At a Senate hearing earlier this week, Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., chaired a discussion about the possibility of colleges and universities adopting yearlong academic schedules. This proposal would throw off not only the student's internal scholastic clock, but also the federal funding system. And, with 80 percent of colleges, Ohio University excluded, operating on a two-semester calendar accompanied by a short summer session, the change to a yearlong calendar would be drastic and should not be done.
The federal Pell Grant system was set up to operate on a semester system, offering money only nine months of the year. If there were a switch to a yearlong calendar, students would be left without their grant money for one quarter. This difference in financial aid could be the deciding factor in whether a student can attend year-round, or if they will be forced to take a semester off due to finances. The only other option would be that the actual Pell Grant system was revamped, and that's a whole other editorial.
All in all, the summer break is a necessity. All students, from grade school to grad school, count the days until the glorious 10-or-so-odd weeks when they are freed from the chains of academia. Visions of lawn sprinklers, ice cream trucks and even summer jobs dance in students' heads. For college students, the prospect of making a small fortune - or at least enough to buy books - via summer employment is enough to make one salivate. Summer is the time for travel, for internships and road trips. Summer is a glorious, glorious time that need not be polluted with the evils of learning.
Without a summer break, college students would be forced to operate on the harsh calendar of the real world, a transition that should be avoided like the plague. After all, didn't most students come to college to prolong the emergence into the working world as long as possible? Let us keep our summer break.
U.S. should lift embargo on Cuba
This week a group of about 70 American medical-school professors, doctors and other scientists were prohibited from attending an important symposium regarding coma and death. Why? Because the symposium was hosted in Cuba. This blunder by the U.S. government reinforces that the embargo with Cuba hinders more than it helps and should be lifted.
The U.S. government should put its pride aside and lift the embargo on Cuba. Currently, the embargo is only a result of America's stubbornness and is more symbolic of its hatred for Castro than a useful tactic. The point of the embargo in the first place was to punish the evil communist Cuban government and make it see the light of democracy. Imposed Feb. 3, 1962, in an attempt to push Fidel Castro out of power, the embargo has since become merely a nuisance, annoying cigar aficionados more than Castro. The fact that the United States' favorite partner in trade, China, is also communist, and that the United States also traded with Vietnam and the ultimate enemy, the former Soviet Union, should make the embargo obsolete. Besides, the United Nations, by a vote of every-other-country-in-the-world to 2, the United States and Israel, condemned the embargo. (But, really, when was the last time the United States listened to the United Nations?)
With initial reasons behind the trade embargo now moot points, the United States should seriously consider the advantages of lifting the embargo. As proven by the case of the scientists, the trade embargo does, in fact, negatively affect Americans, and, as proven by history, the 42-year-old embargo has had little effect on the Cuban government. By not attending this symposium, American scientists missed out on important information regarding comas, information that could change practices regarding comatose patients worldwide. And, by not being able to have input from U.S. researchers, the rest of the world medical community was denied valuable data.
This childish refusal to allow trade with Cuba should be stopped. The embargo doesn't work, and if the United States were truly concerned about the state of affairs in Cuba, it would have changed tactics by now. Instead of punishing groups such like those medical researchers, the U.S. government should lift the embargo.
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