A tuition equity bill is on its way to the Oregon Senate, and if legislators do what’s right, it should pass. The bill seeks to offer in-state college tuition to undocumented high school graduates who currently face out-of-state rates regardless of how long they’ve lived in Oregon. Portland State President Wim Wiewel is all for it, but it’s a controversial idea—a similar bill failed in 2011.
Some feminists drive me crazy. Yes, I said it. You’re not supposed to admit things like that but, well, sometimes I just want to wring their necks.
These days almost every other political speech echoes the woeful tale of the American student. Our plight is discussed in grim correlation with our country’s future. No pressure. We made it into the State of the Union—it wouldn’t be a good one if there weren’t a few depressing statistics, right?
A 15-year-old Icelandic girl is suing to keep her own name. Blaer, meaning “light breeze,” is apparently not acceptable, according to the Icelandic government. Why? Because the word “takes a masculine article” and is therefore not one of the 1,853 female names that parents can choose from when naming their girls, according to an Associated Press report.
On the heels of his second inauguration, President Barack Obama sat down for a 60 Minutes interview with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The two had never conducted a joint interview, which is not to say they’d never been on camera together—who can forget the less-than-cordial Democratic presidential debates of 2007?
Last year, it definitely wasn’t chicken people tasted in their mouths when they heard the name Chick-fil-A. It was something far more bitter. Calls for boycotts rang across the country and the place where people ate lunch was suddenly indicative of their views on gay marriage.
Some say social media is making us less social and more isolated from each other; others say the opposite. Both groups can point to data and experience to support their claims. Recently, though, I watched a Dateline NBC program about this very topic, and it got me thinking not so much about the social trends in media, but of a word that seems to be disappearing from our collective consciousness: serendipity.
About a year ago, the Coalition of Communities of Color released a report referencing Portland State under the heading “The Latino Community in Multnomah County: An Unsettling Profile.” The following month there was a follow-up report on the Asian and Pacific Islander communities in the same county. Both reports were, as their titles suggested, “unsettling.”
We’re a cynical lot. Students, that is. We take issue with as many people and things as we can—professors who don’t care anymore, close-minded classmates, the injustice of student loans and the politics of being a student in the first place. And that’s just on Monday morning. Then again, nothing good happens on Monday mornings.
In what many considered a lackluster second inauguration of President Barack Obama—with nary a glimpse of the magic that hung in the air four years ago—one bright spot was Beyonce Knowles’ rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Of course, it’s now widely speculated that she lip-synched the whole thing, but, really, who cares? We all know she could sing the alphabet and we’d be gobsmacked.
When I was 8 years old and living in England, I wrote a letter to Jimmy Savile asking if I could be on his TV show. His name may mean nothing to you, but imagine an English Mr. Rogers and you’ll have it just about right.