Letters to the Editor

Dear Editor,

I’m writing in response to a recent editorial by Andrew Adams, which claimed – almost guaranteed, actually – that Barack Obama is far too liberal to be elected President of the United States, and that John McCain’s independence and willingness to compromise would whisk him into the White House, no problem.

Unfortunately, the study Adams cited as evidence of Obama’s “extreme liberalism” is an extremely flawed one. It’s conducted annually by the National Journal (not the National Review, as Adams stated – a textbook Freudian slip, considering the rabidly conservative nature of the Review) and this year was based on 99 Senate votes, a third of which Obama missed due to campaign demands. (McCain missed over half the votes, disqualifying him from the study.) These absences skew the data; had Obama been present for every vote, he most likely would have crossed party lines more frequently, lowering his score. In fact, he was only the 10th most liberal senator in 2006, and 16th in 2005. In both those years, he participated in a much higher number of votes.

The truth is, since winning the Democratic primary Obama has been nudging his views to the center in an effort to broaden his appeal. In July he voted to pass George Bush’s FISA bill, granting immunity to telecommunications companies who wire-tap. In August, he proposed that America tap into its strategic oil reserves in order to provide relief from high gas prices. At the Democratic Convention, he promised to lower taxes for 95 percent of Americans. These are not typically leftist stances; in fact, the first two were blatant reversals that infuriated Obama’s liberal base.
Interestingly enough, McCain has been utilizing the same strategy – a shift to the right – for different reasons. He’s looking to shore up the Republican base, which wasn’t exactly doing back-flips over his nomination. In the past 18 months or so, McCain has reversed his stance on Roe v. Wade (he supported the decision until early last year, now wants it overturned), Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy (opposed until last May; now supports), his own immigration bill (said that if the bill came to a vote, he would vote against it), and offshore drilling (opposed until June of this year; now passionately supports).

Consider all those policies, then throw in the fact that McCain – according to a study by the Congressional Quarterly – voted in line with President Bush 95 percent of the time in 2007, and hinting that he might be a “Democrat in disguise” (as Adams did) becomes laughable. (Sidenote: McCain did dissent from the Republican party one-third of the time – back in 2001. In 2007, he voted in line with his party at an uncompromising 90 percent clip.)

Even McCain’s Vice Presidential pick, while risky and unpredictable, was yet another appeal to the right. Were McCain as independently minded as Adams suggests, he would have chosen the running mate he really wanted: good friend and former Democratic Vice Presidential candidate, Joe Lieberman. Talk about a ticket that could woo independents and disillusioned Hillary supporters. Alas, John McCain’s maverick streak seems to have run out just in time to reassure Republicans on the eve of the big election.

Andrew Adams is right about one thing: This election is about the political ideology of two men, a fact all too often lost on the electorate, the media and the men themselves. One is a liberal – but far from extreme – and the other is a conservative, now more than ever. It’s still too early to tell whose changes of heart will pay off in November, but to deem an Obama win unimaginable is absolutely ludicrous. Recent polls show either a dead heat or Obama with a slight advantage, and the majority of Americans agree that this country is in desperate need of a change. Consequently, this is – and always has been – Obama’s election to lose.

Evan Allgood
Graduate Student
Creative Writing

———————————

Dear Editor,

Who needs handicapped access to Lanier Hall, or fenced-in parking lots, or emergency stations on campus with functioning lights, or a library staff scheduled 24/7, or a donation to the progress of a battered women’s shelter in Milledgeville, when we can have 19 snazzy-looking LCD screens all over campus? More importantly, was there a public outcry demanding this excess? If SGA represents the student body, then who exactly were they representing when this legislation was passed?

Maybe SGA hasn’t noticed, but people walk past those TV screens as if they aren’t there. Who is going to stop in the middle of a congested hallway and look up while tons of announcements scroll past too quickly to memorize or write down, and tons of people are shoving their way past you AND the TVs to get back to their apartments?

I’m offended that SGA thinks having something shiny to look at will make people more aware of what’s going on at GCSU. The people who are clueless to the kinds of announcements that will be on Bobcat Vision aren’t clueless because there isn’t an effective mode of communication between RSOs and the student body – they are clueless because they don’t care. And they will continue to be that way regardless of the money spent on advertising materials.

For those students who DO care, there is MyCats, the Student All Digest, the Colonnade, fliers, chalking, Facebook, bulletin boards, table tents in Sodexo, tables on front campus, MySpace, announcements in classes, and most importantly, word-of-mouth.

By refusing to create more and more methods of communication for those on campus who can’t seem to figure out what is going on, then we indirectly increase the dependency of the students on the methods that already exist. Once a student realizes that the events they are interested in are only advertised on Facebook, for example, then they will monitor that medium as needed to keep informed.

If someone can’t figure out what, where, and when something is going on here at GCSU after going through one or all of the above channels, then there is something wrong with the user, not the program.

SGA says that it is attempting to be more “green” by reducing the number of fliers, but let’s be honest here – who is going to stop printing fliers just because they have a 10-second (or less) spread on a TV screen that no one is paying attention to? There are so many more ways to be “green” without spending the kind of money that went into these TVs, like emphasizing the Student All Digest, MyCats, gcsunade.com, chalking, Facebook, and word-of-mouth as valid means of communication.

There are already multiple paper-reducing options in place, why do we need more? This seems to be SGA’s main selling point on these screens, but it doesn’t hold any water. I’m sure if we looked into the amount of electricity used to power these screens (which are not turned off at night, I’ve checked) we would find that they are just as detrimental to our environment as the amount of paper used to print fliers.

If anything, SGA only managed to increase the amount of energy and resources this campus consumes by installing these LCD screens. What will SGA do about this issue, I wonder? If SGA really wants this campus to be more “green”, they would sponsor recycling drives, replace the automatic flushing toilets with manual ones, buy recycled paper for use in the library and tech center, sponsor speakers to hold workshops on low-impact living, sponsor PowerRides so students could feel more comfortable riding their bikes on the roads as well as learning proper cycling etiquette and stop driving their cars, and, I repeat, emphasize the use of environmentally-friendly means of communication already in place on campus.

I am incredibly disappointed in the way SGA used students’ funds as far as these screens are concerned. If you want to feel like you’re at a school so rich it can be fiscally frivolous, then Athens is less than an hour up the road.

Kim O’Toole
Junior
Liberal Studies

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Sep 12 2008. Filed under Letters to the Editor, Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry