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6 The Pioneer Log MARCH 16, 2012OPINION

Super Tuesday confrms the GOP’s weak standing with inconclusive results

BY JAKE BARTMAN

Staff Writer

Conrming the expectations o educated

observers across the country, Super uesday did little more than show that the Repub-lican presidential primary race is pretty de-nitively not denitive. For those who don’tlike watching Republicans destroy one an-other in the news, Super uesday is the day  when Republican voters usually make clear  who’s likely to secure the nomination. It’salso the day when copies o “Te Stranger”are bought in record numbers by a new gen-eration o disillusioned uture Lewis & Clark students. Tat said, it’s those voters whomade Super uesday such a letdown thatought to be buying Nausea. Or maybe a copy o the Constitution, since most Republicanvoters seem not to not have read that either.

Romney still has more delegates siding

 with him, like he did prior to Super uesday,than the rest o the Republican candidates.He now has more than the other three can-didates combined by winning six o the tenstates whose ballots were cast on uesday.

Santorum is still spitting game and talk-ing shit, though he looks more ridiculousthan ever, which is o course a victory or usall.

Gingrich has yet to roll over and bite thebullet or to grab the bull by the horns andlook it in the eyes.

Ron Paul has yet to win even a single

Conict minerals slip rom diamonds on fngers to phones in hand 

BY ROBIN AUBRY

Staff Writer

It is remarkable how much time we dedi-cate to staring at a screens: our phones, lap-tops, MP3 players, iPads and computers inthe Mac and PC labs, and as we wrap-up yetanother midterm season, the amount o time

  we have been spending with our preciouselectronic devices has likely climaxed.

Tat’s why it’s important that we take amoment to refect on how we got these ancy gadgets. Indeed, what we oten overlook isthe human cost associated with producingelectronics. As crucial as they are to our lives,academically or otherwise, their manuac-ture helps nance one o the bloodiest con-ficts the world has ever seen in the Demo-cratic Republic o the Congo.

Since 1998, an estimated 5.4 million peo-ple have died in the DRC and millions havebeen internally displaced. Te deaths ariserom violent confict and abhorrent work conditions, and so many o the deaths occur

to children working in these mines. Just asterriying is the over 15,000 cases o sexualviolence reported in 2010 alone—includingto children. Worse yet, this number likely only scratches the surace o total cases o sexual violence rom that year.

Tis is due largely to a constant confictbetween militant groups and the Congolesegovernment. One o the leading sources o confict in the DRC have been control overthe mines in the northeast, which have anabundance tin, tantalum, tungsten and goldelements—hence the term “confict miner-als” used to describe the minerals excavatedrom these mines.

It is a confict that we oten tragically overlook, yet as consumers we are complicitin it. Te reason the mines in the DRC are so

ILLUSTRATION BY SAMANTHA SARVET

state, but his Alzheimer’s is probably gettingbad enough that he doesn’t know it anyway.Ten again, I’m increasingly coming to be-lieve that it’s more insulting or a rational

being to be winning the Republican primary than losing it. Indeed, winning the race isvery much like being the “tallest midget inthe room,” or maybe the “most shit-housed

person at Sunburn.”Tis bodes well or those o us on the

‘Bama Boat. Speaking or mysel, watchingthe Jersey Shore-esque drama o the Repub-

lican primary has led me more and more tosee Obama as he appeared to me when I wasan awkward and hormonally imbalancedhigh school lad in 2008—that is, he seemsonce more a chain-smoking, bong-toking,healthcare-distributing badass. And I imag-ine the race has aroused similar sympathiesin other olks, too.

No matter what sort o independentMarijuana Party leanings one develops in themiddle o a presidential term, voting or thelittle guy always seems absurd in the ace o the Republican propaganda thresher. So I’llbe voting Democrat until the whole debauchis over and I can resume voting on issues thatnobody cares about raised by organizationsthat nobody’s heard o.

Super uesday has conrmed that theRepublican race is not likely to end any-time soon, as every candidate seems unlikely to give up and teamwork is too advanced astrategy or politics. Te close race is remi-niscent o the Obama-Clinton tussle o thelast election, but happily more devastatingand much more hilarious, like that dog on Youube who wakes up rom what appearsto be a glorious dream in order to run imme-diately into a wall. So we’ll all do well to keepour eyes on the headlines and our seatbeltson, because shit is bound to stay silly.

ILLUSTRATION BY SAMANTHA SARVET

coveted by militant groups and governmentsalike is that the confict minerals extractedrom them are so highly in demand by elec-tronics companies—and indirectly, us.

So ar, no company is even close to pro-ducing a known, certied “confict ree”product. While some, including HP and  Apple have spoken out against the use o 

confict minerals in their products, more stillhave protested governmental attempts toregulate confict minerals.

Right now, SAND, the student anti-genocide coalition, is hard at work to spreadawareness o this issue through the Con-fict Free Campus Initiative. Last semester,they screened a lm, Blood in the Mobile ,and passed an ASLC resolution calling orthe school to consider companies’ progressin becoming “confict-ree” as we buy theirproducts. Tis semester, we plan on havinga number o speakers and discussions on theissue and ully commit LC to become therst school in the Northwest to sign on tosuch a policy.

By taking a glance at just one o our com-puter labs, one can quickly understand how much power we as an academic institutioncan have in infuencing corporate behavior,especially since larger universities like Stand-ord, Duke and University o Colorado-Boulder have signed similar Confict FreeCampus Initiatives.

It’s time we begin to look at our phones,laptops and tablets the same way we lookedat diamonds not too long ago. As a studentand consumer, it troubles me knowing thatthe products I use daily have been producedunder the some o the most horrid condi-tions in the world. No, going confict-ree won’t end the atrocities by itsel; but togeth-er, we can deal a massive blow to the lucrative

business o violent confict in the Congo.