I’m a registered Democrat. How does that sit with you? I took the time to sit down and read Dennis Gilbert’s column (March 3, “From the right”). Will you do the same for me?
To infer that people in poverty need to be “taught” how to get out of it implies that poor people are inferior to you.
The library is worth funding
Dear Dr. Wood, Dr. Lapping, and the whole USM community:
As you examine ways to cut the budget, please also look for valuable resources to sustain.
One of these resources is the library.
Librarians on all three campuses regularly collaborate with each other and with subject faculty to foster information literacy.
USM’s budget shortfalls are no secret. Maine’s budget deficit of nearly $200 million isn’t either.
As a result of these shortfalls, the students, Mainers, and taxpayers alike suffer.
The Maine economy suffers as people tighten their spending. Twenty-six academic programs are suffering.
Major: Psychology
Year: Freshman
Do you have a favorite class at the moment?
Yes I do — my psychology class (Intro to Psych) with Kenneth Gardiner. It’s a little bit long and a little bit tedious, but it’s psych, and as cliche as it sounds, it’s my major, so I love it.
Pisces
February 19-March 20
Time to switch to light beer. Your mellow demeanor and the upcoming vacation could have you lying low-too much time on the couch paired with March Madness and catching up on Lost could result in a few extra pounds.
This week, try blogging your hopes.
After five years at USM, I have this semester found myself seeing this university in a new light.
Just last week, I was walking across Bedford St. from my office toward class in Payson Smith. The soon-to-be-setting sun caught the iced-over trees in the most perfect way.I wished I had had my camera, it was a school-brochure moment.
In last week’s “From the Right,” Dustin Gilbert advocates the censorship of prisoners and their art. I would like to ask him and you, the reader, a question. Could we imagine a world in which Martin Luther King Jr. or Nelson Mandela had their voices silenced while imprisoned? We would have lost the inspiration of “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” and the education of Mandela.
Believe it or not, you can find conservatism in some pretty strange places. I read Dustin Gilbert’s original letter to the editor very closely.
When I introduced myself in this column, I tried to describe some of the many facets that make up who I am.
A mother and English major, gay and very close to being 45, deep within me beats the very conservative heart of a woman whose oldest brother was a police officer who was shot and later died of his injuries.
Monday March 10
Free Press Budget Meeting – Weekly meeting to assign stories/ 92 Bedford Street, Portland Campus/ 5-6 p.m./ For more information email Sarah Trent at [email protected].
Safe Zone Project Session- Join us to learn more about the LGBTQ community at USM/ 10-11:30 a.
I’m a registered Republican. How’s that sit with you? My guess is that it just made at least one person turn to the next page. So much for being open-minded.
To be completely honest, I am a compassionate conservative, which means I’m a person who believes poverty is a top priority and those in it should be taught how to get out of it.
I am writing in response to Dustin Gilbert’s “From the Right” column in the March 3, issue of The Free Press, entitled, “Manning gave up his freedom.” Gilbert’s rant is but the latest in a long and tiring series of simplistic and uninformed right-wing written attacks on political prisoner Tom Manning, his supporters, and the organizers of his art exhibit, “Can’t Jail the Spirit.
So you were born in Syria? What was it like growing up there?
Well, in the old days of Syria when it was not crowded and chaotic in terms of its politics and regional tensions, the people were quite involved with their lives. There was quite a deal of excitement about the future of the country, especially in the 1950s.
Change. Change is good; change is hard.
I am not a person who does well with change.
You wouldn’t guess it – I somehow managed the move from high school in Minnesota to college here, 1500 miles away.
I dealt with the even larger leap across the dateline when I spent a semester living in tomorrow, a.
February 13, 2008
Dear Dr. Wood, Dr. Lapping, and the entire USM Community,
I’m a graduate student in the American & New England Studies program here at USM, as well as a research assistant for Dr. Donna Cassidy and Dr. Ardis Cameron. It has come to my attention that several programs have been put on a “list” of programs that might be cut from USM’s offerings.
I’ve attended USM since the Spring of 2006 and have picked up the Free Press on many more than one occasion while on the Portland campus. Before I turn a page in the Free Press I know which political party’s agenda and talking points I will read about in the opinion/perspective section.
If an Iraq war veteran planned and executed bombings and bank robberies, then murdered a USM professor and was charged, prosecuted, and sentenced to a term of x number of years resulting in life in prison, would you want his name and story to be glorified in police stations?
How about his artwork?
What if the artwork showed that he truly was a thoughtful man and the lives he took were because of unjust or unfair doings to himself and his peers? I say absolutely not-with an exclamation point.
“Do you want to know what YOUR child said to me today, while you were at school?!”
There are no more dreaded words to me then these.
Bring on the analytical papers, the mumps epidemic, group projects, and even the rapidly approaching 45 and I can handle it; but when my partner meets me with those words at the door.
My Fellow Students:
My American Political Thought class recently discussed the labor struggles of the 1880s and the large labor unions that came out of them. During our current financial crisis at USM, unions such as this have taken great lengths to ensure that no tenured or tenure-track faculty will be laid off as the administration tries to find money to cut from the budget over the next few years.
What do you like most about teaching?
I really love it when you’re in a classroom and it just comes alive, and I love it when a student who’s been struggling has a breakthrough, like in a workshop situation and everybody sees it, or when a student writes to the next best level.
Biology
Sophomore
What do you think of your major?
Technically I’m a bio major, but that’s not what I want to be. I want to get into the nursing program, but that’s kind of impossible. I’m doing some bio and some nursing classes.
What’s the best environment to do homework in?
Anywhere really, except if it’s really really loud.
Listening to Bill Clinton speak last Thursday and sitting in on part of the Student Senate meeting on Friday, I remembered why I avoid politics and political discussions at all costs. First, while I do have strong beliefs on many subjects, I am not always comfortable or knowledgeable enough to defend them.
Spring semester is here, and it has happened again: the topic of non-traditional, older students arose, framed by failure. It doesn’t happen in every class, but it happens enough that it has gotten on my last nerve. I am curious if anyone has looked at the withdrawal rate for older students and compared it to those of our younger counterparts.
Interesting that the “discussion” of sex education (“Panel questions abstinence-only sex education,” Feb. 11) only included views from one side of the issue. As a health care provider in rural Maine who sees the effects of children being provided all the contraception they may need, it saddens me that adults will fight for parents to be excluded in this aspect of children’s lives.
In your article on Adam Gopnik’s talk at the Holiday Inn By The Bay, which I did attend, there is a GLARING error about which Osher donates to the Osher Map Library. It is Dr. Harold Osher, not his brother Bernard, who is the big donor there. I believe he has donated over $15 million to USM, and this error should be rectified as clearly as possible.