Opinion - The Daily Lobo

Opinion

Column: Information literacy is as important as ever

Nichole Harwood | November 30

A student has to write a report on Joan of Arc for her history class. She goes home and flips open her mother’s laptop hitting the Google Chrome button on the bottom of the screen. The icon brings up the search engine for her instantly, and she types in “Joan of Arc.” It doesn’t matter if she even spells “Joan of Arc” correctly; it doesn’t even matter that she doesn’t know the last name of the individual she is researching. With the three simple words, “Joan of Arc,” the search engine comes to life, instantly connecting her to 29,700,000, results all providing information on the historical figure. And isn’t that amazing?

Opinion

Column: Sexual harassment and assault allegations could spark social change

Elizabeth Sanchez | November 30

When I was a junior in high school and Prom was just around the corner, my history teacher asked the class to sit down and have a little talk. He wrote three lines on the board: “Rule No. 1: All men are pigs. Rule No. 2: There are no exceptions to Rule No. 1.” Rule No. 3 was something fun and arbitrary about enjoying the dance.

Opinion

Letter: We should all be vigilant about increasing hate crime rates

Daily Lobo Readers | November 29

Editor, In October 2017, The Chronicle of Higher Education sent a video warning to its online list that hate fliers by white supremacists are appearing with greater frequency on college campuses.Here is the link: chronicle.com/article/inside-an-unprecedented. I am an alum (PhD, American Studies, 1983) and retired college professor who has studied hate crimes since the late 1980s. Hate crimes cause trauma, injury and death. Here is a link to a recent Southern Poverty Law Center article drawn from the FBI Uniform Crime report about the rise in hate crimes since the 2016 election of President Donald Trump: splcenter.org/hatewatch.

Opinion

Letter: The world needs to intervene in Rohingya ethnic cleansing

Daily Lobo Readers | November 29

Editor, What is going on with the Rohingyas who were exiled from their own home country is an atrocity. Why is the world still tolerating these horrendous ethnic cleansing practices?

Opinion

Letter: I would not trade my simple lifestyle for one of luxury

Daily Lobo Readers | November 26

Editor, I would not trade speaking, writing and living my conscience for any high-paying job pressing me to shut up my convictions. I would not trade living below the federal income tax level to refuse to pay for war — for all the money in the world. I would not trade mostly walking, sometimes riding the bus — for owning a luxury car.

Opinion

Column: We should expand our recognition of Indigenous people during holidays

Rebecca Brusseau | November 26

Thanksgiving has been well known for being controversial in its roots in the genocide of Indigenous peoples dating back to the original colonization of the Americas. The celebration of this holiday is a sensitive subject, as the arguments on both sides come from places of deep emotional ties. For individuals of indigenous lineage, Thanksgiving celebrates a portion of history that led to a devastating genocide that diminished their population by over ten million, according to EndGenocide.org. What some may see as a warm-hearted holiday that celebrates patriotic gratitude, the reality of what event this holiday honors has left a scar on the ethics of colonial America.

Opinion

Column: Black Friday has, disappointingly, become more orderly

Colton Newman | November 26

Black Friday is a holiday that stands on its own — or it used to be. Over the last couple of years Black Friday has been bleeding over into Thanksgiving. Just a few years ago Black Friday meant getting up at 3 a.m. to get in line at your local Target, Best Buy or Walmart and waiting until 6 a.m. to run to the tech section and fight for the lowest priced television sets. Shopping cart traffic jams and gabfests over discounted DVD players were the enjoyable drama that constituted the normal/abnormal behavior.

Opinion

Letter: US should commit to complete nuclear disarmament

Daily Lobo Readers | November 26

Editor, On Nov. 15, U.S. Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) and US Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA) introduced one of the shortest bills in the histories of their two parliamentary bodies. Shorn of the obligatory "be it enacted, blah, blah, blah" boilerplate, the bill's content comes to 14 words: "It is the policy of the United States to not use nuclear weapons first." It's a short bill and it's a good bill, but it could be made both shorter and better by eliminating the word "first." What America needs is a "no use of nukes, period" policy, followed quickly by an "elimination of the nuclear arsenal" policy.

Maggie Siebert, left, leads a class at Lobo Gardens.

Opinion

Guest Column: New partnership commits to improving Lobo Gardens

Hanes Motsinger | November 26

Editor's Note: This piece submitted by a student in the UNM Geography & Environmental Studies Department is part of our project to help connect the Daily Lobo audience to more members of our community. A new partnership at the University of New Mexico’s Lobo Gardens is enhancing opportunities for the UNM and Albuquerque community to learn how the health of our urban communities and natural worlds are connected. The new collaboration among the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, AmeriCorps VISTA, UNM’s STEAMLabs, the Community Engaged Learning and Research Office and the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies increases the resources and enhances the focus of Lobo Gardens, which was first established in 2010.

Opinion

Column: Cameras aren't good enough to fight crime

Ludella Awad | November 19

The City of Albuquerque District Attorney’s office announced a new program to prevent and reduce crime — SCAN, or Security Camera Analytic Network. The idea is to encourage homes and businesses to register their cameras and join the security camera map. Every day in Albuquerque, we hear about crime, and it is often hard for investigators to pinpoint who was involved and what happened. Investigators try to utilize security cameras located near the area, hoping to get any information they can by obtaining relevant videos of the crime.

Opinion

Letter: Trump wants to abuse power by targeting political opponents

Daily Lobo Readers | November 19

Editor, “The saddest thing is, because I am the president of the United States, I am not supposed to be involved with the Justice Department,” Trump said. “I’m not supposed to be involved with the FBI. I’m not supposed to be doing the kind of things I would love to be doing, and I am very frustrated by it.”

Opinion

Letter: UNM should be careful with upcoming Banner overhaul

Daily Lobo Readers | November 19

Editor, While I was pleasantly surprised at the news that Banner is undergoing a “massive overhaul,” I immediately felt a sense of dread as I read the UNM News story, "Campus-wide system undergoing massive overhaul” (Nov. 15). That dread deepened when I read the Banner 9 information page linked in the article. There is a timeline at the very bottom of that webpage. I panicked when I saw that the number of hours dedicated to the “Reach out and Touch Someone” phase, which includes user training among other tasks, is only six hours for the “customer team.” I am assuming, of course, that the “customer team” is providing, or at least overseeing, the end-user testing, because I cannot find this phase of the rollout anywhere else in the project plan.

Opinion

Column: UNM needs to tackle enrollment rate problem

Rebecca Brusseau | November 19

As Lobos, we naturally want the best for our University, but there are setbacks that are reflected in the decreasing enrollment rates, which cannot be ignored. Poor and decreasing enrollment numbers can cause a snowball effect of hardships at the University of New Mexico. In the past year, UNM has seen almost a 6 percent drop in freshman enrollment. There is a range of issues contributing to poor enrollment numbers in recent years, but largely the issues are in terms of finances.

Opinion

Guest Column: BioBlog — Climate Change and Me

Nick Freymueller | November 19

Editor's Note: This piece was originally published online in the UNM BioBlog on Nov. 9, 2017, written by Nick Freymueller. This is part of our project to help connect the Daily Lobo audience to more members of our community. How does climate change affect the daily life of Alaskans and their winter commute? Masters student Nick Freymueller discusses what it was like to grow up in Alaska and how climate change has personally affected his community in the cold north in the UNM BioBlog.

Opinion

BioBlog: How meditation can help with your health

Zachary Fry | November 17

Editor's Note: This piece was originally published online in the UNM BioBlog on Oct. 25, 2017, written by Zachary Fry. This is part of our project to help connect the Daily Lobo audience to more members of our community. Sa-ta-na-ma.

Opinion

Letter: No to "America First"

Daily Lobo Readers | November 15

Editor, If this nation stopped stealing and hogging the world’s wealth, if this nation stopped murdering moms, dads and kids in many nations, the United States would have far less enemies! My country is the world. I want all 7 plus billion people on Earth to be treated fairly! HELL NO to America first! I do not pledge allegiance to the U.S. flag or to any nation’s flag. I strongly support this city to be a safe place for refugees and for undocumented people.

Opinion

Letter: "Honest Ads Act" undermines right to free political speech

Daily Lobo Readers | November 15

Editor, Wikipedia defines "moral panic" as "a feeling of fear spread among a large number of people that some evil threatens the well-being of society" and notes that "A Dictionary of Sociology" attributes the cultivation of moral panics to "moral entrepreneurs and the mass media." We're well into the second year of a moral panic drummed up by Democrats and "Never Trump" Republicans for the purpose of nullifying the outcome of the 2016 presidential election — removing U.S. President Donald Trump from office or making him a four-year de facto lame duck — by blaming his upset victory on "Russian meddling."

Opinion

Column: Panhandling ordinance punishes kindness and ignores those in need

Ludella Awad | November 13

Albuquerque City Council unanimously passed an ordinance on Nov. 6, making panhandling to motorists illegal. This is not a good solution for our city. The City Council’s new pedestrian ordinance places restrictions not only on panhandlers, but also on vendors such as Girl Scouts selling cookies to motorists. The ordinance also forbids “boot brigade” firefighters from receiving donations from people in their cars. The criminalizing of these harmless fundraisers not only ignores what the people in Albuquerque asked for, but also does not solve the issue it was meant to address.

Opinion

Letter: We should all be prepared for sudden acts of violence

Daily Lobo Readers | November 12

Editor, Our hearts go out to the people of Sutherland Springs, Texas. The First Baptist Church of this town and the entire community was ambushed in what resulted as the worst mass shooting in Texas history. Twenty-six people are dead, and many others are currently fighting for their lives in intensive care. This is heart-crushing for this Texas community and all of America, as we must conclude no place is safe in America anymore. My hometown church in Inez, Kentucky kept the backdoor of the church unlocked during most of my high school years. The church was a place where anyone could enter and pray and seek refuge from the problems of the world.

Opinion

Letter: Veterans Day should be about the promotion of peace

Daily Lobo Readers | November 12

Editor, In 1926, a concurrent resolution of the U.S. Congress held it "fitting that the recurring anniversary of (the armistice which brought World War One to an end) should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations." In 1938, Congress enshrined Nov. 11 of each year as an American holiday "dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be hereafter celebrated and known as 'Armistice Day.'" Somewhere between 15 and 19 million human beings — one-third of them civilians — perished in World War I. Fitting, don't you think, to set aside a day each year for remembrance of the tragedy and for resolve against its repetition, however vain the latter hope might prove?