spared us the usual>harassment. During the :ve minutes that it took to reach the bathroom I had several encoun-ters of the obscene kind including when one man yelled “Jawohl” at me, and then toasted me with his Maß.

I’m getting ahead of myself, however. Let me describe the general splendor that is Oktoberfest. It only lasts for two weeks every year and it actually takes place in September, with its end being the :rst weekend in October. <ere is an o9cial ceremony to mark its start, in which the majority of Munich taps the :rst barrel of Bavarian beer. <e huge :eld in Munich it takes place on is known as “the Wies’n,” which technically translates as “the mead-ows,” but when you say the meadows, everybody knows what you mean; “Oh, the infamous meadows, I was drunk there once…”

<e main attraction is the beer tents. <ey are in fact tents, but more in the are-na of circus tents than camping tents. <e tents are :lled with long wooden tables, and generally have stairs to a second level of seating. Each main brewery in Germa-ny has their own tent, where they serve their own brew and you’re not allowed to take beer out of the tents. Erasmus had seats in the Löwenbräu tent, which had a giant growling sculpture of a lion outside. All of the tents had themes, and while tak-ing in the scenery, I noticed that one tent was shaped like a huge gingerbread castle.

One Maß holds one liter of beer and the glass beer steins are insanely heavy when full. At one point someone grazed my forehead with their Maß and I still have a bump there. Quite literally all they serve is beer, and only their beer. I

heard one girl make the mistake of asking in English if they had water and getting immediately and sharply rebuked by the waitress. Each trip to a table, the waitress-es carry four or :ve beers in each hand, an impressive feat considering their weight and the fact that these women look like middle-aged mothers in dirndls. It wasn’t unusual to see them carrying upwards of ten beers with their arms in a circle around them.

<e huge tents are lined up along a main road, and the rest of the park is :lled with carnival rides and food. You can order some foods in the beer tent, like pretzels, and chicken, but sweets and non-beer beverages are only avail-able outside. Gingerbread hearts are very popular at Oktoberfest. People buy them for their lovers and friends, or like in my case, themselves. <e gifted gingerbread hearts are then worn by a string around the loved one’s neck, a lovely addition to their already festive Oktoberfest attire.

I’ve already discussed my love of Okto-berfest women’s wear, but now we should move on to the other gender’s attire; leder-hosen (“Leather-pants”). Even though the term translates as leather pants, they are typically leather shorts. I saw a few men with full on pants, but not very many. Le-derhosen don’t have a zipper, just a ;ap with buttons, which I think is similar to the butt-;ap on long-johns. You should be glad to know, however, that I did not investigate this curiosity.

After a day full of curiosities, and twenty-four hours after our departure, we all returned to our home-sweet-home, compartment 7 in train 4, and fell into a collectively peaceful slumber until we re-turned to Vienna early the next morning. <e aftermath of Oktoberfest, includ-ing buying groceries while still clad in a dirndl was equally amusing, but another story entirely.


PROP 19"e legalization of marijuana

B Y L O U I S A M E U R Y

P O L I T I C S

On November 2, 2010, the State of California voted down Prop-osition 19, the initiative to legal-

ize marijuana. Prop 19 would have made it legal for those over 21 to buy, cultivate and use marijuana on a recreational basis, essentially putting it in the same category as alcohol. <is would make it safer, tax-able and controlled, but would also make it harder for minors to obtain. (After all, drug dealers don’t exactly discriminate based on age, while liquor stores with ID scanners de:nitely do). California is a traditionally blue state, but recent voter initiatives paint it pretty red. (Remem-ber Prop 8, anyone?) Prop 19, however, seems to be almost above the red/blue divide. <e list of government higher-ups who opposed it include both (Demo-cratic) state senators, both gubernatorial candidates and, of course, the governator himself. On the social end, perhaps it is reminiscent of the days before the war on drugs, the glory days of the beats, Dylan and Haight-Ashbury. However, taken

from another angle, Prop 19 is far more economic in nature, decreasing regulation and opening markets. Above all, Prop 19 is a strategic move to counter many of the larger problems facing the golden coast.

So, why is Prop 19 a good thing? First of all, let’s examine California’s many problems. <e biggest issue is undoubt-edly the economy. California is notori-ous for having one of the highest budget de:cits in the nation. Part of this can be attributed to our property tax system. <anks to Proposition 13, a people’s ini-tiative leftover from 1978, homes are not taxed based on the current value, but on what the owner initially paid, meaning that my parents pay taxes based on the price they paid in the 1980s, which is not re;ective of the more than doubled value it holds today, due to in;ation and rising property value. Prop 13 is part of why the educational system is ranked at 49th out of the 50 states, as property taxes fund public projects such as schools and libraries.

Problem number two: California’s public works, including education, the Department of Motor Vehicles, roads and infrastructure. Despite the fact that Cal Berkeley is the best public institution of higher learning in the United States, there is really nothing else worth mentioning, academically. When I was in elementary school, we not only had art and music, but Spanish and PE at least three days a week. In my home district, art, music and Spanish were cut before I left elementary school, and now PE has been cut from a force of 15-20 teachers for the whole dis-trict, to one.

How, then, would the legalization of marijuana help infrastructure as well as the economy? According to the government, the e=ects of marijuana usage are, essen-tially, laziness and poor job performance, and that is really the last thing we need in a state that has the worst budget de:-cit in the union. However, the domestic economy from marijuana amounts to 14 billion dollars in California, which would


Photo / Tim

e Magazine

create approximately 1.4 billion dollars in tax revenue per year. Beyond the tax rev-enue, however, legalization would create up to 110,000 new jobs and expand the economy by 23 billion dollars annually. It would also decrease expenditure spent on arrests, police force and the penitentiary. One website even listed a decline in race-biased drug arrests as a “pro” of Prop 19.

If Prop 19 had all these potential posi-tives, then there must be something else that made everyone vote it down, right? Let’s examine the e=ects of marijuana. According to the government’s website, “In one study, heavy marijuana abusers reported that the drug impaired several important measures of life achievement including physical and mental health, cognitive abilities, social life, and career status.” However, it also says, “the link between marijuana smoking and these cancers remains unsubstantiated at this time,” and “it is not clear whether mari-juana use causes mental problems, ex-acerbates them, or is used in attempt to self-medicate symptoms already in exis-tence.” In contrast, it is legal for 18-year olds to buy and use cigarettes, which are unquestionably connected to lung can-cer, and for 21-year olds to drink alcohol, which, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, “may have extensive and far–reaching e=ects on the brain, ranging from simple ‘slips’ in memory to permanent and debilitating conditions that require lifetime custodial care. And even moderate drinking leads to short–term impairment, as shown by ex-tensive research on the impact of drinking on driving.” On the whole, it seems that marijuana has fewer harmful far-reaching consequences than substances that are le-gal. It is not that these e=ects are desired or healthy, just that they are less than those negative consequences associated with alcohol and tobacco.

So really, who would the legalization of cannabis hurt? Drug dealers. And honest-ly, we’ve been after them for years, so Prop 19 seems like a good way to :nish them entirely. <e legalization of marijuana

would eliminate the black market within California and decrease the violence on the California/Mexico border and within Mexico (cartels get about 70% of their in-come from exports to the United States). Remember what happened after Prohibi-tion was repealed in the 1930s? <e black market and ma:a wars e=ectively ended. So even if you did not care about the aw-ful economy and pitiable state of educa-tion, isn’t it our duty to try to decrease violence in Mexico, when we do so much to create it? <e US essentially fuels the drug cartels’ civil war, and after years of exploiting them for cheap labor via NAF-TA, it seems about time to take respon-sibility for ourselves and attempt a good neighbor policy.

What is our problem with cannabis? Is it the fact that there is not a lobbying :rm like big tobacco, with their hand in every politician’s back pocket? Or is it just that the lifestyle associated with marijuana doesn’t exactly connote a productive soci-ety? And really, why do people care what their neighbors do, so long as their kids get a decent education and their aging grandfather doesn’t have to wait in line at the DMV for four hours just to re-take his license test? Aren’t some issues bigger than our own petty qualms? Or perhaps, if the legalization of marijuana would help dis-pel racial bias, this is at heart a race issue. After all, Free Weezy day probably spiked the sale of cannabis nationwide to 4/20 levels.

Regardless of individual proclivities for or against marijuana, it seems a shame that we have to wait another two years to see this on the ballot again. After all, the demand will never go away entirely, and it seems the easiest way to create tax revenue without actually hurting anyone except for a small and select group that the gov-ernment has been after for years (ie., drug dealers). Nonetheless, there are two logi-cal arguments against legalization. Like in Massachusetts, marijuana has been decriminalized in California. <is means that anyone caught with under an ounce is charged with a misdemeanor and :ned

100 dollars. Really not that bad, right? A DUI goes on your record, but possession of marijuana does not. Further, medical marijuana has been legal in California since 1996 (and the urban legend in my town goes that if you just pay the right person 60 dollars, you have a card that you can use at the “clinic,” unlimited, for a full year). But, the language used in Prop 19 forces local governments, rather than the state, to set the regulations and prices. Supposedly, these measures could incur large implementation costs, which would then outweigh the bene:ts.

Furthermore, the federal government’s restrictions would not actually permit the unrestricted legalization of marijuana due to interstate commerce laws. <e case study of the Netherlands would actually support this decision; open borders with-in the EU permit the movement of mari-juana, even in those countries that do not actually allow the sale of the drug within their borders. <e problem arisen in this culture of “drug tourism” is the in;ux of non-Dutch Europeans, and the violence they attract with illegal dealers of “hard-er” drugs near border-city co=eeshops. Examples of this violence have been seen in California and Seattle, where owners of medical marijuana have been targeted as well. Violence will no doubt always follow drugs, but this is not a new theme, and it seems that the southernmost border is in much greater need than others.

I’m sure that there are hidden costs which I do not understand, repercussions that cannot be predicted, but it seems most likely that a lot of the votes against Prop 19 are born of fear-- fear of the con-sequences of legalization, fear of change, and fear that legalization would not bring in the revenue expected, leaving the state devastated and full of newly created, legal potheads.


Louisa Meury ’11 ([email protected]) knows someone named Mary Jane.

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