Business as usual
In the Dec. 4 Hatchet, Zej Moczydlowski gave readers a lesson in “Business in the real world”(p. 4). I must first point out that Aramark, the AFL-CIO and the Progressive Student Union have been dealing with business in the real world long before he or I gave our two cents. While Mr. Moczydlowski duly notes that Aramark management once profited from a monopoly environment, he fails, probably due to his recent arrival at GW, to put management’s recent actions into their proper context. For years, Aramark management at GW has used and abused its workers and captive student consumers. In a couple of months, Aramark’s contract with the University comes up for re-negotiation, at which point it may be possible for Aramark to switch from a sales-based operation to a management for a flat fee operation. After years of taking advantage of us, we’re supposed to shrug off Aramark deciding to save some money for a couple of months at our expense?
If the business model proposed in the column is, in fact, “business in the real world,” then IBM would have shut down operations immediately after punch cards became obsolete. For most of this fall semester, Aramark has been promising creative new ways to deal with the new competitive environment. It gave us shorter hours, job cuts and Fan Fare. You’ve never heard of Fan Fare because you never ate there. Product and marketing innovation is a long-term process, and Aramark management at GW has proven that it is only interested in short-term solutions.
What is truly bothersome about the editorial is how it strips managers’ of their ethical responsibility. They still chose to take those “distasteful actions,” no matter how convenient they are for the bottom-line. Do people have less ethical and social responsibility solely because they make those choices in the name of a corporation? The management at Aramark has hurt our campus community and apparently, because they are incorporated, Mr. Moczydlowski expects no more of them. Is he really making the case for business in the real world or just for more business as usual?
-Joshua Steverman
junior, Progressive Student Union
Research Needed
In a letter that recently appeared in The Hatchet (“You have the floor,” Nov. 24, p.5), Adam J. Ramey made na?ve generalizations about and attacks on the gay community. His assumptions about the gay rights movement are false, and I have to seriously question the facts of his eyewitness account. While I acknowledge Mr. Ramey’s intention to accuse gays of hypocrisy and “expose” them for the violent, deviant perverts he believes they are, I suggest he make a more substantive argument next time to save himself from having his ignorance published. Thank you for the floor.
Mr. Ramey obviously empathizes with the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property and therefore chose to write The Hatchet in its defense. Mr. Ramey’s actions are most likely commended by TFP, as his views are in keeping with their anachronistic ones; however, as a gay man I am infuriated. I speak not only for myself but for many members of the gay community at GW. As the newly appointed executive director of The Out Crowd, I read Mr. Ramey’s letter aloud at our weekly meeting. The room erupted with objection, wondering where Mr. Ramey received his information and also how such a thing could be published.
At the conclusion of his letter Mr. Ramey posed two questions: “If homosexuals are peaceful, why did the TFP feel threatened?” and “If homosexual perversity does not extend beyond the bedroom, why did you resort to public obscenities?” First, the gay community has never recognized any of its behaviors as immoral, inside or outside the bedroom. As far as gays trying to reassert themselves as peaceful, I have to ask Mr. Ramey, when did the gays ever take up arms? In response to his account of one pro-gay activist, I do not know of this individual who allegedly screamed obscenities, and I will agree that this was not an effective or mature way to deal with TFP. However, the fault does not lie in whether or not he is stating fact; Mr. Ramey’s fault lies in how he took one experience and applied it generally to the entire gay community at large. One angry person’s actions do not represent every homosexual’s stance.
I assure you that violence is no friend of the Gay-Lesbian-Bisexual-Transgendered community. The gay community lives in fear of violence. I encourage Mr. Ramey to research Stonewall, Matthew Shepard and the recent rape and beating of a lesbian in the District, to cite a few instances of how violence has affected homosexuals. This type of ignorance is what impedes progress.
TFP showed up on campus to distribute literature and force a petition on students that would make homosexuality illegal. TFP, Mr. Ramey and their supporters need to understand the country in which they reside. We live in a secular nation; we live by the law before we live by ideology. Lawmakers in Massachusetts have recognized this, the Supreme Court has recognized this and, in time, America will recognize this. If the TFP felt threatened by a few obscenities, how do they think a gay person felt when someone handed them literature telling them they were illegal? Thank you for your questions, Mr. Ramey, but you could have saved both of us the trouble by a simple Google search on gay rights history before writing your letter and posing absurd questions.
-John J. Amenda
sophomore, executive director, The Out Crowd
Pie in the sky
I write about the staff editorial “A proposal denied” (Dec. 4, p. 4) in Thursday’s Hatchet and the related front-page article (“GW nixes plan”) about the withdrawal of the mandatory summer proposal. It is interesting that we read about this important news in The Hatchet though the faculty as a whole has yet to hear from the administration on this issue; to my knowledge, the Faculty Senate has not yet been advised of this decision.
I am surprised that your front-page writer and the editorial writer continue to assert that the “trimester plan would have generated at least $10 million in perpetuity” (editorial) and “The University could have brought in an additional $12 million annually” (front page). That money was more like a pie in the sky. There has been no verifiable analysis of the real costs and expenses that might have occurred with the alternative calendar proposals, though you make it seem as if we just lost that free $10 million (or $12 million) of extra money. I ask you the following: If the faculty and students of GW are against that proposal, and now the administration has withdrawn it, then who exactly is in favor of this proposal? Is it just a few Hatchet writers who continue to think this was a good idea?
-Murli Gupta
professor of mathematics
member, Faculty Senate
