February issue online

Part 1 is below!


Human Rights at Home by Erin Aldrich

Human Rights Week…in the past, it has been focused on abuses foreign and far away from the United States and the issues that some of the poorest of the poor face. This year, we changed the focus – instead of focusing solely on international issues, we looked at how poverty and human rights affect us at home, even right around the corner from our UD bubble. Thus, our quote for the week from Carl T. Rowan: “It is often easier to become outraged by injustice half a world away than by oppression and discrimination half a block from home.”

Why is it so much harder to look at injustice just around the corner from us? Because it makes us uncomfortable. How can we, as citizens, be complacent when our brothers and sisters in the United States are victims of injustice? They are victims of a system that many of us benefited from – a system that sets them up for failure while we, the typical UD students, coast to success. It is hard to accept this reality, so we are much more comfortable looking across the world, accusing other governments and peoples of unequal and unjust treatment of their citizens. We defend the other and forget our own.

My hope is that Human Rights Week this year opened everyone’s eyes to the problems our fellow citizens struggle with on a daily basis, especially the problems from which the typical UD student has been shielded. The many experts and professionals from the Dayton area passionately spoke about how they work to alleviate poverty and suffering in housing, education, and health. Keynote speaker Brandt Goldstein talked about student empowerment and the ability we have to make changes in our country. Look around the Dayton community – it is not hard to find poverty and injustice, it is just slightly more insidious than in other places around the world. As a citizen, what can you do to help carry the burden? It’s our duty as citizens of this country to be informed, know our rights, and defend the rights of our brothers and sisters.

35th March for Life by Kevin Berry

Nearly one month ago, 60 students from the University of Dayton left their cozy dorms, apartments, and houses at 6:00 in the morning to leave for Washington D.C. These students were not extremely eager tourists. They were social justice advocates. Their cause is life for the unborn. That’s right: I am using social justice and pro-life together. These two terms should never clash.

UD Students for Life, the Pro- Life club on campus, organized the eight hour bus ride, lodging at a church in Alexandria, VA, and the March Activities. After arriving, some students went to the National Cathedral for the Annual Pro-Life Mass. The whole group went to a youth mass and rally the next morning in the Verizon Center. There were around 22,000 excited pro-lifers celebrating the Mass. Bishops from all over the country came to represent their dioceses and to show the Catholic Church’s unwavering support for the unborn. "The Mass of the Basilica was really beautiful because so many Catholics assembled together to worship. The many priests and seminarians were a particular witness to answering God's call to discern their vocation." said junior Anna Littrell.

UD students then joined the masses and met on the National Mall to hear speakers of the movement, including several Congressmen and even presidential candidate Ron Paul. Pro- lifers can take some peace from the fact that each year between 100,000 to 300,000 activists come to protest the continual slaughter of the unborn, which was made legal by an oligarchic decision of the Supreme Court in the Roe v. Wade case. For me, the March reinforced the fact that the Pro- Life movement is vibrant and growing despite the pro-choice movement’s best attempts to silence it. The March for Life is clear evidence that, as long as abortion-on-demand is legal, it will always be protested.