For a long time, the State News editorial board has said that ASMSU needs to find a good way to get students' opinions on issues and get them involved. In fact, in "Unresolved issues," (SN 1/9), we said getting students involved with college funding and getting them to show up when their presence is needed was going to be a tough goal.
I read David Garlock's letter, "Historical man not worth vast attention" (SN 1/19), with a distinct sense of déjà vu. Nothing he had to say was anything I hadn't heard before, usually from some "conservative" pundit with nothing else to write about when Martin Luther King Jr.
Let me start by pointing out that I am a politically moderate, white male. Just about the only point of David Garlock's piece, "Historical man not worth vast attention" (SN 01/19), that I agree with is his assertion that we should not give our leaders a free pass. However, if he took a closer look, I think he would find that many of our founding fathers had similar character flaws to those he ascribes to Martin Luther King Jr. None of the things he accuses King of are actually crimes: That is where we draw the line — since he asked. We are too quick to forget that our historical leaders were human, the same as the rest of us.
Wow, people nowadays have a lot of nerve. Throughout history we have worshipped men who have done less than perfect things.
Anytime a faction of the university announces a proposal to raise student taxes our frugality kicks into autopilot.
East Lansing Parking and Code Enforcement and I like to play this game. See, first I park in the most normal way I can think of or assure my friends that parking in such a fashion is OK.
Some members of the MSU Board of Trustees said the board is not doing anything wrong by having closed work sessions the night before its monthly meetings. But the justifications they provided for closing those sessions left us with more questions than answers. The board holds closed work sessions the day before their formal meeting, in which the two committees talk about the issues on the agenda.
In response to David Garlock's letter, "Historical man not worth vast attention" (1/19), I've got to say, we need to give this guy the official "Republican Medal of Honor." He's judgmental of human flaws, speaks around condemnations without citing a single fact, opposes not only reform but also civil liberties themselves and harbors a paranoid delusion of government overstepping its mandate to protect the populous.
Every year, there always seems to be someone that disagrees with the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and thinks everyone in the country should not honor it, but this, by far, is the most hateful response I have seen. I am sorry that David Garlock ("Historical man not worth vast attention" SN 1/19) had to miss one day of mail and had to take a day off work (although there were plenty of people who did work on that day), but that is how you chose to celebrate the holiday.
From what I read of "Professor salaries rank 5th in Big Ten," (SN 1/19), it sounded like the staff is complaining about being ranked fifth and having an average salary of about $111,000. Now, I understand that MSU has to be comparative, if not better, than some schools to attract good professors and keep the ones we have. But if the salary is going to be higher, then better screening of new professors and better examinations of current professors needs to be put in place. For the most part, I have had average to great professors during my three years at MSU.
Another MSU student is stepping up to the challenge and running for a government office. Law student John Knowles announced his candidacy for a seat in the Michigan House of Representatives in the 69th District, which includes East Lansing and Williamston.
The history of thought on free will and the human mind has tended toward supernatural explanations. It's been suggested, for example, that humans are mystically endowed with an intangible and incorporeal soul, immune to physical laws. Compared with animals, some believe that humans are a fundamentally different type of being.
Oh, ASMSU. You've captivated us with your latest bill. MSU's undergraduate student government has passed a bill in support of two extra days off during fall semester — a fall break.
I was browsing through the pages of The State News when I came across the column, "Local radio needs diversity" (SN 1/12), about diversifying local radio in Lansing. I read through the column and noticed that much of it was devoted to bashing MSU's very own Impact 88.9-FM — which has been the Michigan Association of Broadcasters and Broadcast Music Inc. college radio station of the year for the last five of the past six years.
Timing is everything. But ASMSU seems to be a bit behind. Months after the independent commission reviewing the April 2-3 disturbances released its report, MSU's undergraduate student government is demanding that MSU police be held responsible for its actions regarding events surrounding the disturbances. ASMSU is currently working on a bill that would ask the Executive Committee of Academic Governance to create a special investigative committee to decide if MSU police "shirked" its duty by not cooperating with the independent commission. It's a great idea for ASMSU to take students' needs into account and try to do something about it. But it took ASMSU, what, three months after the commission released its report to discover this? If this was a pressing problem, ASMSU should have gotten involved and demanded that the MSU police be more cooperative when the commission was still meeting. Because the bill — a potentially positive step for students — is late, it looks like ASMSU is just beating a dead horse. A horse that collapsed and died in October, when students decided they didn't want their voices heard and failed to show up to the independent commission's public hearing. Or maybe it died when members of ASMSU, who were assigned to the commission, failed to show up for several meetings. Even if students do still care about that night, it's questionable what the actual effect of having another investigation would be. The independent commission was created to investigate that night and it met for months on end to eventually release a report with recommendations to prevent the disturbances from happening again.
Martin Luther King Jr. was a plagiarist, an adulterer, socialist and power-hungry blasphemer, which I only mention because he claimed to be a reverend. Some deny the charges, others say that it doesn't matter whether they are true or not because the movement he led was so great that we should ignore his personal failings.
The MSU Board of Trustees makes a lot of huge decisions. And it seems to make a lot of these important decisions behind closed doors. The board, of course, always announces its decisions in public, sitting down to a lengthy meeting in which it praises and thanks each member and President Lou Anna K.
As an MSU senior that listens to WDBM (88.9-FM), or the Impact, quite often, I would like to voice my opinion in response to Ryan McCormick's column "Local radio needs diversity" (SN 1/12) about the music on the radio in Lansing.
What is the point of giving MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon an $85,000 raise if she is going to give it back to MSU?
It's funny how moods and overall levels of life enjoyment can change in a matter of mere hours.