opinion
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KANSAN.COM | MONDAY, APRIL 11, 2016
Text your #FFA submissions to 785-289-UDK1 (8351)
Where's the donut section of the food pyramid?
Everyday I wonder what my life would be like if i got up when my alarm went off then i go to back to sleep
Humidity is nature's way of telling me not to try to look nice.
Good friends don't let friends drink and text...their exes.
I just deconstructed the second half of my crunchy chicken cheddar wrap just to eat the chicken and now I think I'm a monster
I want to write Nancy in front of all the "drew for KU" chalkings
Nothing says Graduate Student Appreciation Week quite like exactly one cookie. Signed, every grad student on campus.
I wonder what dogs think when they're on a leash? Do they feel like we don't trust them to run free?
Editor's Note: Happy Monday everybody.
That feeling of death returning from formal weekend
"I should wait to run in the road right when a car is coming!" -squirrels
Why does everything run out at once? My conditioner, face wash, makeup, drive to finish homework, cares given about school
do you ever clean your laptop specifically to avoid doing homework?
Actually had time to take a nap today and now I can't sleep. Why is the world so cruel?
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▶ MADDY MIKINSKI
@Miss_Maddy
This week marked another major twist in the infuriating, confusing saga that is pop star Kesha's lawsuit against possibly former Sony producer Dr. Luke. By now, most of us are familiar with the lawsuit. For the uninformed, the singer is suing for release from a Sony contract that requires her to work with Dr. Luke. In the suit, Kesha alleges the producer drugged and sexually assaulted her.
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In a decision released Wednesday, New York Supreme Court justice Shirley Werner Kornreich threw out human rights violations and hate crime claims made by Kesha. This decision comes
shortly after a judge denied her from escaping her contract this February. After the decision, Kesha said Sony offered to drop her from her contract if she publicly announced that she had lied about being sexually assaulted.
Kornreich's decision initially makes a few crucial legal points. The judge wrote that she believes the assault wasn't proven to have taken place in New York so, therefore, she has no jurisdiction on the matter. Also, as the alleged assault occurred 10 years ago, the statute of limitations on a lawsuit has run out. In New York law, the statute of limitations for lawsuits relating to sexual assault is six years.
After addressing statutory issues with the case, the judge turned her attention to the singer's allegations against the producer. According to AP, Kornreich wrote that Kesha's human rights claims that the assault caused her to develop an eating disorder and damaged her value as an artist don't allude to "extreme, outrageous conduct intolerable in a civilized society." Of the hate crime allegations, the judge said, "Every rape is not a gender-motivated hate crime."
The organization also reports that about 44 percent of these cases involve a victim under the age of 18 and about 98 percent of attackers will never be sent to jail or prison for their crimes.
An average of 293,066 rape and sexual assault cases occur in the US every year, according to the Rape Abuse, and Incest National Network.
Consider this my official dissent.
We've all been told time and time again of the emotional distress that sexual assault victims experience after an attack. Apparently, these statistics and our own knowledge of the damage
Additionally, the judge's assertions regarding rape and hate crimes completely miss the mark. Kornreich doesn't deny Kesha's rape claims. She doesn't say "alleged rape." She states that what transpired between the singer and Dr. Luke was non-consensual. Despite that, she works to justify the producer's actions by saying they didn't come from a place of hatred. What a relief.
sexual assault victims experience has fallen on Justice Kornreich's deaf ears.
I would most definitely argue that rape is, in fact, extreme, outrageous and something intolerable in civilized society. The United States is a nation filled with taboos, but, apparently, sexual assault isn't one of them. Kornreich's response only works to normalize an act that victimizes Americans every two seconds.
In my fiction writing class a couple weeks ago, we were discussing a story in which the main character is a victim of sexual assault. A male student raised his hand and asked why the story didn't
take the time to delve into the attacker's history and motivations for committing the crime. My teacher asked why we needed to.
Justice Kornreich has the same attitude towards Kesha's lawsuit. Trying to decipher whether or not Dr. Luke felt hatred towards Kesha is beside the point. The justice's statement seems to say that Kesha's rape is more justifiable because it doesn't fit the traditional mold for a hate crime.
In any sexual assault, the rapist's motivations are not something to be dissected to search for a valid excuse. Rape has no valid excuse. The decision to purposefully hurt someone both physically and mentally will never be excusable. Just as there is no excuse for the rapes committed by everyday attackers, there is no excuse for rapes committed by celebrities.
Maddy Mikinski is a senior from Linwood studying Enlish and journalism.
Edited by Deanna Ambrose
Gonzales: Panama Papers emphasize social inequalities
In a world that is constantly fighting inequality and social injustice, the effects of tax avoidance, tax havens and fake corporations are tremendous. The leak of the Panama Papers has revealed a web of secrecy that has allowed for some
America's trust in the democracy of the country's government was apparently fragile, even before the release of the Panama Papers.
> RACHEL GONZALES
@rachellnoel
The implications behind the papers could be especially impactful given the current political climate and attitude toward government.
As the papers are investigated though, it is important to keep in mind that addressing the underlying problems of offshore shell companies and tax havens is immensely complicated. Addressing the problem "requires fundamentally changing the way international regulation works, and increasing the willingness of the most powerful states in the system to forego the concentrated benefits of regulatory havens for the broader good of effective global regulation" writes Elizabeth R. DeSombre for
"In the United States, lax laws that enable tax evasion among those who can afford costly attorneys is yet another reminder to working families that dutifully pay their taxes that laws are not written for them," the executive director of The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, Matthew Gardner writes in a piece for CNN.
Exposing such corruption will undoubtedly have a wide reach. In the United States specifically, the leak of the papers has, for many people, confirmed long brewing suspicions of corruption.
The leak of the papers will certainly have a longterm effect on the United States: they further undermine public confidence in government.
$21 trillion to $32 trillion to be hidden away by the super-rich in offshore entities, according to Tax Justice Network 2012.
The papers expose potentially hundreds of thousands of offshore firms connected to people in more than 200 countries and territories around the entire world. The papers reveal that a single law firm, Mossack Fonseca, facilitated the creation of more than 200,000 offshore entities.
the Boston Globe.
But just because the solution is complicated does not mean a solution isn't necessary. At the very least, these papers further press unsettling questions about inequality. At a time when anti-establishment politics seems to be spreading, the Panama Papers will stratify the government from its people and the super rich from the working class even more.
Rachel Gonzales is a junior from Fort Collins, Colo., studying journalism and sociology.
Edited by Deanna Ambrose
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