Category: Robert Beckhusen
In India, it can be considered bad manners to refuse food. You’re expected to have your fill. You should finish your plate, otherwise you may be thought inconsiderate.
Now, I’ve yet to go to India (a problem I’m trying to correct), but Saturday was the first time I’ve experienced Diwali, and the remarkable cuisine seemed to have stuck with most of the uninitiated. I certainly didn’t run into any problems as my hosts at the Indian Students Association saw to it that I went back for seconds.
The great British writer and documentarian Jonathan Meades defined ‘kitsch’ as the gulf between a professed intended sentiment and the bloated expression of that sentiment.
We should think about this closely as we consider a war memorial on university grounds for those who have died in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The proposal to build a statue honoring veterans — reported by Amanda Givens in Wednesday’s issue of The University Star — was put forward by veteran and student Jude Prather, who works as a veteran liaison for ASG. Prather made a good case for it.
In the past two months, three faculty members at San Diego-Area Southwestern College were banned from campus after they strayed from a “free speech patio” during a protest against school policies. A student reporter at James Madison University was charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct after attempting to interview students in a residence hall.
A student resident at the University of Albany was forced to remove a sign from his door satirizing campus food because it was “defacing school property.”
Last week, I had the horror of witnessing a guest speaker on campus — though I agreed with much of what he said –—talk nonsense to the applause of credulous students. But I should begin with some background.
Brian Cuban, who spoke Oct. 21, has been waging a minor but dedicated campaign since 2008 against Facebook. The company decided to allow Holocaust denial groups to stay on the Web site after complaints against speech that denigrates ethnic and religious groups.
Some thoughts on the City Council debate Monday.
I was glad support for building a community college found a strong consensus. The combination of low land costs and rapid population growth has had Austin Community College eying San Marcos for years. It hasn’t happened, partly because of opposition within San Marcos but also by a wounding forgery scandal that sank one of ACC’s petition drives. It was enough for State Rep. Patrick Rose to call it a “traumatic experience for San Marcos” in the June 11, 2006 issue of the San Marcos Daily Record.
Sunday was National Coming Out Day, coinciding with a major equality march in Washington, D.C. and capping off a week of street activism by gay activists including those here at Texas State.
In the spirit of this, I want readers to know I’m a gay man. I’m out to my friends, family and everyone who needs to know. But I don’t want to write about it much because I don’t want to be a “gay writer” or the token gay columnist for this newspaper. It’s just another part of my identity.
I recently had the chance to visit the “Tejanos in Texas” exhibit. As a hobby student of Texas history, I found the story of scout, preacher and gunslinger Jose Policarpio Rodriguez fascinating in the way it dispelled some of our national origin myths.
I can’t help but see the emphasis on graffiti removal by the “Keep San Marcos Beautiful” campaign to be a bit unimaginative.
A proposed amendment to write up kids caught with graffiti toolsgiven when and where the perpetrator is caught, seems misplaced given the environment in which we live.
Sports in general are not interesting to me, and football is barely an exception.
Even as a nonbeliever, I break sides with fellow secularists on small matters.
School prayer, for instance, (or the more palatable “silent reflection”) does not bother me. A moment of the day to think quietly in peace, without coercion of any kind, letting your troubles go absent, is a moment I could get behind.
