Biased math? As the president of the largest political organization on campus, I feel it is my duty to respond to Nathan Batoon's article regarding the opening of the Hillary Clinton campaign office ("Clinton supporters emphasize Texas' role in nominee race," Feb. 18). In the article, a particular Clinton supporter was quoted as saying she "is not ready for a black president." As a Democrat who believes our party needs to remain as united as possible in this primary season, I find this comment reprehensible and offensive. It misrepresents the attitude of the overall celebration of the event and the attitude of Clinton supporters in Austin. In addition, Batoon states that hundreds showed up to support Clinton, whereas his colleague Teresa Mioli reported the same day that 4,700 people attended Saturday night to see former President Clinton speak on behalf of Sen. Clinton. KXAN reported that 3,600 people were in attendance that evening. Mr. Batoon, I was also in attendance to see the former president speak, and more than "hundreds" of people showed up to support the senator at her headquarters' grand opening. If he is referring to the number of volunteers the headquarters received on opening day, he is again incorrect: The Clinton campaign has confirmed with News 8 Austin that they trained 1,100 campaign volunteers on Saturday alone.
But what is most disturbing to me is the failure to mention any of the local leaders who came out to speak in support of Sen. Clinton. More than a dozen speakers who endorse Clinton attended the rally, including respected Texas Sen. Gonzalo Barrientos, State Reps. Eddie Rodriguez and Valinda Bolton and City Councilwoman Jennifer Kim. Please take heed of this biased journalism and be respectful and fair to both presidential candidates in the coming weeks.
Laura Hernandez Political communication studies senior University Democrats president Article Reference Link Debate a violation of UT policy? The CNN Democratic debate to be held on the UT campus may very well be causing UT employees to violate the prohibitions on political activity as established in the Original Handbook of Operating Procedures.
Chapter 9, Section 9.87 clearly states that a member of the staff may only participate in political activities "so long as such political activity does not involve The University of Texas at Austin in partisan politics." The prohibitions go on to state that, "no employee shall allow his time on the job to be used for influencing the outcome of any election."
As I am not privy to the details of the CNN debate that has taken over the Rec Sports Center, I can't say for certain. But by the looks of it, UT is now involved in partisan politics, and there are likely some employees who are using their time on the job to influence the outcome of an election. Brian Parrett College of Communication staff Debate debacle II The Daily Texan reported that, according to the Dean of Students, approximately 400 seats have been reserved for students selected from the random drawing of student volunteers, faculty and advising committees ("Listen, CNN," Feb. 20). This begs the question: How many tickets were actually available to students by random drawing, and how many were actually allotted to student volunteers, faculty, etc? If 18,000 people made special requests for the University tickets, how many tickets were available to us? I'd like to know who, specifically, received the tickets, since so many of us were left out in the cold, wishing and hoping for a ticket to the debate. Bitter, you ask? Yes. I have yet to hear of a student who "won" the lottery. So, I'm calling for the dean's office to provide a list of names of those who were actually given these tickets and how they were granted. Which students were asked to be volunteers and from which committees? Too many questions remain for me to be satisfied with my exclusion from this momentous debate. Jamie Vernon Molecular biology graduate student Article Reference Link Debate debacle I What's the point of having the debate on our campus if they only make 100 tickets available to the public? What's even more frustrating is the disruption caused by this event, including the removal of parking spaces and the closing of the Rec Sports Center for an entire week. If I'm going to have to watch it on TV anyway, they could be debating each other in College Station for all I care! Nikhil Advani Ecology graduate student An even dirtier debate Wolf Blitzer has asked the presidential candidates 460 questions since Jan. 2007. If you were to guess, how many would you think were about climate change? How does six sound?
Why so few? Maybe because Americans for Balanced Energy Choices, a front group for the coal industry, has been putting up big money to sponsor some of the debates. That's why you see all their "clean coal" ads during breaks, dropping more unqualified platitudes than the candidates.
There is no clean coal. We do not know if the technologies being developed will work, what they will cost or if they will be commercially viable. If America ties itself to the pocket strings of last century's energy barons, we'll miss our chance to develop the technologies and jobs of tomorrow that will keep our nation a world leader and an economic superpower.
There's a debate going on outside the broadcast debates about America's energy future. CNN hasn't been participating, but if you want to be part of a balanced debate, we've asked David Novack to pre-screen his movie in Austin before the premiere. "Burning the Future" exposes the dirty side of "clean" coal and is a must-watch for anyone who's been subjected to the "clean coal" ads. Join us today in RLM 4.102 at 5 p.m. Trevor Lovell Business senior Co-founder of ReEnergize Texas
Calvin Sloan Government sophomore President of Peak Oil The fall of Paul Even if every UT student attends Saturday's Ron Paul rally on the Main Mall, the event will be a failure. If the purpose of a rally is to help a person get elected, then Rep. Paul should simply cut his losses. I respect Paul and his views but let's be frank: Ron Paul will not be the GOP nominee this year, or any year. I'm almost certain he knew that going into the race.
Paul has led a courageous effort and endured personal attacks in his bid for the nomination. Yet by refusing to run as a third-party candidate, he has turned his back on thousands of supporters (including many serving in our military) who have donated more than $8 million to his campaign. If he truly felt he was the best nominee for the presidency, he should have taken his window of opportunity around December and defected from the party that no longer stands for his beliefs.
Instead, and surprisingly for someone who so brilliantly articulates sound economics, he has wasted millions of donors' money. If you say his point was to remind Republicans of their conservative roots, he has still failed. The apparent nominee, John McCain, earned some of his greatest applause lines after blasting Ron Paul. It is hard to imagine McCain taking any advice from Paul seriously when he doesn't even mention him when congratulating Mike Huckabee for staying in the race. If you attend the rally it should be to listen to interesting political theory. YCT should collect Paul banners for disposal just like they did for Kerry-Edwards in 2004. Adrian Hernandez Sociology sophomore It's not L-week I recently read with great interest, followed by gnawing concern, the recent piece about the UT Law School's "Color of Justice" program ("UT Law hosts 'Color of Justice' ," Feb. 18). Certainly, attracting minority high school students to higher education is a noble and laudable cause. However, even a cursory glance at the state of world affairs will testify that our planet suffers from no shortage of lawyers. In fact, a vast surplus of lawyers has burdened our courts with junk lawsuits and our innovators with junk patents. I contend that the world needs more engineers. Humanity's most cherished achievements are testaments to the ingenuity of engineers. While the first lawyers worked out new ways to defraud peasants of their livestock, the first engineers were designing monuments of stone that still reach eternally to the stars. While the lawyers of the Roman Empire orated in their togas, its engineers built a continent-spanning system of aqueducts that has inspired plumbing systems ever since. While lawyers fretted over the ownership of the moon, engineers took us there with steel and vacuum tubes.
Since they first kidnapped our dear mascot, Alec, (such hypocrisy!) in 1910, law students and engineering students have lived in uneasy peace at best here at UT. Looking to the future, though, it is clear that engineers, not lawyers, will take humanity into the stars and beyond. Engineers, this is your call to arms! Let us not leave the business of recruiting to the lawyers. Let us remind the youth of our nation of engineering's glorious heritage and unbounded future! Derrick Turk Mechanical engineering senior Article Reference Link Freedom, with responsibility A funny thing about freedom of the press is that, without a readership, the press is nothing but a couple sleeves of paper to make paper mache with or to guard the floor when painting a wall. Dan Treadway's valiant effort to defend freedom of the press in his column ("Freedom of press, no exceptions," Feb. 20) lacks one important ingredient: the readership of a media outlet. Treadway argues that the Dutch newspapers were correct in printing comics that depicted "Muhammed with a fuse coming out of his turban, despite uproar from some Islamic countries. He further argues that the images of both Jesus and the Star of David had some elements of offensive depiction that caused no uproar from people practicing either religion they represented, Christianity and Judaism. However, on the same note, an editor at Golf Magazine tried to print a magazine with a noose on the cover to depict an announcer's words, but he was quickly removed because of his rash decision-making and public uproar. Many other depictions or descriptions would have sufficed to make the same message, but the editor believed the noose idea was original and funny. I do not see him laughing now.
Do not misunderstand my point; freedom of the press allows balances in a government's influence and has been instrumental to that end. However, the same idea of freedom of the press led to a period called Yellow Journalism and many attribute Yellow Journalism to starting a war. Regardless of what ideals we hold, the press and individuals working for the press still must, to some degree, reign in and address what the populace wishes to read. Without the same checks on the press as we have on institutions such as law enforcement and government, the press is as liable to become a monster just the same. William Liu Psychology sophomore Article Reference Link Cuba: Not so fine 'n' dandy In reference to the news article "Fidel Castro resigns after 49 years as Cuba's president, Feb. 20:" I am a Cuban-American who immigrated to the United States when I was two years old. I am an active member of Raices de Esperanza (Roots of Hope), a human rights promotional group for Cuba started at numerous Ivy League schools across the United States.
In this article, UT history professor Jonathan Brown states that Castro "established a state-controlled economy that distributed most of what it had equally to everyone in society." In my experience, the Cuban economy distributed everything equally, including commodities such as food. Unfortunately, this meant that every person after 1962 received less food rations per week than Cuban slaves received in 1849. My parents had to stop their meat intake completely when I was little just to be able to make baby food. We received six ounces of meat (for a family of three) per week.
Secondly, just as Brown said, there was free universal health care. But what Brown forgets to mention is that it was available only to communists. Because my parents opposed communism, I was born in a dilapidated hospital in the middle of Havana that had no running water.
Lastly, the education system in Cuba is, in fact, better than the Texas public education system. But in order to achieve any advanced degrees (post-undergraduate), you had to be a member of the communist party. My father was not allowed to enroll in a Ph.D. program (after passing all the entrance tests) because he went to a Catholic church every Sunday.
If Brown would like to get truthful facts to base his reports on, he may speak to me about my family's past or any of the 2 million exiled Cubans living in the United States. He will then understand what it means to be a normal person in Cuba, not a corrupt member of the communist party. Until then, his opinions will not represent anything close to how real Cuban-Americans feel. Miguel Cruz Aerospace engineering sophomore Article Reference Link
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