A federal failure

Mike Morefield
Columnist

The United States has suffered the greatest natural disaster in its history, and the federal government failed the one group of people they have been instituted to protect by the social contract - Americans. After watching people clinging to their roofs for days and sitting in a conference center without being delivered water, "give me your poor, your tired, your hungry" just doesn't ring as true. [Read article]

Cross the border from Nogales, Ariz., to Nogales, Mexico, and you will notice both countries are separated by stark economic disparities - a contrast between the rule of law and presence of infrastructure in Arizona and corruption and a lack of services in Mexico.

This dichotomy is responsible for the influx of undocumented immigrants into our country, yet our leaders seem to miss this point. Two points of focus must be recognized: The U.S. needs access to cheap, foreign labor, and at the same time the solution to the immigration problem lies in the economic development of Mexico. [Read article]

The fountians (on Alumni Plaza) are aesthetically pleasing, but they are not a very wise use of water in the desert where conservation is such a high priority.

I wish that students would be more exposed to foreign countries' cultures. Students here are open-minded because there is so much offered to them, but I wish there was more. [Read article]

True sacrifice would be higher gas prices

I could not agree more with Scott Patterson's column about the benefits of the rising cost of gas ("Costly gas could save environment"). However, I feel there are better reasons to have high gas prices.

If the last five years have shown anything, it is a complete lack of both accountability and sacrifice in the United States today. We have a war where the only Americans sacrificing are those who are killed or wounded and the families of these people. For everyone else, the cliché is "support our troops." Furthermore, by consuming more gas than any other country on Earth, we are also helping to fund the very terrorists that the war on terror is supposed to fight. [Read article]