Since only a year has elapsed since I, like many of our current prospie visitors, was an overanxious high school senior agonizing over every trifling preparatory detail of my U of C experience, I can attest to the great number of all-purpose, and altogether unhelpful, “things to bring” lists floating around the Internet and U of C literature. Yes, picture frames and storage boxes to slide under my bed sound like very nice things to have, but are they absolutely indispensible? And what of the other stuff—the stuff that only a seasoned undergraduate would know to keep handy? Things so intrinsically ingrained in our culture that, without them, one might as well walk himself into oncoming traffic? In an effort to alleviate all preoccupation, I present to the incoming first-years—and any upperclassmen who have still not caught on—the definitive list of things one should bring to the University of Chicago.
First: Jesus sandals. Now, let me be clear. I’m not talking about the chic, leather, strappy sandals you might find strolling down a sandy beach in Mykonos on a balmy afternoon, straight from the Banana Republic summer collection; I’m talking about the heinous cloth and rubber contraptions you find cradling the calluses of most hippies and invalids, bought at the swap meet from a man with no teeth. They are absolute necessities on the U of C campus; no self-respecting TAPS major leaves the dormitory without them.
It’s a versatile shoe, appropriate for virtually all ages and occasions, though I find that they’re best paired with ratty old T-shirts with holes and sweat stains, procured for free at local sporting events. (You may also want to invest in a couple of these while you’re at it.) If it’s at all possible to arrive the first day of O-Week wearing your new Jesus-sandal ensemble, go ahead and do it; they’re going to be all the rage this fall quarter—as they are every fall quarter—though perhaps I should warn you: The trend will waver sometime in November, at which point Uggs will become the height of fashion. But don’t you worry. Come sunny spring quarter, you’ll be able to break those babies back out as if not even a day has gone by.
Next up: Barack Obama paraphernalia. I tell you, it just never gets old. Though the election is long over, and though the guy took office almost four months ago, it is still absolutely imperative that you express your no-longer-necessary support for Obama’s campaign in the form of a pin on your backpack, a sticker on your laptop, or, perhaps, a tattoo on your ass. Students at the U of C just adore Barack Obama, and they will never let you forget it. Never. So be sure to eBay it up before you return to Hyde Park so as not to accidentally embarrass yourself with a more current political agenda.
Cigarettes: Do you remember when it was drilled into your puerile baby brain that smoking was the un-coolest thing you could ever do, even if your peers and elders assured you otherwise? Well, that was a big fat lie. Everyone who’s anyone at the University of Chicago smokes at least three packs a day. In fact, just this last Tuesday, as a testament to the sheer awesomeness of the cigarette, the Maroon printed an illuminating column called “The Case for Smoking.”
I know the fact of this phenomenon may have a few of you reeling with surprise. Weren’t people here supposed to be intelligent? Shouldn’t they know better than to smoke? Well, I don’t know about that. All I know is that smoking makes a person look way more mature, way more sophisticated, and way more like they have somewhere very important to be as they stride purposefully down the sidewalk, blowing smoke in your face. Emphysema, black lung—none of it matters. What matters is that you and your classmates are choking down a ciggy at every possible opportunity. (It’s also a fabulous way to dress up a pair of Jesus sandals, if you so choose.)
And, finally: porn. You’ll be needing it.
There are other things, of course, that you could and should bring with you to the University of Chicago. However, these are the essentials—the bare necessities for a better life, I should hope, than the one you had in high school. But for now, be free, don’t fret, and enjoy your last months of high school and summer. If this is the university at which you end up, you’ll have far bigger things on your mind than fashion, politics, and drugs. Not porn, however, because porn makes the world go round.
Luke Dumas is a first-year in the College majoring in English Language and Literature.
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Discussion
HARLEYRIDER1978
April 17th 2009 at 05:10 AM
THE AIR ACCORDING TO OSHA
Though repetition has little to do with "the truth," we're repeatedly told that there's "no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke."
OSHA begs to differ.
OSHA has established PELs (Permissible Exposure Levels) for all the measurable chemicals, including the 40 alleged carcinogens, in secondhand smoke. PELs are levels of exposure for an 8-hour workday from which, according to OSHA, no harm will result.
Of course the idea of "thousands of chemicals" can itself sound spooky. Perhaps it would help to note that coffee contains over 1000 chemicals, 19 of which are known to be rat carcinogens.
-"Rodent Carcinogens: Setting Priorities" Gold Et Al., Science, 258: 261-65 (1992)
There. Feel better?
As for secondhand smoke in the air, OSHA has stated outright that:
"Field studies of environmental tobacco smoke indicate that under normal conditions, the components in tobacco smoke are diluted below existing Permissible Exposure Levels (PELS.) as referenced in the Air Contaminant Standard (29 CFR 1910.1000)...It would be very rare to find a workplace with so much smoking that any individual PEL would be exceeded."
-Letter From Greg Watchman, Acting Sec'y, OSHA, To Leroy J Pletten, PHD, July 8, 1997
Indeed it would.
Independent health researchers have done the chemistry and the math to prove how very very rare that would be.
As you're about to see in a moment.
In 1999, comments were solicited by the government from an independent Public and Health Policy Research group, Littlewood & Fennel of Austin, Tx, on the subject of secondhand smoke.
Using EPA figures on the emissions per cigarette of everything measurable in secondhand smoke, they compared them to OSHA's PELs.
The following excerpt and chart are directly from their report and their Washington testimony:
CALCULATING THE NON-EXISTENT RISKS OF ETS
"We have taken the substances for which measurements have actually been obtained--very few, of course, because it's difficult to even find these chemicals in diffuse and diluted ETS.
"We posit a sealed, unventilated enclosure that is 20 feet square with a 9 foot ceiling clearance.
"Taking the figures for ETS yields per cigarette directly from the EPA, we calculated the number of cigarettes that would be required to reach the lowest published "danger" threshold for each of these substances. The results are actually quite amusing. In fact, it is difficult to imagine a situation where these threshold limits could be realized.
"Our chart (Table 1) illustrates each of these substances, but let me report some notable examples.
"For Benzo[a]pyrene, 222,000 cigarettes would be required to reach the lowest published "danger" threshold.
"For Acetone, 118,000 cigarettes would be required.
"Toluene would require 50,000 packs of simultaneously smoldering cigarettes.
"At the lower end of the scale-- in the case of Acetaldehyde or Hydrazine, more than 14,000 smokers would need to light up simultaneously in our little room to reach the threshold at which they might begin to pose a danger.
"For Hydroquinone, "only" 1250 cigarettes are required. Perhaps we could post a notice limiting this 20-foot square room to 300 rather tightly-packed people smoking no more than 62 packs per hour?
"Of course the moment we introduce real world factors to the room -- a door, an open window or two, or a healthy level of mechanical air exchange (remember, the room we've been talking about is sealed) achieving these levels becomes even more implausible.
"It becomes increasingly clear to us that ETS is a political, rather than scientific, scapegoat."
Chart (Table 1)
-"Toxic Toxicology" Littlewood & Fennel
Coming at OSHA from quite a different angle is litigator (and how!) John Banzhaf, founder and president of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH).
Banzhaf is on record as wanting to remove healthy children from intact homes if one of their family smokes. He also favors national smoking bans both indoors and out throughout America, and has litigation kits for sale on how to get your landlord to evict your smoking neighbors.
Banzhaf originally wanted OSHA to ban smoking in all American workplaces.
It's not even that OSHA wasn't happy to play along; it's just that--darn it -- they couldn't find the real-world science to make it credible.
So Banzhaf sued them. Suing federal agencies to get them to do what you want is, alas, a new trick in the political deck of cards. But OSHA, at least apparently, hung tough.
In response to Banzhaf's law suit they said the best they could do would be to set some official standards for permissible levels of smoking in the workplace.
Scaring Banzhaf, and Glantz and the rest of them to death.
Permissible levels? No, no. That would mean that OSHA, officially, said that smoking was permitted. That in fact, there were levels (hard to exceed, as we hope we've already shown) that were generally safe.
This so frightened Banzhaf that he dropped the case. Here are excerpts from his press release:
"ASH has agreed to dismiss its lawsuit against OSHA...to avoid serious harm to the non-smokers rights movement from adverse action OSHA had threatened to take if forced by the suit to do it....developing some hypothetical [ASH's characterization] measurement of smoke pollution that might be a better remedy than prohibiting smoking....[T]his could seriously hurt efforts to pass non-smokers' rights legislation at the state and local level...
Another major threat was that, if the agency were forced by ASH's suit to promulgate a rule regulating workplace smoking, [it] would be likely to pass a weak one.... This weak rule in turn could preempt future and possibly even existing non-smokers rights laws-- a risk no one was willing to take.
As a result of ASH's dismissal of the suit, OSHA will now withdraw its rule-making proceedings but will do so without using any of the damaging [to Anti activists] language they had threatened to include."
-ASH Nixes OSHA Suit To Prevent Harm To Movement
Looking on the bright side, Banzhaf concludes:
"We might now be even more successful in persuading states and localities to ban smoking on their own, once they no longer have OSHA rule-making to hide behind."
Once again, the Anti-Smoking Movement reveals that it's true motive is basically Prohibition (stopping smokers from smoking; making them "social outcasts") --not "safe air."
And the attitude seems to be, as Stanton Glantz says, if the science doesn't "help" you, don't do the science.
KAM
April 20th 2009 at 01:09 PM
Nicely done, I feel you have truly employed your social observations to good use. The highlight of my year is when I see a suburban high school girl break down and wear Jesus sandals while ditching her "oh-so-stylish" heels, thus succumbing to University of Chicago nerd-om (you know who you are, bottle blondes). Might one claim that such attire is equivalent to the habit of a nun? If so, how fitting is the recommendation: "porn. You’ll be needing it," which is perhaps the wisest and most insightful observation of this rather superb column.
BOB
April 20th 2009 at 07:03 PM
Anyone got a cigarette I can bum?
THEATRE FOEVER
May 13th 2009 at 11:54 PM
I come here in defense of all my fellow TAPS majors. We're not sure what these Jesus-sandals are. Why dost thou slander us so?
Also, if/when you try to figure out who sent this, they're are only about eleven of us and we'll probably all admit to the crime. Hope that helps in the investigation.
KRETEK
May 20th 2009 at 06:36 AM
Fire it up!
http://www.davehitt.com/facts/
http://www.thesmokingban.org/
http://www.antibrains.com/
http://www.freedom2choose.info/
http://www.forces.org/
http://www.forces.org/Multimedia_Portal/index.php?selection=82
http://www.aapsonline.org/jpands/hacienda/edcor5.html
http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com/2009/05/in-my-view-attuds-argument-to-ban.html
http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com/2005/07/why-is-pharmaceutical-company-funding.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090423193946.htm
MARIA ALEXANDER
May 22nd 2009 at 07:03 PM
Try to make your next article more informative/enlightening. You think that these are insightful observations, but what poor soul hasn't thought of this before?
PETE
July 4th 2009 at 04:11 PM
Why are a few smokers using this page to encourage public smoking? And I've seen this exact word for word post from Harleyrider1978 on several other blogs. How bout getting imaginative and stop cutting and pasting.