Emin Hadziosmanovic's column "Faking Feminism" (Sept. 13, 2005) exemplifies uncritical analysis regarding women's status in contemporary society. He purports that the feminist movement has not only achieved equality for women but that now "men are being personally dominated by women in relationship dynamics." If Hadziosmanovic had more closely analyzed the wealth of statistics concerning women's status rather than only considering a few anecdotal and unimportant examples (e.g. obsessions with shoes), he might have been inclined to make the opposite conclusion.
Hadziosmanovic trivializes the unequal dynamics in heterosexual relationships when he says, "[T]he women today have men whipped." While he concedes that domestic violence is still a "problem," he completely disregards the glaring statistical evidence that illustrates the extent to which this is true. Approximately 85 percent of all victims of intimate partner violence are women, and women are five to eight more times more likely to be victimized by an intimate partner than men are. Furthermore, women are much more likely than men to be seriously injured in these instances. Does this really illustrate that women are "getting a bigger piece of the power pie"?
While the statistics Hadziosmanovic does use in his argument-college attendance and completion rates-are indicators of promising trends for women's equality, these statistics are irrelevant to his central claim that women are dominating men in personal relationships. Additionally, casual anecdotes of women forcing their husbands to check in with them before "going out for a beer or a round of golf" do little to further his argument, considering that most women still do the majority of the housework, cooking and childcare, even when they themselves work outside the home.
The next time Hadziosmanovic reads a series of Internet articles about men faking orgasms, we sincerely hope he will stop short of using them to explain an entire social movement.
Sarah Gordon
Trinity '08
Claire Lauterbach
Trinity '08
Engineers warned of damage
In an article, "Professors discuss policies, response to hurricane crisis" (Sept. 9, 2005), The Chronicle reported on the panel meeting in the Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy held in the aftermath of the Hurricane Katrina's tragedy to discuss the related failings and future directions of public policy. The article publicized the finger pointing by Dr. Orrin Pilkey, professor emeritus of earth and ocean sciences, who "went on to call the New Orleans tragedy 'the greatest engineering disaster in our history' and faulted the engineering community at large for not warning the public of the dangers associated with the region."
Protecting cities such as New Orleans, situated in depressions subsiding at a rate well exceeding one centimeter per year, is a complex and extremely costly engineering problem. Many ingenious solutions have already been tested and found to perform well in the Netherlands. (Among the most ingenious designs tested are those that allow homes to move up and down without drifting downstream, thanks to blocks of Styrofoam imbedded in foundations.) A number of them, with various price tags and associated risks, have been specifically considered for New Orleans. Along with modeling efforts of the effects of Category 3, 4 and 5 storms hitting the city, some of these solutions are reviewed by J.J. Westerink and R.A. Luettich in their June 2003 paper, "The Creeping Storm," published in Civil Engineering Magazine. Reading it now, one experiences an eerie dejA vu: "If a lingering Category 3 storm-or a stronger storm, say, Category 4 or 5-were to hit the city, much of New Orleans could find itself under more than 20 ft (6 m) of water."
Contrary to Professor Pilkey's assertions, Westerink and Luettich chronicle the engineering community's decades-long efforts to study the dangers posed for New Orleans by storms of Katrina's size and to warn of them. Moreover, the engineering science of fluid dynamics has long been used to predict storm paths and, in particular, had been used to provide an accurate prediction of Katrina's direct hit on New Orleans days before the disaster happened.
As engineering practice requires, our engineering community produced design options, analyzed the associated risks and provided warnings of the recent disaster. It is up to government officials to choose from these design options, secure funding and prepare to deal with the risk of the selected design (or the risk of not selecting one).
The disturbing pictures of flooded fleets of school buses-which could have been used to evacuate most if not all the victims-do not point to faulty engineering. They unmask instead serious and significant failures of the local, state and federal governments in preparing and executing a plan dealing with the risks associated with the engineering solutions selected so far for New Orleans.
Zbigniew J. Kabala
Associate Professor of Civil &
Environmental Engineering
Miguel A. Medina, Jr.
Professor of Civil &
Environmental Engineering
editor's note: The 350-word limit was waived for this letter.
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