Letters to the editor

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To the Editor:

I, for one, was pretty disgusted with Orin Hatch’s visit to UVU. From the amount of petty groveling and sucking up the faculty did, to Hatch’s overall presentation. If you missed it, it was something like this. Old man takes stage, old man is given ties, books, laser pointers. Old man rambles on about “his day.” old man drops names of major Washington players (Emanuel, Biden, Obama) in order to establish credibility with audience. Old man rambles on about new policy. Old man takes questions. Old man personifies ignorance and stupidity in response to questions by demonstrating his inability to understand the issues and then rambles on tangents completely unrelated to the issues about which he was questioned.
This is our elected official, but he can’t articulate a coherent thought about a critical issue. Blithely he dismissed issues like the environmental impact of factory farming on the grounds that, “it’s silly that cow flatulence could be causing global warming” and “that we shouldn’t blame farmers.” This isn’t fantasyland where Old McDonald’s farm provides the 28,000,000,000 tons of meat consumed in the U.S.A. annually. This is a world where the mass production of animal flesh for food has consequences for the planet, people and animals; whether it’s inconvenient for us to believe it or not. What is bad for animals is bad for us; what is good for the animals is good for us. Do your own research on the topic, give it some thought. It matters.

Chris Manor

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To the Editor:

I would not consider myself a very green person. I am not looking for new ways to run my car, only eat organic food, and buy hemp. However, I am a person who does not like to waste. I feel like here at UVU we are wasting a lot of paper due to the lack of recycle bins. Just yesterday I had to walk about 2 minutes to find one. How hard would it be to just put a little basket in each class so there would not be so much wasted paper?

-Nick Bowden

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To the Editor:

Katelyn Gallagher’s Letter to the Editor concerning student housing or
the lack of student housing hit the mark on several points.
Having a student life experience in student housing is an important part
of a university experience and can have a significant positive impact on
student success. Unfortunately, student housing is not and will not be a
part of UVU’s future, if student housing is defined as housing that is
owned and operated by the university.

However, UVU is pioneering a unique relationship with housing for
students. The Office of Student Involvement has just completed its first year
employing students who live in privately owned student housing to build
and facilitate an engaged and dynamic student life experience in
collaboration with these complexes. These students are called Resident
Engagement Coordinators. They are trained and tasked to conduct weekly
activities in and for the students living in apartment complexes. We
call them RECs.

Each semester RECs survey students about their interests, build
activities and often will pay for all or significant parts of activities
in which students show an interest. They form Resident Engagement
Communities around these interests. RECs support on-campus activities
like the MAWL, theater, dance, and guest speakers. They advertise REC
events and campus events and even set up help sessions on student needs
within the apartment complexes. RECs also become a resource for
students in the complex, helping them find support and help for academic, health, financial and even legal needs- helping them connect to
campus and community. The idea is to build a sense of community, support and success in the complex and among the UVU
students who live within that apartment community. The pay off is great for the university and the apartment complexes.

Students attend and perform better in class and have a much higher
satisfaction level living in their “UVU student housing community.” The
apartment complexes are showing a higher rate of students re-signing
leases and negative incidents in the complexes are dropping. While the
program is young, it is expanding next year and enhancements are now in
place to increase its effectiveness and ability to reach more UVU students this fall.

If you would like to learn more about this program or become involved, call us at (801) 863-8682. Or email me at [email protected]. Our
mission is to build the student involvement experience.

Grant Flygare

Director, Office of Student Involvement

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To the Editor:

Thank you for the story (April 13) about our Integrated Studies graduate and Valedictorian Shannon Young, who competed on the Millionaire show.

It seems that you weren’t clear whether Shannon is a woman or a man. She’s a woman, legally married to a man in Utah (which constitutes proof in this state that she’s a woman).

Your headline, however, claims she’s a man.

As we contemplate adding a Gender Studies emphasis to our Integrated Studies program and to the set of minors and emphases in Interdisciplinary Studies, it’s important for us to get our Latin endings right, or if we’re mixing them up, to do so for a purpose.

Scott Abbott

Director of Integrated Studies