By Drew Edwards on April 17, 2008
On March 29, 2008, the world celebrated its second annual Earth Hour, an epic sixty minutes of energy-saving, organized to draw attention to “The Greatest Threat Our Planet Has Ever Faced” – global warming, of course. A number of cities across the globe agreed simultaneously to shut off power together for a period of one [...]
Posted in International | Tagged April 2008, Volume VI Number VI
By Drew Edwards on April 17, 2008
For the past year, Brown University has been hard at work on a number of well-intentioned but misguided efforts to improve the safety of its students. I will discuss three of these efforts in this article: first, a siren, and second, a text-messaging system, both intended to counter school shootings; and, third, a campaign [...]
Posted in Brown University | Tagged April 2008, Volume VI Number VI
By Drew Edwards on March 21, 2008
In “Gun-Free Zones: The Latest in Suicide Pacts” (Spectator VI:3), Kristina Kelleher ’09 noted that the Virginia Tech, Columbine, Beach, Jonesboro, Paducah, Connetquot High, Killeexn, Orange Park, SuccessTech, and West Nickel Mines school shootings all took place in so-called “gun-free zones.” This argument would, most unfortunately, presage another horrendous act of campus violence: the February [...]
Posted in National | Tagged March 2008, Volume VI Number V
By Drew Edwards on February 20, 2008
What does Brown have against the Reserve Officer’s Training Corps (ROTC)? The program faced heavy student and faculty opposition during the Vietnam War, producing its last graduate in 1972. It remains barred from access to the University, allegedly because of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy, established under President Bill Clinton, that restricts openly [...]
Posted in Brown University | Tagged February 2008, Volume VI Number IV
By Drew Edwards on December 6, 2007
A great deal of attention has been paid to sexual assault problems over this past month. In an editorial published in the Brown Daily Herald on October 11th, Lily Shield ’09 writes, “For a school of our size and with our money, Brown has an appalling lack of resources dedicated to helping sexual assault survivors.” [...]
Posted in Brown University, Lead | Tagged December 2007, Volume VI Number III
By Drew Edwards on October 26, 2007
While the exact foundation for a “right to privacy” in America is somewhat constitutionally dubious – there is no such explicit right, as it has been “inferred” from the “penumbra” of various Bill-of-Rights amendments – it is quite clear that Americans highly value their privacy. This is in stark contrast to the UK, where recent [...]
Posted in National | Tagged October 2007, Parents’ Weekend, Volume VI Number II
By Drew Edwards on September 9, 2007
Mr. Stern, for all of his admirable bravado, apparently fails to read my original article. Mr. Stern is free, as he does, to contest the arguments in Swindle. This, however, entirely misses my point. My thesis, as I made clear many times throughout my article, is that arguments that global warming is caused by CO2 [...]
Posted in Response | Tagged September 2007, Volume VI Number I
By Drew Edwards on May 1, 2007
The Great Global Warming Swindle is a new documentary from British television producer Martin Durkin, which casts aside environmental taboos and challenges the notion of “Global Warming” as a man-produced phenomenon.
Before I begin addressing the film’s arguments, I would like to discuss why such a film is so important. Whether or not one [...]
Posted in Brown University
By Drew Edwards on May 1, 2007
Earth Day at Brown University has, in years past, been a fairly reasonable, if perhaps one-sided, celebration of environmentalism. The College Republicans have always been invited, and have accepted this invitation as an opportunity to set up an “Industrial Revolution” table as a modest counterpoint. This has always been conducted in a respectful manner.
This year, [...]
Posted in Brown University | Tagged carbon offsets, college republicans, college republicans banned, earth day, earth day celebrations, environmental action network, May 2007, Volume V Number VII
By Drew Edwards on February 1, 2007
On September 12th, 2006, Harvard College announced that its early admission program would be coming to an end. Shortly thereafter, Princeton’s trustees (who happened to be meeting that weekend) decided to follow suit. As they describe (see http://www.princeton.edu/~paw/web_exclusives/plus/plus_101106rapelye. html), they assumed that following in Harvard’s footsteps immediately would make them appear on the top of [...]
Posted in National | Tagged February 2007, Volume V Number V
