By Dan Palmere
Contributing Writer

One of my first resolutions this New Year was to delete my Facebook account. There’s a fine line between networking and spending an unhealthy amount of time checking status updates. I think I crossed it last semester. My decision came after a lot of reflection on how I was using my time on this social networking site. True, I had met people through it before my move to Boston—but it became increasingly easier to form “relationships” behind a wall, rather than actually talking face to face.

As a musician and bandleader, developing social skills is an important skill. It’s something I’ve accepted I need to work on. Facebook was not helping in a positive way. So, I took the contact information I needed, birthday dates, and let everyone know how to keep in touch if they wanted.

I’m not having withdrawal symptoms, like everyone claimed I would. It’s more like a breath of fresh air. In terms of business and networking, maybe it’s time to go back to the roots: “Hi, I’m Dan Palmere. Pleasure to meet you.”

By Michael Hazani
Contributing Writer

My break is almost over. I’m flying back to Boston in six days. This time next week I’ll be in my Trad Harm class, and what I’m about to tell you will seem like a distant fairytale, and not a very pleasant one at that. Which is why I have to tell you this:

After two weeks of fighting, the Palestinian body count is 760 – some of which are terrorists, others – innocent civilians. The Israeli death toll is currently 13; mostly teens who, in a different time and place, would be going to college right now. So far more than 450 missiles have been launched from the Gaza strip towards Israel, paralyzing major southern cities, sending thousands of civilians to terror-ridden lives spent in shelters. In the meanwhile, Israeli jets, artillery, and infantry are plowing their way through the streets of Gaza, demolishing immense bulks of homes, facilities and infrastructure.

I am currently writing this from my home in Jerusalem, which – thank God, or Allah – is still out of the missiles’ range. While in the past we’ve had our share of terror, this current conflict seems to spare us. Nevertheless, war is all around: A close friend can no longer attend his university, because it’s located in one of the bombarded cities. Other acquaintances have been re-drafted to the army, and some are cautiously making their way through deadly streets as I’m writing this. Families are hosting people from the south, who have fled up north without knowing when they’ll be able to return to their homes. And every time you turn on the TV, the whole thing jumps at you: Another Palestinian home destroyed. Another Israeli kindergarten demolished. Eventually faces fade out, nationalities become irrelevant – to paraphrase Freddy Mercury, this is hell for everyone.

I wrote the above a week before I returned to Boston. As of January 21, Israel has declared a unilateral ceasefire and the IDF has withdrawn its troops from the Gaza strip, thus allowing a well-appreciated, if temporary, moment of peace for both sides. As for myself – I’m back, enjoying the carefree early days of the semester, and I’m crossing my fingers…
But there’s one thought I can’t get out of my head: It’s a lot harder to be empathetic when the damn thing is taking place halfway across the world, isn’t it?

That is exactly why I’m writing this: I’m afraid of forgetting. I’m afraid of locking myself up in the Berklee bubble, as we are all prone to do. John Donne once wrote: “No man is an island, entire of itself.” I guess I’m afraid of becoming an island.

By Dan Thompson
Contributing Writer

Tuition sucks. Nobody likes to think about having to take out more loans or find more scholarships or grants. Sometimes I wonder, as I’m sure you do, where all the money goes. Soon the student body may have an influence on the school’s spending. This influence would be coming in the way of a “Green Fee.”

A “Green Fee” is a charge directly added to tuition, in a visible way, which goes toward making Berklee a more sustainable school. Other schools around the country have taken similar action in different ways. The University of North Carolina created a green dorm floor in the Morrison dorm which is environmentally conscious, paid for with a $4 per semester student fee; Harvard University purchased renewable energy for particular buildings with a $5 per semester fee; and Evergreen State College has an energy policy which requires the purchase of power from renewable sources, paid for with a $1 per credit policy just to name a few. At Berklee, this fee would most likely be $10 per semester used to create sustainable energy on campus and reduce our carbon footprint.

The first project to receive funding from this fee would be solar thermal panels for the 270 Commonwealth dorm. By adding these water heating solar panels the school would reduce its carbon output by over 50 tons a year.

To help make Berklee Greener, the school is asking for student input. In the spring, the student body will have the opportunity to participate in discussions about the green fee and give insight on what they would like to do with the money. The subsequent ideas for the fee and amount of interest in supporting the fight against the climate crisis will help determine what this fee will look like and how far it will go to make Berklee a greener place.

Everyone dislikes paying higher tuition and related fees, but wouldn’t it be nice to know that your money is going directly to something you support and help control?

If you are interested in helping make Berklee a greener place, please contact seamberklee@gmail.com or the “Student Environmental Action Movement” on Facebook.

By Sebastian Gutierrez
Contributing Writer

Despite President-elect Obama’s very successful campaign, his approval of coal burning, for some time now, has left a damper on his popularity. With more than half of the country’s energy coming from this dirty process, it becomes obvious why he would support such a thing. Although his slogan of “clean coal” captured the hearts of millions, growing awareness of the unavoidable destruction caused by the usage of coal has reached dramatic levels.

Bank of America and Citizens Bank, the two leading funders of the coal industry, have finally announced they will discontinue their support for mountain top removal, a threatening method that facilitates coal mining. This is an exciting victory for people living in the Appalachian Mountains and the many activists that work tirelessly to stop coal mining there. In this beautiful area of the country, thousands of residents have become the victims of an array of health problems caused by excessive chemical exposure.

For many homes in the Appalachian Mountains the only source of water is from a well. So when toxic chemicals spill into the ground, residents are forced to manage with heavily contaminated water. Instead of digging into the ground to mine coal, companies have chosen to blast the tops of mountains to make the coal more accessible, even though they are aware that with regular rain, huge waves of coal sludge will spill directly into the rivers and streams of nearby towns. Exposure to both coal and the toxic chemicals used in detonation has been known to cause various cases of spleen, liver and kidney failure, bone damage, stomach cancer and miscarriages. Exposure to the carbon dust that is constantly fogging the air has also been the cause of unusually common asthma, lung cancer and a plethora of other illnesses. Many people have also been injured and killed because of mudslides, floods and industrial accidents. With heavy rains, the forest would easily absorb a great deal of water, but now that many locations have been deforested for mining, a massive, coal-filled runoff is regularly produced.

Larry Gibson, resident of Kayford Mountain in West Virginia, has been a prominent protester of mountain top removal. He lives near one of the largest coal mining sites in the country. Even though he has been offered millions to sell his land (which his family has been living on since the late 1700s) he refuses to do so. He regularly speaks in public about acts of intimidation that he claims the coal industry has been secretly conducting. His solar panels have been sabotaged, one of his dogs was shot dead and the other was hanged. He also witnessed two men in camouflage set fire to his cousin’s empty cabin.

With this country so desperate to produce enough energy, it can be noted that using coal is both a damaging yet easy way to produce it. The horrible outcome as we have seen here would be completely avoidable if we as a nation were to invest more in alternative sources of energy such as geothermal, wind and solar. Do not be fooled by the slogan “clean coal.” As much as we can expect great things from the Obama administration, filtering emissions from coal burning plants is not enough. A great feeling of optimism has indeed come along with this recent victory. However, we still must continue to push towards quickly and dramatically reducing the amount of energy we make from coal or we can expect more communities in the future to be at risk.

By Larry Watson
Contributing Writer and Berklee Faculty

What many of us thought impossible has happened. Upon hearing the news that Barack Obama had won the Presidential Election, the first call I made was to my mother. As joyful tears streamed down my face, my thoughts were of my late father.  He had toiled all his life as a second-class citizen, afraid to take a sick day from work for fear of his employment being terminated. He knew that a jobless black man in 1950’s America was a slave. Senator Obama’s victory tonight honors my father’s life and the countless unsung heroes that gave this country its first African-American president. 

The first call I received was from one of my former students at Cornell University. When I first met him, this Puerto Rican man was 17 years old. He was an applicant for admission to Cornell University; his low SAT scores placed his application in the “reject” pile. My black colleagues and I put our jobs on the line and advocated for his acceptance to the college.  He is now 47 years old, the same age as our president-elect, and is a senior ranking executive at a major corporation advocating for Latino(a) and black citizens. As I am proud to have helped him, black Harvard Law Professors Charles Ogletree, Derrick Bell and countless other nameless educators and community workers must also be proud today, for they helped train our President-elect Barack Obama. Their black counterparts were present at Princeton and many other predominately white educational institutions around America.  Those courageous black folks fought to keep those doors ajar, allowing thousands of black men and women like Michelle Obama and her brother to earn Ivy League degrees and go through life committed to infiltrating an America determined to leave them in the margins. 

I cried thinking of Michelle Obama’s father.  I cried thinking about the late great black historian John Henrik Clarke; law scholar Charles Hamilton Houston; activist Malcolm X; elected officials Shirley Chisholm, Barbra Jordan, Mayor Washington of Chicago, Adam Clayton Powell, and Mayor Dinkins; the list goes on. But mostly, I cried for all the unnamed community leaders, organizers and activists who were ridiculed during their lives, thwarted, arrested, undermined, and unfairly convicted. I cried tears acknowledging that for a fleeting moment, this historic event honored those who elected to fight and speak out rather than betray our communities with silence and inaction.   

This is a powerful lesson and symbolic acknowledgment that there is a payoff when one chooses to serve humanity rather than materialism. There is a payoff when one chooses principal over opportunism. How pathetic one must feel, if you never rocked the boat.  And what about Barack’s classmates, the ones that saw his decision to become a community organizer, and to work on the South Side of Chicago, as a waste of time?  Activists in America share Obama’s victory.  The imagination of an African-American boy was sharpened when he met a man of God in Chicago. That man introduced him to black liberation theology. The combination of his legal training, exposure to black liberation theology, and falling in love with a grounded, authentic African-American woman gave him the necessary skills to pull off the impossible. 

Dolores Huerta, cofounder of the United Farm Workers with Cesar Chavez, gave him his now famous slogan: “Yes We Can.”  I know we can and we will!  We who dream the impossible dream will continue to fight, challenge, speak out, and dismantle the remnants of an America whose Supreme Court once declared, “ A negro has no rights which a white man is bound to respect.” 

By Callum MacKenzie
Staff Writer

So here we are: Barack Obama, the 47-year-old mixed race son of Kenya and Kansas, has won the 2008 presidential election, and will be president of the United States on January 20, 2009. His campaign was marked by a set of catchphrases: “Yes We Can,” “Change You Can Believe In,” that inspired millions in this country and almost inarguably won him the election. There is no question that Barack Obama has run one of the most effective campaigns in the history of this country. After demolishing Hillary Clinton, a candidate with better name recognition and credentials, in the Democratic Party primaries, Obama practically skated through the general election, pitted against John McCain, a candidate from an unpopular incumbent party whose campaign could not find a message.

And now, after two years of drama, , a man who has been in the senate for less than four years, and who has barely told us anything of his actual plans for running the country, is going to be president of the United States. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; there is a long history of candidates with barely any experience on the federal level becoming great (or at least good) presidents: Abraham Lincoln and Bill Clinton come to mind.

On the other hand, and what I believe is more illustrative of the possibilities of an Obama presidency, there have also been absolute disasters of this archetype. The last time this country came to the end of a lengthy era and presidency marked by paranoia, war, and legendary infringements was in 1976, after Nixon, Vietnam, and Watergate had rocked the nation. Jimmy Carter, a relative nobody who was governor of Georgia for four years, was elected president, and in spite of his good efforts to the contrary, the US economy fell apart amid soaring inflation and gas prices, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, and Iran invaded the US embassy and took Americans hostage for almost a year. In fact, it was the disastrous Carter presidency that arguably lead to the rise of the terrible Christian Conservative movement that has done more damage over the past twenty-eight years than Carter’s ineptitude ever could have.

Of course, times are different now. When Nixon was president, senators held hearings about things that our senators now find trivial, and even used their power as a legislative body when it thought that these things were getting out of hand— things like illegal wiretaps, costly and unpopular wars and firings for political gain, for example.

Now our senators are so afraid of the president and of losing office that they actually write legislation that actively approves of these activities. Take 2008’s FISA bill, which gave unconditional amnesty to telecom companies that had been asked by the president to spy on Americans without warrants in spite of the fact that the senate had not viewed any of the records of the spying. This bill was called a “compromise” by the Democratic majority, in spite of the fact that it’s radical repudiation of privacy went far further than anything even proposed by the Republican majority in the years before. What does this have to do with president-elect Obama? He voted for it.

Not only did he vote for it, he voted for cloture so that his senate colleagues Chris Dodd and Russ Feingold could not filibuster the bill as promised. Hopefully, an Obama presidency will not be as mediocre as historical evidence and that which his senate record suggests, but before we all start jumping for joy about Obama’s win changing the country and the world, we should realize that the symbolism of his presidency will likely be more important than his actual presidency; we should ask ourselves, now that Obama has won, what will actually change?

By Dan Htoo-Levine
Staff Writer 

It was a quick victory on election Tuesday for the 44th United States president-elect, Barack Obama. In Chicago, people turned out in droves at Grant Park to celebrate the historical win. The mood in Arizona was drastically different. Die-hard McCain supporters gathered in Phoenix with sunken morale to hear their downtrodden leader speak.

As a home viewer, I was expecting to hear headstrong GOP rhetoric to further darken the line that separates American political parties – following suit with the way McCain ran his campaign. Instead, the former P.O.W. made it clear that he had lost a presidential election, but not his integrity. Although many believe that his speech was a cookie-cutter delivery, he had a certain conviction that made his words heartwarming.

In a few short minutes, Senator McCain gave insight on what it really takes to be an American. Even as he acknowledged the differences between his platform and president-elect Obama’s, McCain preached political unity as he urged his supporters to stand behind their new leader. The Arizona state senator addressed reconciliation and compromise, and with limited, but earnest words, proved his dedication to the United States.

On more than one occasion, McCain put his proud exterior aside to defend Obama from verbal assault. It takes an impressive caliber of person to ignore their ego after losing by a landslide.

It seemed like the few short hours it took to decide the next president gave Senator McCain some kind of revelation. Standing on the podium addressing the nation was a new man that had been buried under political agenda since the beginning of the race. Unfortunately for McCain, the champion had been crowned, and there was no turning back. Obama had won, and the United States had taken new leaps toward social equality. McCain, despite his loss, delivered a sincere, impassioned concession speech that brought a new hope to political collaboration. Even as he lost out on the highest office in the country, John McCain joined the many others that night who were proud to be American.

By Rebecca Perkins
Contributing Writer 

The passing of Proposition 8 amending the California state constitution to define marriage as being a union between a man and a woman has caused uproar in LGBT communities across the country. Protesters are marching throughout the nation to bring attention to what many activists feel is a huge setback for the gay rights movement.  Activists have organized protests and rallies here in Massachusetts to bring attention to what they see as a fundamental civil rights issue. 

I watch this kind of legislation closely myself as a member of the queer community and because my girlfriend of four years is preparing to head back to her home country to renew her visa in hopes of remaining in the US. While state laws have no effect on immigration laws and my ability to sponsor my partner here, I have become increasingly frustrated at what I see as a mass attempt at cultural assimilation among the gay and lesbian community.  While we have spent millions of dollars and countless hours of volunteer work to argue over the definition of marriage, we have not worked toward gaining any of the civil rights that are given to heterosexual couples in state or federal law.

Marriage is a historically sexist institution that has seen women transferred as property visible in the tradition of a woman taking her husband’s last name.  While I have seen many heterosexual couples, including my parents, redefine their own marriages to reflect values of gender equality; these changes have been made personally and without mandate by the state.  By their very nature, queer relationships do not reflect any of the original tenants of marriage.  Our unions are inherently self-defined.  This is important when we are faced with the fact that many of the resources in this movement are being put toward pushing a state definition of our relationships.  In my mind, the state’s role is to ensure that all citizens have access to equal taxation status and immigration rights, as well as providing equality in issues of family visitation in hospitals and adoption, etc.  So why are we looking to the state to define our relationships when they have always evolved in very personal and individual ways within our families and faith communities?  Our resources would be much better spent passing bills to allow civil unions.  This would take a lot of the steam out of gay marriage opponents and would possibly lead the way to all state recognized relationships being called civil unions.  LGBT families do not need to adopt a hetero-normative tradition to be seen as equals in society.