UWC- USA MARCH 2015

CAMPUS NEWS

This issue, read all about t h e p r o p o s e d n e w schedules as well as the Friend-crush café that took place during the weekend.

WORLD NEWS

This week we’re covering the r ise in Walmar t ’s minimum wage.

OPINION

Flip to the back to read all about a twitter page for a whole country and to get y o u r w e e k l y d o s e o f humour.

Photo Credit: forbes.com

Walmart Raises Wages: Is Altruism,

Economics, or Something Else

at Work?

CHARLIE THOMPSON(CANADA ‘16)

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Earlier this month, it was announced that Walmart would be raising starting wages across the board to 9 dollars per hour

(and 10$ next year), which is significantly higher than the federal minimum hourly wage of 7.25$. Some lauded this as a victory of a free market and of the notion that “rising tides raise all boats”, but others claim that it was an inevitable change — and that Walmart simply initiated it before it was forced on them, with the goal of getting good publicity.

Walmart’s CEO, Doug M c M i l l o n , c i t e d h i s d e e p appreciation for the workers as motivation for raising the starting wage. “When we take a step back, it’s clear to me that one of our highest priorities must be to invest more in our people this year”, he said. (continued on page 5)

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A message from the Editors

Hello readers,

As the long awaited break of Project Week has finally rolled around, don’t forget to read about the news on campus and beyond.

Best,

The Editors

LITERATI STAFF

THE EDITORS

Blake Anderson USA-KS

Ojaswee Rajbhandary Nepal ‘15

Katerina Yang China ‘16

Kevin Yin Canada ’16

Sage de Brum Marshall Islands ’15

FACULTY SPONSOR

Parris Bushong

Tengliang He Japan ’16

Isabel Skye USA - WI ‘16

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Charlie Thompson Canada ‘16

UWC- USA MARCH 2015

New Schedule for 2016

KEVIN YIN(CANADA ‘16)

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On Feb. 28th, Szymon Galazka posted on the Student Council page for UWC-USA claiming exclusive knowledge of the proposed new schedule for 2016.

The post included information about longer school days, explaining that the current school day would be extended until 4:30 in order to free Wednesdays for extracurricular activities and services both on campus and off. The post states that Official Physical Activities (OPA's) would be completely removed and that Action credit would be achieved through the

wilderness program, fitness and services. Galazka also said that President Mukul "proposed a four day long week calendar but doesn't support Wednesday as the free day".

The post went on to offer personal opinions on ways to take down the new schedule as well as attempting to rally the student body against this proposed idea. The origin of his information remains speculative.

However, a copy of two schedules were been leaked to students on the same date, at 10:00 pm, highlighting both the truths and inaccuracies of Galazka's post. The schedules are two among five that are all currently in progress.

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The images do not apparently include daily increases to 4:30 pm. In "Option 1" the 4:30 rule only applies to Tuesdays and Theory of Knowledge (TOK) codes on Mondays and Thursdays. In "Option 2 ", this applies to Mondays (through what appears to be what is currently being referred to as M-Code) and Thursdays. TOK would be taught in free codes in the second option.

Though the 4:30 pm rule was generalized in the post, the claimed removal of OPA's seems to be accurate.

It was suggested by sources that the services proposed for Wednesdays would be mandatory although the accuracy of this information remains in question. The images also suggest that all clubs and extracurriculars that did not fall into the category of wilderness, fitness or service would be compiled into time slots after 7:00 pm.

While there are almost as many drafts flying around as people voicing their opinions, we will probably have to end up waiting until next year to see the final version.

Friend Crush Café! TENGLIANG HE(JAPAN ‘16)

————————— Last Saturday night, we had the lovely Friend Crush Café. Big thanks to all the awesome performers and also big thanks to Emelia and Brian for their amazing hosting!

Unlike Love Café, Friend Crush is for people who want to make friends in a loving way with other people. It is held annually and has a great reputation. As like every other café, Friend Crush also had many pass-downs from our second-years. That is a big part of every café and one of the most entertaining parts as well. Examples include ‘Backstreet Boys’ for Halloween Café (Gabriel, Lukas, Jimmy, Charlie, Victor) and ‘Best Pick-up Line’ for Love Cafe (Peter). Cheers JC and his crew, Corner F. and his Chocolate Boys. You guys did a fantastic job. Pass-downs always entertain us and leave us looking forward to the following year.

Big applause to Alex P. and Gabriel for the amusing opening! Your duet was incredible. Japanese guys, thanks for sharing our Kawaii culture with everyone. We enjoyed the show very much. Justin S. and Lukas B. were my personal favorites. It was a great comedy show as well as an amazing musical. Big cheers to them. Dara and Era, your duet was fascinating. Kevin S. I’m sure Emelia loved your sweet voice. Sadly, I can’t mention all of the awesome performers in this little space…Oh! Don’t forget Adrian! He totally blew our minds. ‘Montezuma’ was such a nice song that it reminded me my greatest times here and almost made me cry.

Hope you all had a great Friend Crush! For those of you who missed this awesome Café, definitely come next year! I hope all the performers gained some new lovely friends, and I also want to thank Celisse and Travis for their support.

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(continued from page 1)

There will be proportional raises in other positions, and changes that will allow employees more control over their own schedules. There will also be improvements to the medical coverage offered by Walmart, and the conditions surrounding paid sick days will be more convenient.

While anything that will improve real lives is not sad news to hear, skeptics argue that there is no altruism involved, and that Walmart could be doing much more for its workers and for America. Walmart —famous for discouraging unions and breaking them up when they attempt to form — was already under a huge amount of pressure from both activist groups and workers demanding better treatment. Activist group Making Change at Walmart celebrated the decision, and said that, “Under pressure from workers, the company announces raises for half a million employees!” Many financial news operations consider this to be a harbinger for the last stages of the USA’s economic recover y, and be l ieve that a low unemployment rate is forcing companies to do more to attract and retain workers.

Although spending a billion dollars (6% of annual profits) for better working conditions may seem admirable, there are other numbers to consider as well. A large portion of Walmart employees live below the poverty line and are forced to rely on food stamps, medicaid and subsidized housing. In many instances this is not the worker’s fault — many employees experience inconsistent hours (which makes a second job very hard) and do not get the hours they request, because giving them a full work week would require them to be

made “full-time” employees, which gives Walmart certain obligations that they would rather avoid. A report 1 recently calculated that the average Walmart employee uses 4515$ in public assistance per year, and with 1.4 million employees this adds up quickly. The report calculates that Walmart is costing American taxpayers about 6.2 billion dollars every year through their abuse of federal aid programs. With annual profits near 16B$, it seems as though they could afford to pay their workers a livable wage.

Some are rightfully angry at the thought of subsidizing a huge corporation like Walmart. Proponents argue that this is a good argument against government regulation, but the inflation adjusted buying power of 1968’s minimum hourly wage would be around 11$ today. In the years since then, many believe that government policy — in regards to minimum wage and worker rights — has been decidedly detrimental to the average American citizen, while being extremely amenable to large corporations who can afford lobbyists. Ronald Reagan and his policy of trickle-down economics marked the beginning of an era that is now culminating in the highest wealth inequality America has ever seen. The principle of trickle-down economics, which supposes that tax breaks for the rich will spur job creation, has never been proven to have any basis in economics a n d i s l a r g e l y c o n s i d e r e d t o b e fundamentally flawed. Interestingly, it was tried once before in America — flying under the name of “horse and sparrow theory”, it was explained in the following way: “'If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.”

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The imagery that the scene evokes is a good representation of the idea’s true nature, and some economists think that it contributed to the Panic of 1896. Legislation that allows massive corporations to abuse federal programs and evade taxation through loopholes will likely be a large issue in the 2016 presidential race, and some large cities have taken it upon themselves to raise their minimum wages.

Regardless, it is good to hear that America’s largest private employer is doing this, and it will send ripples through other min imum-wage indus t r i es a s o ther companies announce similar raises out of necessity to stay competitive. This has already happened at many retail operations, and we will hopefully see a trend towards fairer (if only marginally) compensation for the hard working people of this country.

Sources:

1:http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2014/04/15/report-walmart-workers-cost-taxpayers-6-2-billion-in-public-assistance/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-gibson/how-walmarts-bosses-get-r_b_5630789.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walmart

h t t p s : / / w w w. b o s t o n g l o b e . c o m / o p i n i o n /2015/02/27/walmar t-pay-hike- isn-altr uist ic/SSJUfjeAY4IjZgzbS5rlTK/story.html

The Great Twitter Experiment: Sweden

Edition ISABEL SKYE(USA - WI ‘16)

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On December 11th, Sweden decided to embark on one of the most risky twitter experiments ever undertaken. It all started the day curators of the Tourism Ministry gave the @sweden Twitter information and handle to one Jack Wermer, a writer.

The reasoning behind this was advertisement and representation. It has been said by the Swedish Government that they felt the way to best represent their country was to have their digital presence controlled by average citizens. A statement from Thomas Brühl, CEO of VisitSweden, an organization dedicated to promoting tourism of Sweden, was as follows, “No one owns the brand of Sweden more than its people. With this initiative we let them show their Sweden to the world.”

Since Jack Wermer there have been a chain of Swedish citizens given the power to “go wild” in the presence of the world. Since its conception they have had teachers, college students, priests, truck drivers and the like represent the European nation to the world community.

The result of the experiment has been a large boom in the tourism of the country. Whether it’s through the plethora of followers of the twitter, a whopping 66,500, or the estimated $40 million worth of promotion through world media coverage, many would call the payback of the stunt rather positive.

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Source: www.movieplot.com

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However, as many predicted at its conception, it was also a large risk. With the only things the handlers of the twitter account were discouraged of doing being using the account for illegal activity and politicking, many saw room for mass disaster and scandal.

Those many were right.

For months the experiment went rather well, some would even go so far as to say exceedingly well. However, controversy struck with the post of one Sonja Abrahamsson. When given the twitter account she began to tweet quest ionable, poss ib ly ant i -Semit ic and homophobic statements.

While this was the tweet heard ‘round the world most were not worried about the survival of the experiment due to the content of past tweets that went through without much controversy. This content ranges from live-breast-feeding to tweets on masturbation.

However, this has not in fact impeded the experiment at all. Some countries, such as Scotland, have even followed in the stead of Sweden and begun a citizen-run twitter. This was considered a revolutionary jump in the mass-media platform.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2015/02/02/383214906/swedens-social-experiment-on-twitter-celebrates-third-anniversary

Ask Sir E Brum

SAGE DE BRUM (MARSHALL ISLANDS ’15)

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1. Do you have any wise words to bestow upon me to perhaps allow me to progress and grow in my life?

- Tis better to have loved and lost, than to never have loved at all.

- A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

- Trying is the first step towards failure.

- Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same. –Oscar Wilde

- Build a man a fire and he’ll be warm for a night. Set a man on fire and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life.

- When you think of doing something, ask yourself “would an idiot do this?” If so, don't do it.

2. What’s the difference between school and life?

- In school, you're taught a lesson then given a test. In life, you're given a test that teaches you a lesson. –Tom Bodett

3. A friend asked me to make a mix for him, what should be in the mix?

- For starters having a minaj a trois would kick it off nicely (Starships, superbass, anaconda).

- Next, you should get a good drink mixed as well

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Photo Credit: mashable.com

UWC- USA MARCH 2015

- How do you make a good mixed drink you ask? Well our good friend wikihow has an idea, nicely explained in 6 steps (1-5 paraphrased below)

1. Think about drinks to mix

2. Pick drinks to mix

3. Mix drinks

4. Give it to other people to drink

5. Write down the drinks

6. Finished.

- No alcohol in the mix though, but yet, isn't alcohol technically a solution?

Source: http://m.wikihow.com/Mix-Your-Own-Drink

4. How cool is it that Dwan Light is finally going to be open sometime in the near future?

- So cool, I can't even

- Cool enough; while it's true that people are going to work on it sometime this week or next week, who knows? There is no hope in this world. Bleakness is the way of life. Happiness is blissful ignorance. Bla bla pretend depressing stuff bla bla

5. How does one proceed to tell their parents that they choose dance over their parents’ preferred medical career?

- Carefully

- Start off with “remember that time when…”

- bring up that time when you were young and wanted vanilla ice cream but now you like chocolate ice cream

- Say that you are doing the thing they hate the most, then say “now doesn't me doing dance sound like a much better idea?”

6. I want to fit in with the Pokemon community on campus, do you know something I could say to them.

- Look at someone, wink, point and say “TM87”

- Say something like “why does the media want me to date a deoxys? Thin arms, thin waist, thigh gap, hip bones”

- “yo mama’s so fat, her splash attacks actually do damage”

7. How to burn?

- someone says that meeting at the cliff is the perfect spot to meet. “Yeah, so he can jump off when he meets you”

- someone wants to get over their fear of whale and is asking for tips. “Stop looking in the mirror”

- asks what the strongest form of birth control is. “Your personality”

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