Thursday, January 1, 2026

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Opinion | 1000

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COMMENTARY

'Pro-Bush' photo needed to have Kerry counterpart

I'm extremely disappointed at the two photos accompanying the presidential election story on the front page of the Welcome Week Edition of The State News. The reader's eye is naturally drawn to the largest color photo on the page where we clearly read "Bush Country" or other pro-President Bush messages.

COMMENTARY

Unawareness

Before reading this editorial, challenge yourself to list the criteria of a transgender person. A transgender person isn't necessarily a transvestite, for transvestites don't necessarily feel they were born as the wrong sex, but do choose to dress as such.

COMMENTARY

Battle state

When political candidates stop in Michigan as much as Sen. John Kerry and President Bush have, it's irresponsible not to go out and see them - both of them. Regardless of which political party you swear allegiance to, it's imperative to see the whole picture going into any election.

COMMENTARY

Uniting folk

The Great Lakes Folk Festival can't be labeled anything other than good. It brings world folk culture to Mid-Michigan.

COMMENTARY

Google database endangers privacy

As Google prepares to go public with an initial stock offering of 25 million shares, some long-held concerns about the company's immense power and questionable policies still float in the air.

COMMENTARY

Terror alert: Gold

After American swimmer Mark Spitz broke seven world records en route to his record seven gold medals at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, he was flown home to America for being Jewish in Germany.

COMMENTARY

To maintain the sanctity of electoral college, Florida must sink

We are a nation in danger. Not from terrorist cells abroad or domestic, but from ourselves. Our political schisms and petty, partisan bickering - once the background noise to respectably-run campaigns - have coagulated together not unlike the T-1000 from "Terminator 2" to create a political rift in our nation so expansive that Evel Knievel himself dare not attempt to jump it on his motor bike. In a time of knee-jerk partisan retort to potshots that were never thrown, we still fail to realize how perilously close America is to forgetting that we all share the same hope for our country, no matter who its leader is.

COMMENTARY

Butting heads

When the MSU Board of Trustees had a padlock secured on their conference room doors last week in Petoskey to protect their key documents, their action was more symbolic of faculty unrest than it was indicative of a request for privacy. From the realignment of the liberal arts college last spring to last weekend's lock-up, the tension between some faculty and MSU administrators has approached a boiling point.

COMMENTARY

Wishful thinking

File sharing, while it might have started out illegally, has the potential to become legal and flourish through network services to universities, and contracts with the reformed Napster. If it can be done within the bounds of the law, file sharing doesn't present a problem. Many people were present for the illegal free-for-all downloading during the beginnings of Internet file sharing.

COMMENTARY

Kicking the habit

Ruined grades left and right, poor sleeping habits and subpar social skills - maybe Internet addiction still is a devastatingly widespread problem and not quite an absolute evil.

COMMENTARY

Infidelity runs rampant in nature

Here's a conundrum - how do you ensure your partner will remain faithful to you? If the answer to that isn't complex enough, consider if this was the follow-up question - how do you convince them to inject him or her with a gene that makes them more faithful? These sorts of outlandish questions - particularly the latter - don't simply come to my mind out of the blue.

COMMENTARY

Trustees' 'secrecy' invites speculation, distrust of 'U'

MSU is a public institution, not the private fiefdom of the MSU Board of Trustees. No weight of padlocks can obscure the pattern of secrecy and dissimulation that has characterized recent board actions, from their furtive handling of the potentially disastrous medical school move - to their inexplicable refusal to conduct a presidential search. The more secrecy that surrounds their deliberation of large policy matters for which they are answerable to the faculty and staff, students and the people of Michigan - the more the trustees invite the unavoidable conclusion that they have something to hide.

COMMENTARY

Legacy woes

In Monday's edition of The Contradiction Times, it was reported President George W. Bush is taking a hard line against the tradition of legacy in public universities.