Unacceptable Behavior

A quick aside. Last night riots broke out at Iowa State University injuring one student when a light pole was knocked over by rioters and fell on his head. Recent press releases say he is in critical but stable condition at the moment. There is already so much content on the interwebs about this that mine will be brief. I think President Leith did the right thing by cancelling VEISHEA. For those complaining that he is punishing the rule followers I say that it was his only real option to calm down the situation. I am beyond appalled at the conduct of these ISU students and VEISHEA attendees. I have been hyping VEISHEA all semester to my international friends and you select few managed to ruin it within three days. VEISHEA is supposed to be a celebration of the knowledge, creativity and community of ISU not some excuse to wreck property and hurt people. I have never before felt ashamed to be a Cyclone but I am today. There is a fund being raised now to help pay for the damage to the Ames community along with helping the student who was injured and his family. Click this link for the page: #5forISU

The other reason for my post today is the senate blocking the passage of an act that would have increased income inequality between men and women in the U.S. While not necessarily mandating equal pay the Paycheck Fairness Act would have stopped companies penalizing their employees for discussing salary information and that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has access to salary information to assess the level of inequality that exists in a company. This seems like a great first step to diminishing the income gap between the male and female working populations. According the the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2010 (the most recent data I found) on average women working full time made 81% of what their male counterparts made. That's an almost 20% gap and amounted to a deficit of 155 dollars per week. (Males made 824$/week versus women who made 669$/week.) That to me is horrifying. A women can work the same job for the same amount of time as a man and be payed 20% less for no other reason other than that she is a woman. We say we are a country built on the principles of equality, equal opportunity, and freedom. Doesn't really seem like that to me.

In response to the outcry after they voted down the bill, some conservative senators defended the bill saying that it would have wasted companies time and money with "frivolous" lawsuits. "Frivolous" was the actual word used by one of the senators. I am having a hard time even responding to that because of the incredible amount of things wrong with that one sentence. Not only are they saying corporations are more important than women, they are saying that women fighting for equality are wasting everyone's time. They're also calling fighting for equal pay frivolous as well as giving corporations the "thumbs up" to keep right on doing what they're doing. Various commentators have said that this is just a ploy to get the support of women ahead of an election. I tell you what, when you dismiss providing equality to your citizens as an attempt to gain popularity you need to go stick your head in the sand and have a good hard think about your personal values and the way that you are constructing your political party. You want to know why it makes Obama more popular? It's because it makes the lives of this countries' citizens better and that will always be popular.