Author: Allison Shook

By Allison Shook, Madison Lane, and Megan Herrera

Layout Editors and News Editor

Being a college student requires a lot of printing.  Having class syllabi, notes, PowerPoint slides, essays and more printed out is essential for success in a class. In an institution where printing is free and accessible throughout campus, it is no surprise that majority of students wouldn’t care about wasting excessive amounts of paper, ink and money.

As of this semester, the Administration has implemented a new printing system in the Bertrand Library in an attempt to conserve resources. This process requires students to choose a number as a personal code to receive their document. When printing, students must walk to their printer, click on their document that can be seen by their username, enter the code and then click “OK.” The purpose of this is to decrease the amount of paper that was being thrown away every day and avoid problems such as lost pages or mix-ups.

Some students have found this process to be extremely time consuming because walking to a printer and punching a couple numbers into a screen, and waiting two minutes for their document seems to be a waste of time. Instead of realizing the advantages of this system, they focus on and criticize the small problem of a little extra effort required. Walking to a printer and not having your document ready for you seems to be the main concern for lazy students that can’t find the time to ensure their document is printed properly.

However, this new system has multiple benefits. It provides efficiency, while also being eco-friendly. As the world around is trying to go green, it seems honorable for the University to switch to this advantageous policy. As a campus that advertises and promotes events such as RecycleMania and housing students in an Environmental Residential College, we are taking baby steps to a more eco-friendly future.

Ultimately, the advantages of this new printing method outweigh the small hassles  that some students are complaining about. Hopefully these students will see the benefits of the new system and their negativity will fade away over time.

By Amanda Ayers

Contributing Writer

Roughly 47 million people in the United States do not have healthcare. With the passage of President Obama’s healthcare reform bill by a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives against unanimous opposition from members of the Republican party, the issue is as relevant as ever.

Our government is not only attempting to assist the uninsured, but also trying to quell the anxieties of those in fear of being denied coverage. I believe it is in America’s best interest to reevaluate and forgo thoughts of universal healthcare.

Although President Obama attempted to frame his healthcare proposal in capitalist terms, the underlying truth is that it is fundamentally anti-capitalist. The government’s “public option” will have rates so low as to eliminate competition among private enterprise and medical practices. By having a monopoly over the healthcare system, government is singlehandedly driving away competition.

As healthcare is an economic good to be bought and sold, it cannot be justified as a service that a government must ensure for everyone. Only in a competitive and relatively free market will health services, like doctors, equipment and treatments, be of the highest caliber. Inferior care obviously does not apply to every single medical center under a universal healthcare system; but, a correlation between a competitive market and higher-quality services exists. Take Great Britain as an example.

If the federal government provides healthcare, discrepancies arise about what kinds of treatments should and should not be guaranteed. Should this system provide services for a woman to freely obtain an abortion?  Government officials will be left to subjectively render some treatments worthwhile and “cost-effective” and others unnecessary.

In this system, government is interfering with the right to privacy. Rather than doctors and patients making the decisions regarding health, life and death, the federal government is intervening in these personal matters in an unprecedented manner.

Although many proponents are confident in “control costs” to manage the deficit as a result of the reform, one need only glance at the strained national budget as a result of Medicare and Medicaid decades ago. Now, imagine adding roughly 16 million people (an estimate made by the Congressional Budget Office) to the already irresolvable Medicaid rolls. I find faulty logic in a government that stands at over 13 trillion dollars in national debt (according to the U.S. Department of the Treasury), yet yearns to expand government programs, further augmenting taxes, especially on the upper class. Broader coverage and cost control do not add up. Universal healthcare will not ultimately be most beneficial for those who are actually subsidizing it, and it is logical to predict that even more money will be poured into this reformed healthcare system than originally planned in the coming years.

Rights do not come, nor should they be granted, by our government; they should be merely protected by the government. I distinguish between the right to pursue happiness and the provided right to happiness, and the duty to promote the general welfare, not for government to provide it.

Many who desire to fit the Constitution to the modern dilemma of healthcare believe providing proper healthcare services to those who need them is attending to the general welfare of the American people. This tenet is reflective of the liberal political culture desired by the founders in the writing of the Constitution. This culture called for both a government that intervened only to an absolutely necessary extent, and one that endorsed the values of individual responsibility, initiative and the faith in the “American Dream.”

The commerce clause is also very pertinent to the economic argument against healthcare. Many argue that if we accept that the government’s responsibility is to use the power to tax and spend money for the purpose of protecting its citizens’ right to life and general welfare, healthcare is certainly an institutional solution, as it is often necessary to sustain life.

From an economic standpoint, Congress is simply capitalizing on its power to regulate interstate commerce, within which the healthcare industry certainly falls. The intent of the Constitution, however, was federalism: a balance between federal power and state power.

States have no independent sovereign place in the new healthcare system to set policy as they see fit. Rather than maintain a voluntary federal-state partnership, these new reforms impart a compulsory top-down federal program and violate the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, which states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” The reform is putting services like healthcare into the hands of the federal government (which has enacted a mandate for the majority of its people), rather than its states and citizens.

The founders never intended these services to be provided, but instead wanted to protect our ability to procure them.

How do you feel about plans to construct a mosque near Ground Zero?
“We have no right to say no. It’s as if we told a church, synagogue or any other place of worship they couldn’t build there. And that clearly goes against what this country stands for.” -Laura Snider ’14

“I think it’s fine to have a mosque near Ground Zero. An entire religion can’t be represented by a small group of extremists.” –Kathleen Molgaard ’12

“I can see how people are against it, but we as Americans have no right to tell fellow citizens where or where not to build a place of worship.”- Grady O’Brien ’12

“Construction of the mosque should be allowed. Not allowing it to be built would just perpetuate the idea that all Muslims are terrorists.” – Katie Koch ’12

“I think it’s great. We’re supposed to have religious freedom in this country, so why shouldn’t a neighborhood be allowed to build a mosque? My mom’s against it, though.”- Phil Perilstein ’11