Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881

The Daily Northwestern

39° Evanston, IL
Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881

The Daily Northwestern

Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881

The Daily Northwestern

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Thumbs: Lacrosse wins, Porn at Tech loses

Thumbs up to the women’s lacrosse team’s fifth straight victory in the NCAA championships. No matter what moniker you use – the Drive for Five, One for the Thumb, Fifthwestern – it is tough not to be impressed with the Wildcats’ accomplishment. Northwestern finished an undefeated season and a fifth straight national championship with a 21-7 win in the final against North Carolina on Sunday. The Cats proved you never question the heart of a champion.

Thumbs up to the new Safewalk Program. Throughout Reading Week the Associated Student Government will fund and organize a test run of SafeWalk. Students can call between midnight and 2 a.m.and get a pair of escorts to walk them anywhere on campus and a bit to the west. If the program is successful, it will be a nice, cost-effective and green solution to SafeRide’s overpopularity.

This sounds like a great start to helping student safety on campus. The trick is to make students take it seriously and not abuse the system. It’s going to be a lot harder for a couple of escorts (no matter how strapping) to get a drunk girl home after a party than if SafeRide picked her up, but we hope the 13 volunteers will be up to the challenge.

Logistical issues aside, this could be one of those programs that significantly improve NU student life and safety. We hope that if successful, the administration would be willing to fund it in the future.

But now students will face the eternal question: army or ninja? Will the volunteers walking you home after a grueling night at the library be members of NU’s Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps, or the ParaCombatives Ju-jutsu club? Oh, the suspense.

Thumbs down to Porn at Tech getting canceled. OK, so it’s tacky. It’s potentially offensive. It’s definitely not high brow. But what people seem to be forgetting is Porn at Tech isn’t supposed to be classy. Instead, it’s a longstanding tradition that for a few moments a year, a few hundred hung over, uptight Northwestern students and their friends from schools that get out before midsummer get together and get grossed out by some terrible acting and/or genitalia.

No one’s advocating we go live our lives like porn stars. No one’s making anyone attend who doesn’t choose to. Generally when people accuse NU of being too PC the argument tends to fall flat. By banning events like Porn at Tech that offer laughs and only offend the students who choose to attend the showing in the first place, we all lose out.

NU becomes a slightly duller place, students hate the administration or whoever took the space away just a little bit more and suddenly we’re arguing as a campus over whether two hours of watching trashy people sharing their body fluids is a right or a privilege. Now, that’s just not what Dillo Day is about.

Thumbs up to Roxana Saberi’s safe return to the United States after her unwilling stint in an Iranian jail cell. She’s free, back and coming to NU. After Iranian courts reversed Saberi’s eight year prison sentence three weeks ago, the ’99 Medill grad has finally returned to the United States.

Initially arrested for buying a bottle of wine, Saberi ultimately faced charges of espionage for reporting without official press credentials. Now that she is back, Medill officials have confirmed that she will attend the Medill convocation on June 20.

Saberi’s release didn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s pretty clear that without pressure from President Obama, Saberi would probably still be in Iran with a seemingly interminable prison sentence.

The students who worked to organize a rally for her release and the politicians and editorial boards all over the country who kept her story in the news made her freedom possible. Without that public pressure to bring her home, she might have been forgotten.

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Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881
Thumbs: Lacrosse wins, Porn at Tech loses