MISSING THE CONVOCATION
The renaming of the Convocation Center to the Bank United Center reeks of bad politics and another example of corporate influence. The students here at the University of Miami take a sense of pride in having their own arena on campus. To bring in a corporate sponsor to rename it is a slap in the face to the many generous sponsors who helped fund the building of the Convocation Center. Before we know it, the Orange Bowl will soon be Insert-Big-Corporation-Name-Here Stadium if the price is right. President Shalala seems care less about what name is on the front of arena, as long as the money keeps flowing in. Students, faculty and University donors should protest the renaming of the Convocation Center.
Tyler Simmons
Student
ESPN MESSES UP?
Don’t get me wrong. I love ESPN. I’ve got SportsCenter on behind me while I write this.
But c’mon? Can they sink much lower in Bristol? I know this ain’t their usual thing, but to try and make something out of a goofy song that’s two years old? Please.
Putting aside the issues of white editorial staffs not understanding today’s black youth, why would they run something two years old just when it looked like the ‘Canes were on the bubble of another national championship?
They’ve even got a stupid poll asking if the team’s conduct is worse, same or better-in that order.
All that song was was an inside joke that got turned into a smear. What guys don’t make comments about women when they’re in college? Not at that level, necessarily, but listen to any explicit-lyrics rap song about women since NWA was big and you’ll hear as bad or worse.
Heck, I’d bet that most of you reading this, if male, can recall a time or two in their lives when they’ve made a comment about women that they’d say to their guy friends and not to a female-the same guys that would break someone’s jaw if they heard the same comments about their wife, daughter or mother.
I know plenty of women that say things along the same lines, too-not in the same way, of course, but the messages conveyed are similar.
That’s what this is here. It wasn’t broadcast or anything. If you listened to it online you already knew it was loaded with misogynistic explicatives, but so was Shakespeare, just in a more formal tongue.
Oh, and it’s not possible that there’s a little bravado going on here? A little college-sports kleos about prowess with women? I don’t know, of course, but I could easily see it happening. And either way, it’s none of my damned business who knocks boots with whom.
Look, I’m not making any excuses for anyone, either. Sure there’s poor taste involved here, and letting it get out is just dumb. But just running it, at least on a national level, is ridiculous.
So I say ESPN has just as big a place in this as the fools who let it get out. Who’s the bigger culprit-the one who makes the stupid thing or the one who makes sure that millions of people go searching the Internet to hear it? Oh, wait, maybe it’s me for trying to puff out my own chest about it.
See, all of us fall victim to poor taste from time to time.
Ryan Deering
Student
TROUBLED COMMUTERS
I get up at 4:45 a.m. to take the Tri-rail and Metrorail to UM each day. The earliest Tri-rail train is supposed to arrive at 5:47 a.m. and it never arrives at any of the 18 stations on time. Students and other commuters have put up with the inefficiency of Tri-rail for much too long (they claim the system is always “under construction”). It is time to make people aware of the shabby services that this company provides. Tri-rail needs some criticism from the media. I am desperately hoping this awakens them to the concerns of their neglected customers.
One may think that I am overly irate for just a few minor kinks in the Tri-rail system, but there is more to the story. Not only are Tri-rail trains always late, but they also never have answers to customer queries and quite more often than I would have liked, they leave notices onboard their trains telling their customers to “seek alternative means of transportation.”
On Friday, Nov. 18, the Tri-rail’s recent “I won’t be running” bulletin was issued and, much to my dismay, this would be during the week of finals. Frequent users of the Tri-rail systems buy monthly passes and it isn’t surprising that Tri-rail will not be compensating those who have to find their magical “alternative means of transportation.”
A fellow commuter on the train said that all the ill-serviced commuters in the Tri-rail system should do something about this-here is what I’ve decided to do about the problem: send a letter to your paper.
“Ah idaat ting dat Tri-rail!”
Jamaican dialect for: It’s really unfair what the Tri-rail system is doing to its commuters.
Toni Jackson
Student