Publications

JESSICA STANTON

Maybe it's time to give up on rebuilding New Orleans

(Published in The Daily Lobo, September 2007)

Many people have been moved by the recent problems the city of New Orleans is still facing two years after Hurricane Katrina hit the area. After reading yesterday’s article, I was moved as well, but in a different direction.

It occurred to me that the government and other groups have spend very large amounts of money extremely unorganized attempts to fix the city, and still much of the city remains in ruins. My best friend has lived in New Orleans her entire life, and since the hurricane, she’s been unable to get an apartment. Since there are few places to choose from, there are ridiculously long waiting lists.

I was in the city several months ago, and while the tourist areas are active and beautiful, the rest of the city is not. It is deserted and desolate and dangerous.

I feel sorry for the people who lost their families, friends, homes, and maybe even their identities, but it does not seem that any amount of money is going to fix these things.

Maybe it is time to give up on New Orleans.

Great nations have faced destruction and never recovered, and the same thing is happening to New Orleans. It would be sad to have such a historic and beautiful city fade away from the map, but perhaps it is going to cost more money than it is worth to save it. New Orleans as it exists now might just be the way it stays.

Brian Schwaner pointed out that many of New Orleans’ residents wonder how the government can spend so much money on the war, and forget about them. I am not by any means for the war in Iraq, but that is how the government works right now. The war is more important to the people in charge than rebuilding a city that has been lost for two years.

Nothing in New Orleans has returned to how it was previously, but for those who do live there, they are living. It is time to move on. There is no one to come to the rescue of this almost forgotten city.

Let's move on from the flag incident

(Published in the Daily Lobo, October 5, 2007)

I am so tired of reading about the flag incident from last month. We all know that Peter Lynch should not have torn the Mexican flag. An article in Thursday's Daily Lobo quotes him as saying that. So, let's move on.

As far as charging him with a hate crime, I find the idea ridiculous. If Lynch posted racist comments on his MySpace Web page, so what? It's his. He can write whatever he wants there. He can have any opinion he wants and post it there. MySpace isn't going to stop him. Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion, no matter how misinformed or uneducated it is, and if Lynch feels that way, then that is his right. If he does feel that way, I doubt he is the only person on campus who does.

The issue here should be that El Centro de la Raza flew a Mexican flag without a U.S. flag nearby. If we are going to prosecute Lynch for hate crimes, then I say we also prosecute El Centro for disobeying U.S. law.

I guess I fail to see how tearing a flag is a hate crime. People burn the U.S. flag, and no one does anything about it, because we are all so concerned about our freedom of speech and expression. Again, since the flag did not belong to Lynch, he should not have torn it. So maybe next time, he can buy his own flag and do whatever he wants with it.

Now let's move on to topics of real importance.

UNM should invest in lights if student safety is a priority

(Published in the Daily Lobo, November 20, 2007)

When I leave my evening classes, it is completely dark outside, and there are almost no bright lights around the main walkways. I don't feel safe at night when I am on campus.

Recently, money was spent to install huge lights on Johnson Field, and they are wonderful. But why were they only installed on the field? This time of year, it is dark even earlier, so the early evening classes are faced with this same challenge.

Walking to the bus stop or a parking lot becomes an exercise in caution. Student safety on campus should be the main priority of those concerned, but it does not seem as though it is. The few on-campus parking lots are very dark as well, making it dangerous and intimidating to walk alone at night.

While we are paying tens of thousands of dollars to administrators and school officials, they have probably never walked across the campus alone and in the dark. A $20 tuition surcharge for each student would supply more than enough money to mount enough lights to make students feel safer. It would be a worthwhile investment.