Editor,
I am writing regarding the "Daily Lobo asks you" segment in Friday's Daily Lobo regarding the minimum wage proposal that failed to pass in Albuquerque.
I am absolutely appalled at the cavalier way in which the students the Daily Lobo interviewed dismissed the importance of such a proposal. I am especially disgusted with the comments of Aaron Wantuck. It is quite clear that he has no real understanding of the world in which he lives. He states that minimum wage jobs are not careers and that people should just go to school and pick a field.
I wonder if it occurred to Wantuck that perhaps, for some people, minimum wage jobs are a career - that they may not have the ability to pay for an education for themselves, and that they may be working harder than he just so they can provide a better future for their children? Perhaps they may even be working two jobs so they can pay for their children to have the ability to get an education, pick a field and improve their station in life.
To illustrate, consider that an individual working 40 hours per week, making the current minimum wage, would earn approximately $10,000 per year before taxes. If this person were to attend UNM part time as a resident and undergraduate, they would pay $2,054.40 per year in tuition, leaving them approximately $7,945.60 for taxes, rent, utilities and basic living expenses.
Wantuck seems to be making some kind of moral judgment about people who do not have the opportunities he has been blessed with. With attitudes such as this, how can we ever work as a society to create much needed changes? The overall tone of the segment was selfish and entirely lacking in any kind of understanding or compassion for the vast numbers of hardworking people in this city who cannot even break through the poverty line.
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Students seemed more concerned about whether prices would go up than whether these hardworking people can heat their homes this winter. Have any of these students ever had to choose between buying food or paying their electric bill?
I want to also encourage any student, staff or faculty member who reads the Daily Lobo to speak out about these comments. How can we allow such uninformed comments to go unaddressed?
And if we do, how will the people uttering them ever realize that maybe they need to educate themselves before making comments about an issue they don't understand that effects people they don't even seem to care about? I must continue to hope there are students out there who can see beyond their own sphere of existence and who will educate themselves so they can educate others.
Without that hope, there is none for the future of this country or this society.
Jennifer George
UNM student
