Public Policy and Bullying

For those of you who haven’t yet heard about it, UVM is having a one day display this week called “1,100 Backpacks,” which is an exhibit traveling the nation to commemorate college suicides.  While students obviously commit suicide for a variety of issues, I would like to focus this entry on the recent awareness of suicides for young gay students, many of who are the subject of bullying or harassment.  After the large number of gay teen suicides this fall, numerous individuals and organizations, from Apple employees to Lady Gaga, have been working to spread awareness about this issue. 

While I think that it is great that so many organizations are working to increase awareness about this issue, I believe that more needs to be done to institute effective policies to protect individuals from harassment.  I believe that much of the changes need to start in schools, from elementary on up.  If schools are mandated to implement policies that require students to be educated about homosexuality from an early age, and institute harsher sanctions for bullying, I believe that more gay teens will feel safe and accepted by their communities.  It is also important for teachers to be trained to accept, or at least tolerate, gay students, so that they do not contribute to the problem themselves and are better equipped to stop bullying.  Also, there needs to be increased penalties for adults who harass individuals for their sexual orientation, and more laws that prevent discrimination based on sexual orientation.  While I realize that these changes could be extremely controversial, especially for the religious right, I believe that it is necessary for our country to do more to protect all citizens from bullying and harassment.

For those of you interested in the exhibit, you can learn more here:

http://www.uvm.edu/bored/calendar/-send-silence-packing-1100-backpacks

Foreign Aid Policy: Is is Fair?

The recent uprisings in Africa made me think a little more about the policy behind American foreign aid.  Foreign aid makes up a large part of the federal budget, and is both something that is frequently opposed and minimally understood.  I find it very interesting that many people strongly oppose any foreign aid spending, yet gloss over the world news and have no idea what truly is going on in other nations. 

The United States donates more foreign aid than any other nation in the world, yet it is not always for the most humanitarian reasons.  It is clear that foreign aid often goes to corrupt regimes as a method of “buying” their cooperation with the United States, and aid is more likely to go to oil rich nations than poor nations with few natural resources.  This quote by Robert Gates, the Secretary of Defense, shows this sense of cynicism, “Governments deal with the United States because it's in their interest, not because they like us, not because they trust us, and not because they believe we can keep secrets (taken from David Rieff’s article in the New Republic, Wikileaks and the Cyberwars to Come, "December 14, 2010).

While I certainly do not dismiss this point of view, I also believe that it is important to remember that, regardless of its intention, foreign aid does save lives.  Foreign aid may not be implemented in the most efficient or fair manner, but it does help some of the people that it serves.  I also believe that if the American people were more aware of the issues in the developing world they would be better able to lobby their representatives to make foreign aid policy more fairly implemented.

I though that this link was a particularly sad account about the consequences of one of the recent wars: in Libya

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/03/31/libya.rape.case/index.html

I also though that this article about the failure of foreign aid certainly gives the reader something to think about:

http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa065.html