Word: optional
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...vanguard is Tiger Trails, tel: (61?3) 6234 3931, a tour company that offers guided walks through the Tarkine's interior. "Nature-based tourism is part of a new generation of thinking, offering another option for these forests where industry and conservation can work together," says Mike Thomas, a member of Tasmania's Doctors for Forests lobby group and designer of a spectacular Tiger Trails walk that takes trekkers though a Tarkine river gorge that is home to the forest's threatened myrtle trees...
...been the question for the council, who gave us the opt-option on the termbill hike last semester and on the initiative to establish student funding for wind power last week. Incidentally, we chose to pass the hike and pass wind, and to be given the chance to opt-out of both of them. Other groups have been doing this opting thing on the sly for some time: Harvard Right to Life (HRL) helps students opt-out of the portion of their student health bills that can be used to pay for abortions at University Health Services...
...think that all this concern is overblown and that an expansion of opt-options, as silly as they may seem, would be a good thing for this campus. Consider for a moment the tremendous triumph of democratic deliberation that is subsumed in the opt-out option: A majority rules, and the rights of the minority to disagree with that rule are actually respected. That’s a compromise that would have pleased Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. It combines a free-market mechanism any conservative can embrace with an inherent toleration any liberal can love...
Most of the concerns with opt-options seem at best superficial. After a little work, conscientious objectors were indeed allowed to opt-out of the termbill hike, and the Student Receivables Office (which administers the termbill) has committed to making the opt-out process easier. The wind power initiative, say what you will of its merits, was deemed by a majority of the council to be worth the small added inconvenience of an additional checkbox on the termbill. I trust that the council will be sensible enough to keep rare the opt-options on the termbill, and if it isn?...
...think that with vigilance we can prevent either from occurring. If done right, the opt-option university can be one where we take pride in advancing our own conceptions of justice or our own interests while building a deep respect for those who may disagree with our priorities. The answer to “what’s in it for me?” would thus be a campus that truly values, in word and deed, the differences among us. And although the line between the acceptable and unacceptable opt-out would be admittedly blurry, a campus which continued...