Volume 1, Issue 1 - December 1997

A newsletter-format statement by Providence College students regarding the presence and impact of student voices on campus. The document urges that students have more power in how the community is governed

216 Jewish Hospital of St. Louis

https://digitalcommons.wustl.edu/bjc_216/1187/thumbnail.jp

Revitalizing Regulation

A Review of Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit is Transforming the Public Sector by David Osborne and Rethinking the Progressive Agenda: The Reform of the American Regulatory State by Susan Rose-Ackerma

Living Mindfully Through Crisis: Searching for Life Advice in the “Philosophy-Medicine” of Buddhism

This paper examines philosophy as a way of life in a time of crisis by focusing on Buddhism, envisioned as a path exercising the faculty of “mindfulness.” From this standpoint of “Buddhist philosophy as mindful exercise, ” and following the Kyōto School’s inspiration of engaging a dialogue with Western traditions, including modern psychology and medicine, the paper reflects upon the role of philosophy during this critical period. In response to the contemporary fragmentation of knowledge, it conceives creatively a set of core principles in the form of maxims – to be examined and adapted by each potentially interested individual – as tools to retain vital information, organize reflection, and reorient one’s attention and destiny. Structured according to the Buddhist categories of view, meditation, and conduct, this collection of maxims serves to articulate the organic movement that goes back and forth between the distinctions made in philosophical discourse and the unity of lived philosophy

Positive Aging: Resilience And Reconstruction

From a social constructionist perspective, conceptions of aging emerge from participation in relationships. Thus, there is reason to counter the Western stereotype of aging as decline with a more robust and positive vision. In the same way, resilience in everyday life may be achieved by engaging creatively and collaboratively in coordinating the flow of circumstances and interpretations making up daily life. We illustrate the potentials of resilience in terms of collaborative attempts to generate positive reconstructions of what are often defined as debilitating circumstances: reduced income, diminished attractiveness in physical appearance, declining physical and mental abilities, physical handicaps, the “empty nest,” the loss of loved ones and approaching death. As we propose, sustaining a resilient orientation requires continuous improvization, as one\u27s life conditions continue to change. By drawing on the resources accumulated over a lifetime, and collaborating with one\u27s contemporaries, culturally defined losses may be reconstructed and a positive confluence re-established. As we look back at our lives, we both agree that when we were in our twenties and thirties, we had not looked forward to “growing old.” We never wanted to be identified as “old folks” and we did not look forward to “retiring.” Later we viewed with some distress the emergence of wrinkles and gray hair, and we hoped that every forgotten name was not a sign of dementia. It was not so much the signaling of oncoming death that was important in our age anxiety

Reversing the Evils of Federal Mandatory Minimum Sentences: Is Clemency the Only Answer?

(Excerpt) Thirty-five years ago, Alice Marie Johnson lived a full life. She was a wife, a mother of five children, and a manager at FedEx. Then divorce, the death of one of her children, and job loss shattered her world. Ms. Johnson was able to find employment as a factory worker, a role which paid only a fraction of her former salary and was insufficient to support her children. Desperate and burdened, she became a telephone mule for drug dealers. She was instructed to “pass phone messages [and] [w]hen people came to town . . . [to tell] them what number to call for drug transactions.” Alice Marie Johnson’s role as a telephone mule can be likened to some drug couriers in smuggling operations. Drug trafficking rings often recruit women as drug couriers. These female drug couriers are often disconnected from the intricate workings of the drug conspiracy and are only expected to transport the drugs. Their minuscule role in the drug ring means they are at a disadvantage during the prosecutorial process because they have little information to trade in exchange for a lesser charge. Such was Ms. Johnson’s story. She had never been charged with or convicted of a crime. Nor was she a drug kingpin or ringleader. Yet she was convicted of “conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine, attempted possession of cocaine with intent to distribute and deliver, money laundering, conspiracy to commit money laundering and structuring a monetary transaction” after her codefendants testified against her. In the end, Alice Marie Johnson was sentenced to life in prison as a first-time nonviolent drug offender under the mandatory minimum sentencing laws. In Ms. Johnson’s words, she “was given a death sentence without sitting on death row” when she was convicted on October 31, 1996

President’s Forum

This August the Naval War College will host a very significant event—Global War Game 2008. This game marks the Navy’s return to “Title X” war gaming, a strategic-level analytic activity that was discontinued in 2001.* The College originated this type of gaming in 1979, when the Navy decided to explore conflict with the Soviet Union on a worldwide scale. Its purpose was to help rebuild the Navy’s operational and strategic perspective, a perspective many felt had become too narrowly tactical