I spent the minutes leading up to my twenty first birthday having an existential crisis. I felt the world spiraling out of my hands in a way I have never felt before, as if I were slipping underwater and drowning. It wasn’t a crisis of getting older or facing adulthood. It was the crisis of having to ask permission, of being rejected, and of being shunned and forced to walk the streets for a stupid, banal reason.

Peter Singer spoke at Rutgers last week, giving his renowned talk on donating to charities. In this weeks JVP Speaks, the Johnsonville sounds off on the event and the argument.

You’re out and about or in and around, just doing what you do when you’re one or the other, and, ka-pow, you’re knocked aside the head with a seemingly racist comment. What do you do?

Through out human history people have been discussing the true nature of ‘human nature’, whether we are intrinsically good, bad, or just a blank slate. Taking into account the schools of thought relating to human nature as well as your own personal experiences, what do you think is the true nature of ‘human nature’?

I have had an uncertain relationship with “non-conformity” since high school. In my early teens, I thought non-conformity could be found in Hot Topic, that scary looking shop in the mall. I shake my head thinking about the babysitting dollars I drained on plastic jelly bracelets and mass produced t-shirts. I used their “weird” and “different” clothing to express a certain discomfort with myself, because I didn’t want to fit in with everybody else.

Project Civility is in full swing at Rutgers, whether you noticed it or not. The initiative’s aim is to get people to ask questions about what it means to be part of a community, about how people should treat one another, and what can be done to improve the quality of people’s treatment of others. Of course, the whole initiative is voluntary rather than mandatory, which means that, chances are, one likely won’t be prompted to participate in Project Civility in one’s day to day. At the very least, I’ve yet to be prompted, so I figured that I’d prompt myself and my fellow JVPers to participate ourselves with this week’s question: Should America have a notion of civic duty if it doesn’t already? Why or why not? If so, what should it entail?

Hello and welcome to JVP Speaks! In this soon-to-be-a-recurring-feature, contributors will kick-off a discussion on a particular topic by writing on a single prompt. This week the JVP asked itself: are you voting? Why or why not? Feel free to answer the question yourself, comment on any of our answers, and to generally get the ball rolling on this important topic! Here’s what we had to say:

I first came across a dusty bottle of Chambourg when helping my grandparents clean out their house this summer. It sat on the hutch in the living room, in the shadows behind my grandfather’s extensive collection of carved ducks. The curious spherical bottle, filled with purple wine-colored liquid and embellished with tacky gold letters, caught my eye. I was puzzled–not once on the bottle does it tell you the ingredients, the alcohol content or what it should taste like.

Marlana Moore is the sort of staff member one wants to have: dedicated, enthusiastic, and capable and willing to write on any issue. She brought this same spirit to our Q and A, asking me as many questions as I asked her! And while I was pulled partway under the spotlight, Marlana remains at center stage, which is good news since she has plenty to say and a unique way to say it.

An enlightening article, including original photos.