Saturday, September 21, 2024

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Commentary

COMMENTARY

MEAP matters

It looks like the Michigan Educational Assessment Program, or MEAP, tests have one less problem. The Michigan Department of Treasury, which oversees the program, learned from its mistake last year, when officials released the names of 71 schools being investigated for cheating on the state’s standardized tests.

COMMENTARY

Drunken disorder

Michigan legislators recently passed a bill to eliminate the excuse “I was drunk” as a possible legal excuse for a crime.

COMMENTARY

Coach concerns

Minority recruitment efforts for faculty and students have been highly publicized in recent years, but another area of university life hasn’t seen as much press, racial inequality in athletics. A symposium organized by MSU athletics director Clarence Underwood at Kellogg Center this week aimed to begin to correct that.

COMMENTARY

Terrorism a reality everywhere, nations must defend before negotiations

How quickly we forget the horror of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Remember the fear, the astonishment, the utter hopelessness that we all felt watching passenger-laden aircraft decimate the World Trade Center, murdering thousands of men and women whose only crime was to rise with their alarm clocks and journey to another day of work? Now imagine if we had to experience this feeling again, not in another isolated, dramatic episode of terror, but every single day, not knowing which of our friends or family would next find themselves under the murderous ax of militant extremists.

COMMENTARY

Fair Warning

U.S. officials are right to warn citizens of the danger of continued terrorism on American soil. Since Sept.

COMMENTARY

Belted Bibles

The superintendent of Wayland Union Schools near Grand Rapids recently had a tough decision to make: Turn way the Gideons International’s efforts to give out free Bibles in school or face a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union. Fortunately for the U.S.

COMMENTARY

More parking than proposed needed

It is a shame that the proposal for the new parking lot in place of the Michigan State Police station is only 1,300 car spaces (“‘U’ may get increase in parking,” SN 5/15). This university takes advantage of students and their families by charging extremely high prices for parking and large fines for illegally parking.

COMMENTARY

Bronzed beauty

After more than a decade of absence, former MSU President John A. Hannah will soon be seen on campus again. Plans are underway for a bronze statue of the university’s 12th president, a welcome addition to the place so heavily marked by Hannah.

COMMENTARY

Changing lanes

East Lansing city officials are right to take a closer look at transportation concerns along East Grand River Avenue.

COMMENTARY

Flour patrol just going overboard

A local group out for their monthly run used a mixture of flour and chalk to mark their route resulting in a quarantine for what police thought was an anthrax scare. Historically, anthrax in powder form has been sent through the U.S.

COMMENTARY

Columnist wrong, shows doing fine

I’d like to correct columnist Jacquelyne Froeber’s column, “New reality shows another sign of TV wasteland” (SN 5/16). In her column, Froeber said that, like most reality shows, the ratings of “Survivor” were down, when in actuality the ratings for “Survivor: Marquesas” are up quite a bit from the last season.

COMMENTARY

Admissions policy should pursue goal

While I support the concept of affirmative action, I disagree with the recent editorial supporting a federal court of appeal’s decision to uphold current affirmative action policies at the University of Michigan (“Positive Action,” SN 5/15). The goal of affirmative action is to assist disadvantaged groups in selection procedures in order to further equality.

COMMENTARY

Dollar dilemma

The East Lansing School District is facing a dilemma. It must find a way to make up a $3.5 million budget deficit. But to help do so, school officials could choose to close Spartan Village Elementary, acclaimed for its diverse student population.

COMMENTARY

Parking, please

On our campus, parking has been a hotly debated issue for as long as most people can remember. And while it may be too much to hope for a light at the end of this long tunnel, part of MSU’s 2020 Vision plans for campus development tackle part of the parking problem, even as parking spots are lost for added green space. The proposed creation of a 1,300 space parking lot where the Michigan State Police headquarters is located on Harrison Avenue would be a huge benefit to student commuters and visitors to the university.