Thursday, September 18, 2008

What's playing on campus? 

It's not only religious liberals that somehow find it time to talk politics. Our own Women's Center just happened to notice hey! there's an election this year!
It seems timely and logical to address issues of public policy and politics during a presidential election year. Consequently, the Women�s Center chose this topic for the Fall 2008 theme for Women on Wednesday, a signature noon-hour lecture series with an 18-year history at SCSU. As in the past, this series seeks to address the issues that students, faculty and staff have identified as important and of interest to them. These issues include many areas of public policy that affect the lives of women, as well as men and children, on a daily basis, including violence against women, reproductive rights, immigration, sex education and teen pregnancy, citizenship, human rights, and women in the military.
Well certainly, that seems like a neat list. And one might think that given Governor Palin's own response to teen pregnancy and reproductive rights one might get a talk about this, and there it is "Reproductive Rights" on October 22. What do you want to bet we'll have someone speaking from the National Down Syndrome Society or maybe some research on teen pregnancy. That'd be nice. But I'm not hopeful given the list of other topics: Maze of Injustice; Citizenship for Equity and Social Justice; GLBT Civil Rights during a Presidential Election Year; and Let�s Get Real: Race and Sex in the 2008 Election.

Likewise we got notice of a talk being offered by "the Social Responsibility Masters program, in conjunction with the Women�s Center, Multicultural Student Services, the Department of Theatre, Film Studies and Dance, and the Department of Mass Communication" of the movie Uncounted. There will be no reading from John Fund; instead, the Secretary of State Mark Ritchie will be there. This is Mark Ritchie who ACORN's founder calls his "organizing colleague this April."
Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, a long time organizing colleague from the nonprofit sector, addressed the Board and told the story not only of his partnership with ACORN in Minnesota and nationally in deciding to run for this seat, but also of the work he has done with us on our key issue of Election Protection.
I plan to see one of the showings of the movie; I'd like to ask Secretary Ritchie how he plans to prevent the registration of dead people and people in prison that has been happening in Milwaukee last month. I've invited Secretary Ritchie's #1 fan to join me.

UPDATE: More "timely and logical" addressing of "public policy" at Metro State in Denver.

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