A Shakespearean tragedy in the making

[Published in NDSU's "The Spectrum" on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009, in the Opinion section – can be found on its official website here.]

In both issues last week, one of our writers here at The Spectrum didn’t accomplish a whole lot with his time and energy other than bashing Student Government for pretty much no discernable reason at all. That writer was me.

For years and years now, Student Government and The Spectrum have more or less not gotten along very well. Arriving at NDSU was like walking right into the middle of “Romeo and Juliet.” The Montagues and Capulets have already been fighting for quite a while, due to things that happened long ago, and there really seems to be no end in sight.

Part of this is due to the very nature of media and government, two entities that really have no business sharing an ice cream sundae romantically at the local diner. But part of it isn’t. A lot of us aren’t even sure where any of it is coming from. None of this is doing anybody at all any good.

Me bashing Student Government doesn’t help The Spectrum any, and Student Government members having hostility for the campus newspaper just ends up resulting in a battle of wills when they want to publish an article. But most importantly, it doesn’t help the students. None of this helps them one bit.

There’s no question that I, myself, have done nothing but further this problem; however, I’m a product of this ongoing gang war, not the cause of it. I’m just the latest person to fall into the unofficial tradition passed down by all our predecessors. People on both sides are to blame. I simply unfortunately happen to have a bigger mouth than most and simply made public what’s already being said behind closed doors.

I think all of this is unproductive and unhelpful, and I hope that it can stop. Sure, if Student Government were involved with a massive cover-up of extra terrestrials that crash-landed on campus, The Spectrum would absolutely be the very first to call them out on it. (As long as it happened just before a Tuesday or Friday.)

But regarding things that are actually happening on campus and aren’t part of an imaginary metaphor involving alien spaceships, I don’t see any reason why Student Government and The Spectrum couldn’t try to get along better. We both have the same ultimate common goal: publicly representing NDSU’s students and making our campus a better place to live and learn.

Maybe it’s too much to ask, completely impossible, and I’m absolutely nuts, but working together as separate groups is something I believe can only help the students.

This isn’t The Spectrum sending a relationship request to Student Government’s Facebook profile. This is not any sort of official apology to or from either party. This is simply my opinion. Just Adam Desautel using the aforementioned big mouth I was blessed/cursed with to tell both The Spectrum and Student Government that maybe it’s time to call a truce, be civil, and actually work together.

This is my way of doing my part to attempt to reconstruct a bridge that was burned down many years ago. Let’s end this pointless poo-flinging before ... well, you know how Romeo and Juliet end up at the end of the play.

State leaders work to improve the nation’s energy efficiency

[Published in NDSU's "The Spectrum" on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 in the News section – can be found on its official website here.]

North Dakota’s plans to become a part of a greater national move towards cleaner, greener energy are becoming clearer and more profound.

State leaders met at the White House on Wednesday, Oct. 28, where they worked towards advancing energy policies that have progressed our nation significantly in the beginning stages of what they hope to be one of our country’s largest industry changes in decades, and possibly even centuries.

In a press release, North Dakota Senator Tim Mathern, one of the 40 state legislators from across the U.S. chosen for the meeting, declared North Dakota as one of the nations leading states in energy-efficient technologies.

“North Dakota and many other states have shown leadership building a cleaner, more energy-efficient future,” Mathern said. “State legislators play a unique role in clean-energy jobs policies. We’re elected representatives of the people, we know the businesses and labor issues in our states, and many of us see federal action as impacting the next generation of innovation and prosperity in America.”

The American Clean Energy and Security Act is what the current debate surrounds. “To create clean energy jobs, achieve energy independence, reduce global warming pollution and transition to a clean energy economy,” is its stated summary.

According to www.opencongress.org, one of many websites that track legislation to inform the public concerning bills’ progress, the bill was passed in the House on June 26, 2009, and is currently awaiting the Senate and Presidential stages.

Creating an energy-efficient future without the need of as many non-renewable energy sources is only a part of the goal. The economic stimulation due to the addition and creation of many jobs is something many are looking forward to.

“Renewable energy projects can create new good paying jobs right here in North Dakota as have coal and oil,” Mathern said.

Student Government’s polling of NDSU students last semester was conducted under a heavy bias

I am publicly calling for a complete retraction by Student Government of the unscientific smoking ban poll conducted last spring, which is now being used to determine whether or not students want a complete ban on all cigarette use on campus.

Their poll does not accurately reflect the student body as a whole, and if I can prove that, then our Student Government is acting and making decisions on biased data and needs to stop.

For them to deny this in the face of proof and refuse to listen for the potential real majority on campus is nothing short of contempt for democracy.

If I wanted to get an accurate opinion of what students at UND think of students at NDSU, I would need to select a random sample of students – typically as large of a random sample as I can reasonably interview.

A truly random selection of students removes most potential bias in a sample that you want to be representative of a group or population.

There’s a wrong way to do it, however. Let’s say I put up advertisements around UND about my study, emailed all of the students, and even announced it at all their hockey games. For a week, I opened an online poll, allowing anyone at UND to vote on it.

I then use this data to conclude what UND thinks of NDSU.

The problem is something that any first-year sociology or psychology student should be able to point out about halfway through my analogy: volunteer bias.

The only people who took part in my survey are students who both knew of my study and actively wanted to participate in it. That is not a random sample, due to volunteer bias.

The people elected themselves to vote, making the sample determine itself, rather than the researcher randomly determining the sample.

Any study conducted with a volunteer bias built into it calls into question the validity (measuring what it is supposed to measure) and reliability (stability over time) of the sample.

Student Government’s poll was conducted exactly in this biased way. Perhaps they should have done research on how to do research.

I know that you think you all did a great job and patted yourselves on the back when you got your “historical record turnout” when 30 percent of the students voted, but I can’t tell you how many people still ask me things like, “there’s going to be a smoking ban? When is the vote going to be?”

Sorry honey, but Student Government says it’s your fault you didn’t know you were supposed to vote.

Student Government, if you truly care about what we think as students, you will throw out your entire skewed agenda you’re pushing, halt the political process that is leading up to an early November passing of legislation that you don’t truthfully know whether the students want or not, and re-poll the students in a fair, accurate, random, unbiased and scientific way.

Start over. Admit your fault and forget about “looking bad.” Do the right thing and call the whole thing off instead of simply sending whoever this “Mike” guy is to our website to make veiled threats about the fact that you can cut off The Spectrum’s funding.

Do your job and represent us ethically as students.

Smoking Ban: Student government is utilizing propaganda

[Published in NDSU's "The Spectrum" on Tuesday, October 27, 2009 in the Opinion section – can be found on its official website here. This article was a "face-off," with the opposing viewpoint found here.]

Student government has been handing out literature to faculty members of NDSU regarding the smoking ban to try and persuade them on how to vote. Just like racist, communist, terrorist, or totalitarian organizations, student government has now joined the propaganda distribution club.

The information they are pushing on teachers is nothing short of political spin, lies, and fluffy descriptive words and phrases. Like this sentence: “The turnout of 3,872 set a historical record for student body elections, far surpassing even past elections for elected student leaders.”

Any idea why that is? Don’t worry if you don’t, because I’m going to tell you. It’s because nobody cares about “elections for elected student leaders.” The only people who care about student government are people who are in student government, and they don’t count. They are comparing their unscientific online poll they conducted to other unscientific polls that were about things that people probably didn’t know about, and wouldn’t have cared about even if they did.

The very next sentence is even worse on the yellow journalism scale. “This overwhelming display of student interest proved to the campus the seriousness of the issue and the definite call for a change.”

The facts: 3,872 students voted at all, 2,408 supported the smoking ban, and 1,465 opposed it, out of a total of around 13,000. A little less than 20 percent is not an “overwhelming display of student interest,” and I don’t consider that to be sufficient cause for removing civil rights for the other 80 percent of the student body.

This is like the House of Representatives producing an advertising campaign to try to convince the Senate on how they should vote. Only that analogy doesn’t really work, because comparing student government to politicians is an insult to politicians. Barely anyone knows what student government’s actual function is, and I’m not even sure they exist.

The pamphlet goes on to talk about secondhand smoke. Want some examples of things it doesn’t say? Secondhand smoke only hurts people indoors. We already ban smoking 50 feet from any building, so to make the argument that since this isn’t enforced enough, we need to ban smoking altogether, is like saying that if too many people are speeding, we should just ban the use of cars.

Scientists estimate Fargo to be windier than the planet Jupiter, and you’re worried about outdoor secondhand smoke? If it’s not about that, then I don’t understand the issue. Actually I do; that was rhetorical.

I think this is Student Government’s “pet project,” something they’re pushing to get passed so they can put something meaningful on their resume to say, “Oh look at me! I was involved in banning the use of tobacco at NDSU!”

I think they’re afraid of this whole thing failing, because then they won’t be able to tout it loudly on their soapbox as an accomplishment to whatever employers actually care that someone was in student government. I think they want to be able to point to this as something that they did that mattered, whether it’s moral or immoral, conducted fairly or not.

Repower North Dakota

[Published in NDSU's "The Spectrum" on Tuesday, October 27, 2009 in the News section – can be found on its official website here.]

As the U.S. Senate continues the debate over the newly introduced Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, a North Dakota branch of Repower America is currently working to push legislation that will provide the state, as well as the entire country, with clean energy and environmentally friendly jobs and technology.

Repower America, which has a local branch office in Downtown Fargo, was introduced to “repower” the United States with wind and solar energy, which they say will “revitalize our national energy infrastructure.” It is a project of the Alliance for Climate Protection, a national non-profit organization started in 2006 by Al Gore, former U.S. Vice President and Nobel recipient. The organization is dedicated to educating citizens on the importance of acting on clean energy legislation.

Eric Mitchell, the North Dakota state director for Repower America, said that their mission can be summed up into three main areas and talking points. “It’s about climate change, national security and jobs.”

Regarding climate change, Mitchell discussed the importance of “lessening the greenhouse gases and CO2’s in the atmosphere.”

“Almost 90 percent of every credible scientist who is walking the planet now will tell you that the climate change is real, it’s happening now, and we are at a point where we really have to make a decision as to what direction we’re going to go on,” Mitchell said.

He also talked about national security and our dependence on foreign oil.

“We’re buying oil from and we’re making friends with countries that use some of that money to give it right back to the terrorists that we have to turn around and fight,” Mitchell said. “It’s a vicious, evil circle, but as long as we are dependent on that foreign source of energy, it’s just a reality of life. We have to do something to lessen that dependency.”

Creating jobs is another thing that Repower America believes will come out of a national shift towards green energy. “These are finally some more manufacturing jobs that you can’t export, jobs that will employ right here in North Dakota, jobs that will employ scientists, and get folks more focused on engineering again.”

Describing specifically where these jobs come from, Mitchell said for solar energy, “someone has to build the solar panels, someone’s got to sell those solar panels, and someone’s got to maintain those solar panels.” For wind, “someone’s got to build, sell, and maintain the turbines as well.”

“This is a whole new industry that’s going to come out of this, and we haven’t had anything like this in this country since the automated systems went into play to build cars,” Mitchell said. “And we could damn straight use some jobs.”

Mitchell holds that the move to clean energy should be thought of as even more than just an investment in our future. “It’s a necessity. I believe the Earth does take care of itself, and it will, but it may take a thousand years, and I don’t think we have a thousand years to wait. We don’t look like we’re going to be building colonies on the moon or in space anytime soon, so for now, we’re stuck here.”

For students wanting to get involved in this issue, Mitchell encourages signing up as a member on their website. Members are informed of the latest events, suggestions on what to do, and prompts on when it is most opportune to send letters to the editor, write letters to Congress, and other forms of action.

To sign up, go to repoweramerica.org/northdakota. Field Organizer Shayna Kurland can be contacted by phone at (402) 306-8564 or by e-mail at shayna.kurland@climateprotect.org.