Opinion

Letter: Madrid's integrity shines despite muck-slinging ads

Editor, When I was a boy in the early '50s, my family lived in student housing at New Mexico A & M - now NMSU - in Las Cruces. My best buddy and next door neighbor was Charles Madrid, whose little sister, Patricia, is running for our nation's Congress. Over the years, I have watched the Madrid family build itself a good and successful working-class American life through their own hard work, intelligence, education, courage, honesty and family solidarity.

Letter: College kids hard workers; not handed silver platters

Editor, This is a brief response to Jason Darensburg's letter published in Tuesday's issue of the Daily Lobo. He was not very fair in generalizing that "college is mostly for rich kids with no value system." I am originally from Chihuahua, Mexico, and this assumption does not apply to me.

Ed toons

Letter: Funding for work study needs to be fully restored

Editor, Thanks for the article in the Aug. 29 Daily Lobo exposing proposed federal budget cuts that would eviscerate student work-study and Pell Grant programs. However, Kathleen O'Keefe, interim director of student financial aid, did not adequately address the way the proposed cuts will affect UNM students.

Column: Wal-Mart at unfair advantage

Wal-Mart has spent the last few years in the public bull's-eye. Some claim Wal-Mart is being attacked simply because it is the biggest retailer with the highest profits. Although being the biggest comes with much more public scrutiny - and thus more responsibility to be socially aware - being the best is not necessarily a corporate death sentence in our capitalism-loving society. However, the case against Wal-Mart does in fact have strong points.

Letter: Protests in 1970s violent; involved many nonstudents

Editor, I found the article on nonviolent protests in Thursday's Daily Lobo interesting. I was a student at the time, and the protests were violent. What was even more interesting was the number of nonstudents involved. People arrested at the SUB included street people and high school students.

Letter: UNM falls behind in support of breastfeeding mothers

Editor, Raquel Cordova's letter in Friday's Daily Lobo inspired me because of my similar experience last fall. Though there is no policy requiring it, my department offered to let me use its comprehensive-exam room as a location to pump while I was away from my 6-month-old daughter.

Ed toons

Letter: Not all problems in U.S. can be blamed on Bush

Editor, In John Steiner's letter in Thursday's Daily Lobo, he uses four examples of failures that he attributes to the Bush administration: knowledge of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist plans, failure to evacuate people from New Orleans, failure to handle post-Katrina New Orleans properly, and a loss of pensions due to criminal wrongdoing by a number of corporate officers.

Letter: Present generation should be more politically active

Editor, As an avid Daily Lobo reader, it did my radical heart good to see Thursday's installment of the three-part series, "From the Archives." In the early '70s, there were massive anti-war protests throughout the country, even at UNM. Students literally fought hand-to-hand with riot police over the prosecution of the Vietnam War.

Letter: Student protests in '70s were violent, not peaceful

Editor, I was a bit surprised to see that a former president of the University believes that UNM was spared the violence that plagued some universities in the late 1960s. I wonder how he could draw that conclusion. The events at the SUB at UNM in 1970 were among the most violent in the nation, probably ranking third in casualties after Kent State and Jackson State Universities.

Letter: Ethical reform needed for Albuquerque schools

Ethics reform should be an important issue in the upcoming election if it meets certain criteria. The idea of ethics reform would have to be in a state of controversy, a vital or unsettled matter, under discussion or in dispute. So, it would seem that ethics reform is an issue.

Letter: UNM mothers need place to breastfeed on campus

Editor, I became a new mom last March. Having a daughter has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. There are hundreds of mothers here on campus with infants. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends breastfeeding for at least the first year.

Letter: Former UNM president lived full, celebrated life

Editor, I was at the memorial service last Saturday when the late Ferrel Heady, former UNM president, was eulogized. It was fitting and proper that the Daily Lobo covered the event in Monday's issue. I am privileged to know Heady and his noble qualities, and thus would like to echo all the other voices of admiration and add a few words of my own.

Letter: Photo gives impression hookah smoking is safe

I was greatly dismayed to see the front-page photo of two UNM students sharing a hookah full of strawberry-flavored tobacco in Tuesday's Daily Lobo. Using this photo as filler in the same fashion the Lobo runs pictures of students playing Frisbee, skateboarding or sharing a meal in the SUB serves to reinforce the commonly held misperception that hookah smoking is an innocuous activity.

Column: Lunch meat a bunch of baloney

Lunch meat - for many, the plastic crackle that comes with the first rent of bright yellow packaging is the harbinger of the new semester. Time to brown bag it for another four months.

Letter: Bush administration spins Katrina failure as success

I feel like I'm living the novel 1984 as I watch Bush puffing, strutting and dominating the headlines on the anniversary of one of the most complete failures of government since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Ed toons

Column: Bush's policies only help Iran

by Matthew Chavez Daily Lobo columnist In the grim years that concluded the Vietnam War, the late scholar Richard Barnet aptly summarized the sweeping strategic failure of the most horrific U.S. terror campaign of the post-World War II period. "After spending more than fifty-thousand lives and $150 billion," he observed in a landmark study of the U.

Column: City denies event without just cause

by Joe Buffaloe Daily Lobo columnist Rock Out With Your Cause Out - an event featuring local bands, a graffiti battle and an MC battle - was set to take place last Saturday at Civic Plaza. Instead, it became a protest after city government refused the Southwest Organizing Project's request for a permit.