Editor, Over the past few months, there has been a lot of talk about banning smoking outdoors. Not only am I referring to the proposal to ban it from campus, but some cities have actually made it illegal to smoke outside, too. While I am not a smoker, I feel as though someone should speak up.
Editor, I would like to offer a correction to Wednesday's article concerning the tobacco motion passed by the Staff Council. I am a staff councilor, and I voted against this motion, so it is not accurate to say it was passed unanimously. Since the surgeon general has advised there is no safe level of secondhand smoke, I would agree it is in the interest of staff, faculty and students to have a smoke-free campus.
Editor, On Monday at track practice, head coach Matt Henry informed his athletes that he will not be coming back to coach next year. The athletes were stunned by the candid resignation, unwilling to accept the reality of losing their longtime mentor and friend.
Editor, This is in response to the student who complained it was an "atrocity" when her car was booted while illegally parked at the UNM Hospital structure. I am in complete agreement with the student - a boot should not have been put on her car. She should have been towed.
Editor, Without knowing much about UNM, I could now tell anyone that its future is brighter because of the hiring of Oklahoma State's president David Schmidly. Schmidly has done wonderful things for OSU's entire student body, faculty and university system.
Editor, I'm not sure if Joe Buffaloe was being facetious in his rant about the Lewis "Scooter" Libby trial in Wednesday's Daily Lobo, but he seems to be arguing that no one cares about the trial, and that the issues are confusing and unimportant. This could not be farther from the truth.
Editor, I am a master's student living in on-campus housing - the SRCs, to be specific. My apartment is on the ground floor of a building that houses more than 30 people. For all those folks, we have a total of three not-very-large garbage cans. These are placed right outside my front door.
The perjury trial of former vice presidential aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby is still underway. He might be found guilty; he might not. Who cares?
Editor, I deplore columnist Scott Darnell's characterization of the U.S. as an innocent bystander in a world of tyrannical bullies. He laments that "none of us asked for" the likes of Saddam Hussein, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong Il. While he correctly points out that the American people did not in fact ask for the threats we face today, he conveniently neglects to consider the active, if not definitive, role our government has played in creating and arming these threats.
Editor, As many people in the world are realizing, global warming and climate change are increasingly serious threats to the health and future well-being of human civilization. As an environmental science major, I sometimes wonder, how should the responsibility of caring for our environment fall upon the individual? Are we as humans really doing what is necessary to make the world a better place? Changes to help prevent this danger are being made on international, national, state and local levels.
Editor, While I consider skateboarders on the whole to be a nuisance, filling the world with more annoying sounds than are needed, they do not warrant being banned on campus. Knowing that James Burbank is an English professor here at UNM, dare I assert he has committed the association fallacy? He says that he used to find skateboarders "an amusing, albeit destructive, part of campus.
Editor, According to the University Business Policies and Procedures Manual, Section 2260, "Individuals using bicycles, skates, skateboards and other nonmotorized vehicles on campus must at all times yield to pedestrians, use due caution and exercise concern for the safety of self and others.
Editor, Recently, a local news show in Albuquerque questioned whether we as a community were any safer from drunken driving after all the legislation, tougher penalties and laws that we've adopted. Unfortunately, studies leaned heavily toward the fact that we are not safer.
I am grateful to the University's Board of Regents for choosing me as president of UNM, and I am humbled by the quality of my fellow finalists; each is uniquely qualified to serve. I wanted to take this opportunity to say hello and to extend to each of you an invitation.
Editor, Today is a great day in Stillwater, Okla. David Schmidly is now your problem. I feel sorry for UNM students. I hope your faculty has the guts to stand up to Schmidly and keep him in check. Ours could not or would not, and the school suffered as a result.
With about half the U.S. snowed in on Valentine's Day, President Bush likely felt that he had a captive audience when he held a news conference to address a few issues. He spoke about the beginning stages of the security crackdown in Iraq, detailing that U.S. forces in Baghdad are teaming with Iraqi security forces to clear insurgents from the area and hold the areas afterward.
Editor, Many UNM employees who didn't come to work on Wednesday due to the snowstorm discovered they would be docked eight hours of annual leave, even though the University was officially open for only five hours. This amounts to a take-back of three hours of pay for each employee who couldn't make it to work that day.
Editor, I illegally parked in the UNMH structure in a mad dash to make it to my 9:30 a.m. class. It was wrong, and I should be punished for such things. However, jeopardizing my safety as part of the punishment is totally out of line. I had class until 3:15 p.
Editor, No one will be happier than me when the new cell phone ban takes effect on Saturday. There are indeed times when having a cell phone is essential, and they have even saved lives. However, during this same period, I have noticed a huge increase in people talking on their cell phones for no good reason while driving around town.
Editor, One of the questions consistently asked of the presidential finalists was about their qualifications to be the president of UNM, a complex organization of about 30,000 students, 3,000 faculty and quite a large staff. Yet, hardly 20 students and usually less than 100 faculty or staff attended their respective forums.
Solutions by The State News
