Opinions

It seems I cannot go a week without hearing one person or another argue against investment in NASA and space exploration as a whole. Whether they are waxing eloquent over the need to fix problems on Earth before looking out to the starts or complaining about a massive waste of resources, they are unified in opposition to a driving force for scientific innovation. This is not to say there are no problems that need accounting on Earth, no economies to fix or conflicts to be resolved.  There are so many...

­­­­­­­This week I’m bringing my opinion a little closer to home – well, to our home away from home. At UPS, for those of us who live on campus, aches, pains and sniffles mean a trip to CHWS. I’ll start this on a positive note. There are plenty of absolutely wonderful things about CHWS – proximity to campus housing, an excellent counseling program, and who could forget the ever-appreciated free condoms? Yet I find myself incredibly disappointed at something I’ve heard. A close friend of mine, who has asked to...

On October 5 a Latino Education Policy Forum was held to discuss the possibility of making Washington state funds for higher education available to undocumented high school graduates. The forum was held by the Latino/a Educational Achievement Program (LEAP), an organization that seeks the betterment of academic achievement among Hispanic students in the state of Washington. So far, LEAP has had one major policy approved by the state legislature – House Bill 1079, which passed in 2003 and is explained by their website as allowing “undocumented students to pay in-state...

So what are you doing during class? Surfing Facebook or listening to the professor and engaging in the class? Chances are that if you are using a laptop during class, you are probably surfing the Internet instead of being engaged in the class. Some professors allow laptops in class, some ban them. There are many reasons to ban laptops in classrooms. Laptops detract from the learning experience. A study by the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts showed that students who used laptops during class remembered less lecture content than those...

On Monday, Oct. 8, Socialist Alternative—a global political movement affiliated with the Committee for a Worker’s International, as well as with the socialist political parties of 41 countries—held a talk entitled “Capitalism in Crisis and the Socialist Alternative” in Wyatt 109. The talk hosted speakers from Austria and numerous Occupy movements, many of them from right here in Tacoma. It focused on the failings of global capitalism and argued that the current economic crisis is not something specific to any shortcomings of capitaism, but rather was a structural crisis endemic...

Given the ubiquitousness and centrality of the Internet in American culture, it seems prudent to learn why, between 2000 and 2006, the U.S. dropped from fifth to 22nd in network speed, affordability and availability, when younger countries have universal coverage and speeds many times our own. Although appearances would suggest this country’s broadband exists in an unchanging state, it results from decades of policies and regulations that have led to the modern high-priced oligopoly unrecognizable by the intended market. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) began crafting a regulatory structure in...

New York Times columnist David Brooks has recently branded Mitt Romney as the “least popular candidate in history.” Recent musings that Romney has no chance of winning a ‘popularity contest’ against Barack Obama have called into question some of Romney’s more questionable acts. As voting day draws nearer, I, as a first-time voter in the U.S., am left pondering what value Romney does have in the race.  I have yet to find any. Standing out in my brain, in the laundry list of public faux pas Romney has committed wholeheartedly,...

Referendum 74 is a hot issue on the ticket this election, plastering our LGBT friendly community with green Washington United For Marriage “I DO” bumper stickers and yard signs beaming with their slogan: “Equality for all loving couples.” But outside of our impenetrable bubble of open-minded academia, there exists a dark word of discriminatory, antiquated religious fanatics and anti-marriage equality bigots; namely, The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) and The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Seattle. It may come as no surprise that both of these organizations are religiously based groups,...

There is a problem with our media. I’m not speaking of the blind obsession with balance—as if such a thing were possible. Nor am I speaking of the media’s advertising-based focus on sensationalism, violence and voyeuristic news. I am speaking of the media’s pathological need for objectivity at the expense of informational broadcasting. This bastardization of the fourth estate has resulted in a political climate supporting misdirection, falsehoods and a refusal to establish any sense of context. Any fact-checking is decried as an inherently biased activity, and so the media...