August 26 is the 95th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote. The League of Women Voters of New Mexico honors the amazing women who fought with unrelenting tenacity to achieve the most powerful extension of citizenship rights in our nation’s history.
While I respect the goal to obtain equal rights among men and women, I was disappointed after I read yesterday's story, "Activists Go Without for Topless Equality." While their intentions may be to de-sexualize the female body, the results are furthering our objectification as women.
Well, as freshmen, most students are coming from high school backgrounds of sports or involvement that aren’t plausible in a college setting. Students who were never involved now want college to be more than just going to class, but UNM is HUGE, so how can anyone know where to start? There are more than 300 chartered student organizations, Residence Life and Student Housing , 25 sororities and fraternities combined, Athletics and, of course, student government. Where do you begin?
On Friday, there was another student alert of a female being groped on UNM main campus. That makes five groping reports in a month (according to KOB Channel 4 news). As people on campus are being targeted by predators, the UNM policy office states: “No person may use or possess a weapon on any part of campus.” Also, any weapons found could lead to materials being impounded by law enforcement and disciplinary or criminal action. (The only persons exempt are campus police and “inoperable” weapons by ROTC).
We live in a society that is more connected, and yet at the same time more disconnected, than ever before. Social media has transformed the way we communicate, and has made creating social connections that previously would have been improbable as easy as clicking a button. At the same time, repeated studies show that the number of close friends the average American says she/he can talk to in a time of need has dropped sharply over the last half-century. Other evidence points to the same trend: the number of people who would describe themselves as lonely, who live alone and who don’t interact outside of work/school situations have all increased steadily over the last 50 or so years.
I’ve been reading your letters pages and am happy to find something better than what appears in the local dumb rag (the Journal). Trump reminds me of Rupert Pupkin, the comic wannabe in Scorsese’s “The King of Comedy” who kidnaps a talk show host (Jerry Lewis) to get ten minutes on the program. I kind of like Trump’s unfiltered rant -- it’s audacious, but what he proposes is usually ugly, in line with the Republican agenda.
Every time I hear or read about Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, I can’t help but contemplate the similarities between the man himself and this animated character. He feeds off distraction, misdirection and controversy. His racism and sexism is forgiven or even cheered because it is “honest.”
American politics is quite silly – absurd, even. This irreverent perspective goes beyond a critique of the veneration that cartoon characters like Donald Trump receive from much of the conservative body politic: It is a viewpoint that strikes at a very deep, very real problem that appears to be embedded in the American political fabric. The problem, you see, is the American voter’s dutiful allegiance to a willful culture of ignorance. American culture, broadly speaking, is not well-known for scientific literacy. After all, we are rather good at turning out high school students who simply do not measure up in STEM areas compared to students from many other “developed” or “First-World” nations.
Editor, I strongly agree with Ms. Woods’ assessment of Donald Trump and his comments. He is one of the few politicians speaking what they think and meaning it. I may not agree with everything Mr. Trump has to say, but the fact that he is speaking honestly to the silent majority of people in this great country of ours is more admirable than I have the words to verbalize about.
ntolerance is courageous? I grieved to read Rev. Mary Woods’ letter “Donald Trump shows courage in illegal immigrant comments.” As director of the NM Faith Coalition for Immigrant Justice, I dread ministers promoting intolerant messages so disconnected from Christianity. The heart of Rev. Woods’ message — that recent events have ignited discussion around racism bringing us to a crossroads — holds truth. Our country has skirted race for too long, and the imperative to address it is now. For someone experienced with racism to justify supposed “protective racism” is counterintuitive.
Who honestly cares about ASUNM? What do they even do (aside from wearing bright colors and harassing people twice a year asking them to vote)? We know that student government can seem irrelevant, and the work we do sometimes doesn’t quite reach the student body in the way we hope it to. But we wouldn’t stand out there in heels, getting sunburns and creepily approaching strangers, if we didn’t believe in something bigger.
It was with a great deal of disgust that I read Rev. Mary E. Woods’ letter entitled “Donald Trump shows courage in illegal immigrant comments.” Trump’s focus and forte center on only political non-correctness. Just because he can yell and scream like a brat, a certain segment of the population thinks that’s cool.
Recent events in America have ignited some serious discussions around racism and placed our country at the crossroads of social and political divide. As a Christian, providentially called and ecclesiastically ordained minister and board-certified chaplain, I am impelled to pen my sentiments during this trying time in the history of these United States of America. From my vantage point as an African-American of Cherokee and Blackfoot Indian descent, raised in the Jim Crow city of Birmingham, Alabama, I have always viewed racism as overt and covert; that there could be no reasonable rationale for this social stigma. Yet the remarks attributed to Donald Trump regarding Mexican immigrants led me to entertain the idea of “protective” racism, which can fall into either category cited above. In stating that “Mexico sends its rapists, drug dealers, et. al., to the United States,” I contend that he was speaking out of the realization and concern that steps need to be taken to rein in runaway immigration practices by our neighbors to the south, who somehow feel that they have an entitlement to the services and benefits that we citizens have struggled for years to enjoy.
When you put together the recent large-scale hacking of classified U.S. personnel data by the Chinese with the extraordinary number of Chinese nationals at American universities today, you see a blurring of the lines between researching for purposes of pure scholarship and malicious spying. In that hack, the Chinese were allegedly looking for our spies operating in their country. But we spy on China well enough to tell that it is they who are spying. Then we have been known to block participation by Chinese scientists in international conferences held here, thereby stifling the growth of purely scientific and benign knowledge which can only happen these days if totally non-political research nerds can share discoveries and data openly without intimidating visits by national security agencies. We have even blocked the mutual sharing of scholarly scientific findings, even for medical benefit, with tiny Cuba.
Just because everybody in the media world is jumping off the cliff like lemmings to join the digital world doesn’t mean the Daily Lobo has to as well. Clearly, this is an economic decision and I wish the editorial staff of the Daily Lobo had the huevos to simply come out and say it: Printing on paper with ink costs a hell of a lot of money. On the other hand, because just about everybody and their dog is going digital, the printed word has an impact like never before.
What do the following international graduate students from India in the United States have in common: Chandrasekhar Reddy Komma and Kiran Kumar Allam, both of Louisiana State University; Randhir Kaur of University of California, San Francisco; Sai Kiran of Miami Atlantic University? They were all innocently going about their business, working hard pursuing advanced degrees, and were murdered.
When I applied for a job with the Daily Lobo I pictured a room crowded with papers and overflowing ashtrays. I envisioned coffee cups full of rum with melting ice. I heard, in my mind, people yelling across each other about the hottest topics, demanding phone numbers and confirmation: “Did the governor really say that?!” I saw myself taking a questionable assignment and prying open a window to get to the files that would finally put away that dirtbag politician. I would drag the hegemony down by blasting it with the holy light of journalism! I quickly figured out that I knew nothing of journalism. Everything Hunter S. Thompson taught me about reporting was wrong. With no experience and little functional knowledge in the field, my first two submissions were rapidly rejected. The world of journalism — especially college journalism — is full of obscure rules. Brought upon me with the most immediate rigor was the first-person rule: Nothing in a story is to be written in first person.
On June 8, the New Mexico Legislature was called back into a special session to reconsider passing the $295 million capital outlay bill that died in the final days of the 2015 legislative session. The special session requires that lawmakers return to Santa Fe to reconsider spending on capital projects critical to higher education and communities throughout rural New Mexico. Not only does capital outlay provide improvements to public facilities in local communities, but it also provides much-needed jobs through the construction and improvements of facilities in a state that currently ranks 48th in job growth. The special session is an opportunity to restore some of the funding request made my colleges and universities throughout New Mexico. Gov. Susana Martinez and House Republicans had proposed a 44 percent cut to institutions of higher education throughout the state during the 60-day regular session — now is the time to restore these cuts. Some of those cuts included building and infrastructure improvement such as roof improvements to the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, a tech center at UNM Gallup, and improvements to UNM’s Health Education Building. Smaller institutions critical to the state mission of higher education, such as Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute, also depend on capital improvement funds to maintain buildings, and have requested $500,000 to upgrade a fire alarm system to be in compliance with fire regulations.
Not long ago, the idea of a gay athlete was foreign to many. Yes, there had been athletes who ‘came out’ after their playing days were over, but their stories were relegated to the back pages of the newspapers, or not talked about at all. That long-held stance has since fallen to the wayside with Jason Collins and Michael Sam breaking barriers by coming out as gay during their careers. Collins became the first openly gay active NBA player when he took to the court for the Brooklyn Nets in 2014. Sam was the first openly gay player to be chosen in the NFL draft when St. Louis selected him with the 294th pick just last year.
Now that we acknowledge drug-induced psychosis, we should also acknowledge psychosis induced purely by religion. After all, ISIL among the Muslims, the KKK among the Christians, and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh among the Hindus are all gangs of violent psychopaths. The problem is that any religion is very clever at broadcasting that it is the corresponding non-believers who have this or that delusion, not they. Take climate change. Well-funded Christian fundamentalists, even in this scientifically advanced country, claim that climate change is delusion. In reality, it is they who are delusional about man-made climate change as fact — the most obvious causative factor to anybody breathing being the plumes of pollution blanketing the sky throughout the thin skin around Earth we call the atmosphere. But self-proclaimed Christian “scientists” get into government and say things like “You only have to reflect God, and you can breathe anything and you will never fall sick.” Then they take their hats off to the likes of the Koch brothers, who toss in more change. Or Christians imagine some “God” to be pulling the strings and sending down lightning with pinpoint accuracy in the manner of laser-guided missiles, and thus effecting climate change, not man.
Solutions by The State News
