Opinion
Millar Library plays host to a familiar sight: a full computer lab, complete with the sounds of keyboards clicking, muffled pop songs coming out of someone’s headphones and the voices of people either pleading to all that’s holy that the printer surrenders their assignment or calmly informing the help desk that printer two is, of all things, printing off six copies of a kid-friendly version of the Old Testament.
There’s no getting around it: These days, everyone seems to have a plan to help at-risk teens.
Portland State’s Friendtorship program is one of the latest plans designed for this purpose. Now in its second year, the Friendtorship program seeks to fulfill one simple goal: get young people—specifically those who haven’t considered college as a part of their futures—interested in higher education.
A couple of weeks back, I commented on the criticism aimed at the Revolutionary Marxist class PSU offers through the Chiron Studies program. On the conservative website The Blaze, author Erica Ritz suggested that a “controversial” course like this should not be covered by taxpayer dollars. She added that classes like this are the reason our country’s university system is under fire.
On Saturday, May 12, postal workers across the United States picked up more than just letters and packages. It was the annual Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive, a program developed by the National Association of Letter Carriers to assist food banks in serving those in need. Along their routes, more than 200,000 mail carriers collected millions of pounds of non-perishable food donations in their trucks and bags.
Imagine walking into a bar knowing exactly how many people are inside. Before you even order a drink, you also know the exact ratio of men to women and the average age of everyone there. Maybe your odds just got better, but if they did, at what cost?
A few years from now, Portland State’s South Park Blocks will look quite different. The university recently announced that in addition to Smith Memorial Student Union, the Peter W. Stott Center will also be receiving an upgrade and remodel. Both of these new plans have been touted as great for students.
On Wednesday, May 9, in a taped interview with ABC’s Robin Roberts, President Barack Obama made history by becoming the first president to announce support for marriage equality. Citing his support and admiration for friends, colleagues and military personnel who are in “incredibly committed monogamous [same-sex] relationships,” he said, “At a certain point I’ve just concluded that, for me personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.”
As Charlie Hales and Jefferson Smith took center stage on Tuesday night, the name Cameron Whitten was not on the lips of many, if any. But as our voting process proceeded with a business-as-usual result, it’s too bad that his name was so easy to miss on the ballot.
When it comes to education, it seems that the general thought is that the better the teachers, the better the education. But there is also the economy to keep in mind. Our current economic state is less than desirable, so many schools and school districts have had to make tough decisions regarding the hiring of new teachers, repairs to school grounds and even school closures. The Portland public school district is no exception to this.
There is a serious disconnect between the opinions of the American public and the political agendas of our nation’s representatives. Dozens of polls conducted by various institutions all over the country reach the same conclusion time after time: America is not living up to the expectations of her citizens.
It’s not every day that we see a practical application of what we learn in the classroom toward our day-to-day lives.
Rarely do we sit in our statistics classes and daydream about all the ways we can change the world through data collection—or maybe it’s just me.