I am this wonderful lady’s aunt. I wish I had time to tell you 1/100th of what Kathy has done to help others, me included. I don’t know of anyone who has come in contact with her that did not benefit in some way.

Her sister, Jamie Bachman, my niece as well, is the mother of an Autistic son. She is an encyclopedia of knowledge on this subject and has helped so many parents that didn’t know where to turn. Kathy and Jamie started an annual walk for Autism which is very successful. I could go on and on.

It doesn’t matter what you need or what time you need it…..Kathy Kelly is there. My heart swells with pride when I see one of these girls recognized for their accomplishments for they are truely deserving.

They say that children live what they learn, well, they saw their father do this all their lives. He would give you his last dollar along with the shirt off his back, he was a great guy. Like Daddy like daughters.

A therapy dog is there for other peoples benefit, not its handlers, and in most cases requires certification from a therapy dog program to accompany its handler as well as permission from the place the dog is to accompany its owner.

Some things are right, including the fact as service dog requires about 2 years of training to be able to do its job.

If you don’t give a person a fair shake in life, how can you expect them to succeed? A person convicted of a crime clearly did something bad, but how many of us have done things that we never got caught for, large or small. None of us knows the circumstances of a person that gets in trouble, so who are we to judge.

I am now more aware that trying to be the peacemaker, and hoping for a resolution that would please all partners. If I believed that anyone walking by me smoking were dying from catching a whiff of the smoke I would be more open to those facts. It really doesn’t matter now but as a smoker for years and being a nonsmoker for years I would want my choice whether I want to smoke on campus. I wonder how all of this plays out with where the taxes are going.

Voting NO on Prop B is the only smart thing to do.

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Almost your Grandparents – Karl and Joan Cunningham

So you feel you need protection from the lung cancer you might get after twenty-five million years of walking through ten doorway crowds of smokers every day for that long? What about the protection for those smoking students who are forced off campus at night into unsafe neighborhoods to smoke? Think it’ll take 25,000,000 years for one of them to get mugged?

Oh, of course. You’ll say they simply have the choice not to go. But then again, a few seconds later, you’ll go back to ranting about them being hopeless drug addicts, right?

– MJM

I believe the smoking bans are a form of discrimination against us as contributing smoking Americans. Response: Smokefree laws are not a form of discrimination. In order to be discriminated you have to possess certain protected rights that are being violated. Smokers are not a protected class. Smokefree policies are implemented to protect people from the carcinogens that smokers produce and spread indiscriminately to those around them.

Freedom of choice should lead more to a compromise between the two groups than sending the smokers underground like drug addicts. Response: Most smokers ARE DRUG ADDICTS. Why do you think anyone should compromise their health and safety in order for you to be able to satisfy your addiction to nicotine?

In a perfect world cigarettes would never have been invented, but the fact is that it is a legal product. Response: It is legal, but is it safe?

I fully agree that such places should be provided, AND agree that it can be upsetting to some nonsmokers if they are under such a a covered area and people are smoking. BUT… I do *not* think you should be giving credence to the concept that, even in such conditions, smokers are “harming non smoking students and faculty.”

I’ve never looked into such “covered patio smoke exposure,” but to give you an idea how people’s fears are unreasonably magnified, I’ll share some analysis I did about fears over walking through “clouds of smokers” at doorways on campuses. Briefly, using the EPA Report figures as a base and applying approximate corrections for intensities and durations of exposure, it would take walking through such clouds of smokers TEN TIMES A DAY for roughly twenty-five million years on the average to produce a single lung cancer. And yet you’ll have students who will literally walk around to the other side of a building, or perhaps even cross a street, in order to avoid a single such “cloud” out of concern for their health.

The ideal solution, and one which will never be accepted by Antismokers, is to provide a few comfortable and separately ventilated indoor areas for smokers and their friends to relax and socialize. Most of the “problems” with outdoor campus smoking would disappear. Why won’t you see such a thing? Simple: it doesn’t fit with the program of treating the students like lab rats to be negatively conditioned into “proper” behavior.

Rachel your point about the survey bias is very true: everything from the wording of the questions to the places where the survey was pushed to the degree of organization by paid staffers who were involved and by the campus’s Health Dept. affect the percentages.

I would suggest that you Google “V.Gen5H” and read, print out, and share “The Lies Behind The Smoking Bans” (It’s the “Health Arguments” link at the top.) that you’ll find there. Students and staff on other campuses have fought and are fighting these bans and you can too.

Michael J. McFadden,
Author of “Dissecting Antismokers’ Brains”

This is why I won’t give interviews to the Griffon news. Seriously, get with the program.

Frankly, I don’t know if Sister is being disingenuous or if she’s deluding herself as to Moses Young’s guilt. I was a friend of Jimmy Schneider. I attended every hearing, the trial, and Mr. Young’s execution. The State was far kinder and humane to Moses Young than he ever was to his victims.

As far as traditions that already exist at Western – The homecoming bonfire is a great tradition that lasts a total of one day of the fall sports season. The NWMSU game is a great rivalry, and one that students look forward to, however it is also just one football game. These rally towels offer a united way for students to join together as a fan base at ALL sporting events, not simply two events of the fall season. Our student section at sporting events is growing, but can always be improved. We as SGA officials felt that the towels were a big hit last year, and offer a fun, inclusive way that we as Griffon sports fans can show our support and help create an awesome gameday atmosphere, whether it is for volleyball, basketball, soccer, or football.

I would also be interested to know how many students were polled regarding the quality of the towels, as the article states that “most feel that the quality is very poor.” I have heard feedback that is quite the opposite of your claim. I’m guessing it’s a safe bet that of the 6,000 students you are attempting to defend, you did not question “most”of them for their opinion.

In all, the idea is to encourage students to support MWSU and get involved, be it the arts, professional organizations, gree life, or athletics. It just so happens that athletics are a venue that reach a large base of our students. The idea isn’t to get students to the events and then sit there in silence. The towels, t-shirts, themes for games (Black out, Gold out, etc.) are, collectively, ways to unite our fanbase and create a great atmosphere that shows visiting schools why “It’s a great day to be a Griffon!”

MRH

If one so wishes to have a direct vote and say, there are still senate seats open. Students are encouraged to join.

PS. Under God was added in the 50′s to scare people into hating the “Godless” communists. E Pluribus Unum

All I got to say is corperate greed. If only our employers could see how this is efecting our insurance.

I was not saying that the whole department is like this… they clearly are not. My point was that there are a few people who acted like this, and still do. I see several people more concentrated on themselves than the department.

Now, with the whole people being mad at me over me getting a role… that was one person and it didn’t last long. It was just a side example I wanted to use.

And with me stereo-analyzing my colleagues, that was so not my intention. I do not see everyone doing this. If I think you act like this, I will and have told you.

And the last point you made that I want to address is saying that I am doing this for attention. If you know ANYTHING about me, you would know that I don’t react well to people calling me out or bringing me down…. so knowing that this article would result in some of that, I did NOT do it for any selfish reasons. I’m just sick of dealing with bad relationships between people in shows. It almost made me quit a show last semester.

This article was not meant to call anyone out, so I did not want to bring up certain people or the situations that inspired me to write this up.

Once again, I respect you and your opinion… I just wanted to put my side into it.

I also can definitely understand your annoyance. That was a risk I knew I was taking while writing it.

[sic] means that the headline was not tampered with. The Griffon News does not alter letters to the editor for grammar, spelling or punctuation. “Sitting the Record Straight” was the headline indicated in the letter, which is why it was left for print and online.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sic

I don’t think I have ever heard a more absurd analogy. The neither the terrorists or any average citizen is allowed to have the bombs.

The out rite ban on felons being able to have firearms started in 1968 and was all because of one incident. Every year new laws are passed making it easier for the average person to be convicted of a felony. If these so called felons are so dangerous why are they allowed out of prison? Why not ban all felons from driving cars they kill more people then guns? Ban them from owning any sharp instruments not even a pencil and make them ride around strapped to a wheelchair so they cannot punch or kick anyone. Like it or not most felons go to work, pay taxes, and have family responsibilities like everyone else. The ban on felons being able to vote and own firearms is just another unconstitutional infringement.

griifion news should do a story on call mary buckler she know how to get hold of me or email me mary number is 271-4417

I think you are tilting your hand when you protest too much. People may think you feel guilty.

As I have already explained on another opinion piece, the ban is an issue that is being brought up by the administration, NOT by SGA. A proposal came up in SGA to write up a version to suggest to the administration, as it will be pretty much our only chance to get any input. Maybe you should stop getting your information from other staff members, as it has failed you time and time again. It is the administration that does not care that the students voted down the bill. They will get lower insurance premiums if we are smoke-free, and it looks better, so they are going through this regardless of what the students want.

So, there is not going to be a vote, because this has nothing to do with SGA, and the administration does not care what the students think.

The fact is, senators have spent hours over several months now looking over our budget, comparing it to other schools, and doing all of the same things with fees, then discussing it from one side to the other. We can never ask this of students, we cannot say, “Hey, spend 10 hours over the next 3 months going over these spreadsheets while discussing it continually with other students, then come back and vote.” This is why the senate vote came about, because we knew the numbers, because we are looking out for everyone and not just ourselves, and because we believe that most students will not do either.

I am, though, for a student vote. With information provided and a specific issue, I feel hat the students have the right to decide what they want, and the right to give up that decision to others. However, student participation in this entire process has been absolutely pathetic. If you stand for anything, let your senators know! Go to senate or committee meetings, e mail the senators or committee chairs, stop in to the office and chat with the officers during any of their 20 office hours a week, come to the forums that we set up!

So far, I have seen substantially more not caring than disapproval of anything that senate has done in my year as a senator, which has saddened me. It takes hardly any effort to let us know what you think, yet we have still only gotten the opinions of the Griffon News staff and of students that we have sought out specifically. There have been too many times where the Griffon News reporter was the only person in the gallery. This is your government, these are your senators, and you should make use of us just like any resource available to you at Missouri Western.

I know that you think yellow journalism gets readers, but criminalizing the SGA for something that the administration is doing only makes you look like an idiot when everyone finds out, which they will, and discredits the paper (if it has any credit left, which I question weekly).

Let us look a a quote from another piece published by the Griffon News in November of 2011, “Life is a game about you, not the other players. You can’t change the decisions other people will make, only your own. Why would you want to change their decisions? You’re not learning anything from it and neither are they.” Now, think about this: the administration will change the decisions that you make if they ban smoking on campus, your choice becomes to do it on the sly and risk a fine (going out of your way to hide or out to your car), quit smoking, or go for a significant portion of the day. Now, this quote was taken from an article that was bashing Occupiers for trying to protest for better conditions (money out of politics that limits the people’s voices, working and wage laws, foreclosures, etc.), but the quote says that we should not fight for what we believe in, just do something ourselves, and allow policies to be passed down upon us.

If this was a student government bill, students could change it, they did in fact. However it is not, and the only way to change it is to protest the administration’s move, which the Griffon News’ article strongly declares a negative act. “Traditional students just lack an understanding of how the real world operates.” In the real world, governments are putting smoking bans in place.

Once again, students have failed to see the hand of the administration at work, and have piled the blame onto those who have no actual say. Come on guys, wake up.

As chair for the Campus Advancement Committee, I have to say that I do feel like the money that students pay should be fully used.  However, I don’t feel that Beyers and Samenus are in the right by saying that SGA is the reason for the lack of spending. Several senators have gone out into the campus and have asked students face to face what they would like to see improved on campus and we get the same response each time,”I don’t know” this discussion is a two-way street, as senators, we can only do so much.

I personally have sat down with Kelsey and Cody and have listened to their ideas for if they are elected.  Generally, they have good ideas for improving campus and student involvement.  However, some of their ideas are not unrealistic, but have been tried by past or the current senate.  Samenus’ idea about improving parking, obviously that is an issue that is on campus and that is something that the current senate has looked into.  The problem isn’t that there is not enough parking, I have driven around campus and there are plenty of spots.  The “issue” is that people don’t like having to park far away from their destination.  And a lot of it is simply that they don’t get to park right next to the building.  The majority of my classes are in Popplewell Hall and there have been times that I have had to park clear down at the end of the parking lot down by Potter Hall.  That is just the nature of the beast.  I believe that whether or not one improves parking, there will always be a group that thinks that parking on campus needs to be improved.

Let’s talk about the promise of a full senate.  They say that it is Jacob Scott that can’t get a full senate, when in reality, Scott has really nothing to do with it.  Scott has been out in campus getting students to try to get involved with SGA.  The current session has also been out trying to get students involved with the organization.  The problem comes in that because of past sessions of senate that have created this negative view that we have that students don’t want to be involved with the senate.  This year, we have been rebuilding the view students have of SGA, we have close to a full senate now, and we have senators, an executive board, and a president who truly care about improving the campus and campus life.

Speaking about our president, let me just touch base on that.  Alison Norris is probably one of the hardest workers I know.  She is in her office at least forty hours a week, serves on at least a dozen committees, takes the hit anytime something goes wrong with the student body, and on top of that is the fact that she is a full time student trying to make sure she graduates in May.  Yes, she has a wedding coming up so she needs to plan, and so she may do a little while in her office, but what people don’t understand is that even if she is working on that, she spends little time on because she has so much more that she has to do.  If she is working on it, she has no problem stopping work on it to listen to a student who wants to talk to her about an issue that they may have.  My personal opinion is that if you have to stoop to attacking the current president who is NOT running for reelection, do you really deserve to be president?  That is my personal opinion, I know that it happens all the time.  For example, Obama still attacks George W. Bush in some of his speeches.

I think this response solely comes down to this, actions speak louder than words.  Beyers and Samenus have never served as a senator nor have they been to a senate meeting before.  In the SGA Constitution, there is nothing that says that if they don’t stick to their words, that we can impeach them.  They talk about change, but is it change for the better or for worse.  They can talk the talk, but can they walk the walk?

Students: you pay a fee to SGA every semester. What does it go to? New speakers and spotlights used for events across campus, televisions, a refrigerator, and tables and chairs for a new lounge in Potter Hall that all students can enjoy, money for students to go to conferences, workshops, and competitions (we just sent several theater students to a major festival that MWSU has not been invited to in 25 years!), the recycling program, and the student success seminars that help students prepare resumes, develop study and career skills, and become more employable. Oh yes, and that was just this year.

We are also working on improved campus lighting, a bus transportation system to alleviate parking and connect students with shopping and hot spots in town, forums for students to pitch ideas, having a regular clean-up system for our campus both inside and out, doing another murals for minds project at a treatment center for troubled young men, having a carnival/fun day as part of SGA Week in April, having new surveys for student interests, building an outside patio area for Wilson students,replacing broken chairs and tables in Wilson, and replacing several classroom’s chairs in Popplewell and Wilson. This last project is going to be a significant part of this year’s budget if it passes, and if these candidates actually knew about it, they would understand that we are using a good deal of money on something that students sit in for hours every day. But they do not, because they do not come to either Senate or committee meetings.

In effect, they have no clue. Senate has 18 seats filled, which is good because it leaves room for senators to join mid-semester. There are 16 on the ballot, which is perfect for the start of the new year. If we had a full senate right out, new senators would not be able to join, and might leave while waiting for an open seat. It is not as if we only have 8 senators or something! Oh, and if these two people were actually senators (have attended any three meetings and applied, went through the process) we would have a full senate of 20 individuals.

Alison maintains office hours. The point of this is so that she can be avaliable to the students who can drop in any of those 20 hours a week. Much of the Executive Board’s time is actually taken up on the evenings and on weekends with administrative meetings, faculty senate, committees such as the one that deals with general education courses, etc. Because this takes up so much of their time, they are allowed that extra time during the day when they are not with students to do things that they would normally be doing on evenings and weekends that they are instead working with the university’s administration. This is just another example of how this young man does not understand how SGA works.

I do not know either of these individuals, which is a major problem because I am a very involved senator. If they want so much change, especially with spending, why have they not attended a meeting of the Campus Advancement Committee, which deals with exactly that and formulates bills to benefit the students? I see no evidence of their claims, if they want to change anything on our campus, I need to know how they plan to do it with no experience or knowledge of the system.

I am not against any real effort by anyone to get involved on campus, anyone who wants to make a difference is A-okay in my book. However, you do not start at the top when you are approaching something new, I would never decide that I wanted to learn to ride a unicycle and therefor run off to a circus school to immediately try it on a high wire, that would just be stupid. In the same way, it would be folly for someone, however good their intentions may be, to not attend any senate or committee meetings and then run for president with the claim that their lack of any knowledge or experience would be a benefit. I would fall straight off of that high wire, and so will anyone who does not have the experience to handle the situation.

If you want to change things on campus, we meet every Monday, next week we will have senate and then a short committee meeting afterward to get us back on the rotation after President’s Day. I invite you to join us with your ideas, and we can teach you what to do about them.

A “B” is not a high benchmark, it is between average and great. Smith feels 2.5 was a fine benchmark, but this is surly at least in part because he did not meet the qualifications for a promotion. Student government is great, and having the ability to go good on campus is wonderful. However, this is now what will tag along with you for the rest of your life, your transcripts will.

“It should be very rare that adjunct faculty are teaching the same amount of courses as their full-time counterparts, Daffron said.: It should be… but I see it here all of the time, so it is clearly not rare by any means. Is it alright that we are exploiting professionals, the people who are responsible for some part of our education? No!

Molloy admits that this job takes up most of his weekends. If this man (or any other adjunct with this schedule) has a wife and children, that is not acceptable. They are working but can neither support their family on that wage nor can they spend an adequate amount of quality time with their family.

If we are talking about young, fresh-out-of-grad school professionals without families or spouses, it does not make a difference. They are never going to end up with a spouse and children if they cannot invest the time into a relationship!

“If the students are unhappy about it, that’s when we have to be concerned,” Molloy said. “If they feel that they are not getting as quality of education or feel they are being shortchanged, then that’s a legitimate concern.”

So exploiting the labor force does not matter unless the students are upset about it, apparently.

Send this to Marian. I don’t need to ask if all is well!!!

Jacob Scott
Executive Vice President, SGA
Presiding Officer, Student Senate