The Economy: Where Do We Go Now?

The experts may claim that the economy is improving, but I’m not buying it.

The suburb I live in was always considered a decent place to live. Although I’ve always hated my town based of its overwhelming abundance of trains and auto parts stores, most people who live here are happy with it and my friends from the city describe it as being “cute”. But now, it seems that every time I drive around in my area, I see yet another foreclosed house that had been occupied just a few days earlier. Similarly, a more-affluent suburb I often shop in is now littered with vacant storefronts, even though just two years ago, that town’s shopping district was thriving.



When I was in high school, we all whined about the bad economy based on high gas prices and low interest rates, but back then, everyone I knew was surviving just fine. Now, I know of businesses that have shut down rather than continuing to pay the rising cost of renting space. With the increased cost of living expenses, most middle-class citizens are now agonizing over how they’ll ever come up with enough to cover their next mortgage payment or the upcoming round of property taxes. Everyone I know who is looking for a job isn’t finding one. And some of the most hard-working people I know are facing foreclosure.



So between the lack of jobs, the inflated cost of everything, the government’s increases in taxes, and the fact that banks are becoming less and less reliable, where are we supposed to go? It’s not about whether or not people can afford a vacation anymore. The middle class is shriveling as a growing percentage of the population has nowhere to live, no work to be found, and no money for food. Does the government really think that rather than creating jobs or lowering taxes, the solution to our economic problems is for everyone to just die?



At one time the economy was the consumer’s friend. Back in the 1990’s, if you had enough money to put a little away in the bank, you were rewarded with a reasonable amount of money in interest. Longer ago than that, back in the 1950’s, shoppers were given S&H stamps every time they went to the grocery store, which they could later use in order to receive free household items. Perhaps you could argue that expensive restaurants and specialty stores do the same thing now by giving regular customers free birthday dinners and buy-10-get-one-free punch-cards. But when the economy’s bad, the first things people give up are those expensive services, whereas grocery shopping is a necessity for everyone.



Maybe the experts think the reason why consumers can’t be given a break now is because the economy is bad. But doesn’t it instead seem that the economy is bad now because no one is given a break?

Are Sororities and Fraternities Killing Diversity?

The college I go to prides itself on being diverse. Nearly every class manages to discuss issues like racism at some point or another. When you open up a brochure about the college, you see dozens of images of happy students, half of whom belong to a racial minority group, even though in reality, for every 20 students at the college, there appear to be only about 3 who aren’t white. This hypocrisy is an issue pretty much everyone is aware of, but there are other ways in which the school isn’t diverse that most people seem blind to. And if you know anything at all about me, you know I like to point out what other people tend to neglect.

Now I’m not exactly trying to bash the school. They give out a lot of scholarships, it‘s a nice looking campus, and I wasn‘t able to find any other college that offered a degree in the major I wanted, so I wouldn‘t say I‘m not happy with the school in general. And in terms of diversity, they have handled some things extremely well, like when the gay pride flag on campus was vandalized, the college put up signs informing students that the college welcomes everyone and doesn’t approve of homophobic attitudes.

The thing is, when I think of diversity, I usually think of it applying to all people based on all aspects of their identity, including nationality, sex, religion, sexual orientation, age, disability or lack thereof, and class. Yet at the college I go to, the whole issue of class seems to be completely forgotten about. Perhaps it’s because the college is located in a fairly wealthy area, but don’t they realize that not everyone who goes there lives within a three mile radius?

This semester I’ve actually taken a class on diversity in the workplace, and in the class, subjects like sexism, ageism, disability, sexual orientation, and religion were each talked about for approximately an hour and a half while the whole other half of the semester was dedicated to racism. The class discussed pretty much every imaginable type of racism except racism against Native Americans, because apparently they think that isn’t an issue in the United States. Yet neither the teacher nor the textbook even attempted to address discrimination on the basis of class.

It seems the college has no idea that there are people of various income levels attending their classes. After all, everywhere you go on campus, you see signs of the sororities and fraternities, and while I don’t know much about the fraternities, I do know that students who aren’t rolling in dough could never afford to be in a sorority. From what I hear, it costs hundreds of dollars to join a sorority, and the girls I know who belong to one say that if they miss a sorority event, they have to pay $50 or even $100, even if the reason they missed the event was because they had to attend class. Additionally, those of us who spend a great deal of time doing work outside of school would never possibly have the time to go to all of these events, so the sororities seem to favour those who not only live on campus but also do not need jobs in order to afford their classes.

So ironically, in this age when Greece’s economy has failed, the people here who take part in “The Greek Life” end up making the rest of us look like we come from the ghettos in comparison, and colleges that hope to eliminate discrimination don’t even recognize that they’re supporting a kind of discrimination that affects a large majority of the student body.