Twisted logic

Slavery isn’t that bad. I mean, the slave owners provided food and shelter for their slaves. That’s like paying them, right?

At least, that’s the opinion of 30-year-old Scott Terry, a North Carolina native who attended a discussion about race sponsored by the Conservative Political Action Committee at Towson University.

Terry clearly skimmed over the section of his history textbook that talked about slavery, or at least the part about the lack of basic freedoms and the fact that these people were being owned by other people.

He gets an “F” for being an ignorant racist.

Broadcast failure

People are pretty upset over the media coverage of the rape of a high school girl in Steubenville, Ohio. While critics have said that the media were too sympathetic toward the rapists, another problem is that CNN, Fox News and MSNBC all aired the name of the victim.

News outlets typically don’t name rape victims because we want to protect the victim’s privacy. When news outlets air a victim’s name, it could prevent future victims from going forward to the police in the fear that soon, everyone might know.

Seeing that only 46 percent of rape cases get reported to the police according to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, the news media outlets have failed.

The secret’s out

Some secret societies at Georgetown University aren’t so secret anymore.

A source with the nickname “Steward Throat” leaked emails to FreeGeorgetown, the student news blog at Georgetown University. These emails exposed a candidate for their government elections as a Steward (the Second Society of Stewards is a known secret society at Georgetown) which lost him votes leading to him losing the election. The whole secret society thing seems pretty stupid, which makes the whole situation pretty stupid. No matter what, if the whole campus knows about a secret society, it isn’t a secret anymore, so the Stewards definitely failed.

Kicking butts

The Student Health Advisory Committee is holding a competition to clean up cigarette’s around campus.

The KickButts Day Cleanup Challenge on March 20 is a chance for students to win money while helping to clean up the cigarette butts on campus. This is a part of a larger movement at SHAC to make the UA a tobacco free campus.

While KickButts Day may not prevent people from smoking around campus, its a way for students to show that they’re serious about seeing a change in policy.

According to the American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation, there are 1,129 smokefree campuses across the country, and there is no reason why the UA can’t be one of them.

— Editorials are determined by the Arizona Daily Wildcat’s editorial board and written by one of its members. They are Kristina Bui, Dan Desrochers, K.C. Libman and Sarah Precup. They can be reached at letters@wildcat.arizona.edu or on Twitter via @WildcatOpinions.