Thursday, March 24, 2011 OPINIONS The University Star – 5

Proposed house bill

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Campus Pulse Will you vote in the ASG elections? aims to vaccinate
“I wasn’t planning on voting. I don’t know what the process involves or how to go
all college students
about doing it. I actually had no idea we had an ASG. What does that stand for?”

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— Luis Lira, applied mathematics senior

“I don’t know when the elections are, but I’ll vote. I don’t know who’s running,
but I have a friend in ASG so I’ll probably swing my vote for whoever he votes

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for.” — Mitchell Soukup, pre-geography junior By Caitlin Clark
Assistant Opinions Editor

D istrict 26 State Rep. Charlie Howard is ready to stick

you with a healthy dose of his new bill, whether you
like it or not. Howard has filed a bill to require all Texas col-
“I’m voting, but I don’t know who for yet. I have some friends in ASG so I’ll base lege students to receive a bacterial meningitis vaccination.
my vote off of whoever they tell me to vote for.” — Richard Nguyen, exercise and But there’s no need to worry, it's just a little prick, right?

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Using precautionary methods to prevent disease and death
sports science senior isn’t my issue with this bill. I’d be more than happy to go
through the less than 10 seconds of discomfort it takes to
receive a shot if it meant I was preventing myself and those
around me from contracting a disease. However, I believe
such cooperation should be voluntary rather than coerced.
I do see why Howard would like to pass this bill. In 2008 Ja-
mie Schanbaum, then a sophomore at the University of Texas,
“I didn’t even know elections were going on for anything. I haven’t seen the contracted meningococcal septicemia and ultimately lost her
signs, and I don’t know what ASG is.” — Lauren Rodriguez, marketing junior lower legs and fingers to the disease. House Bill 4189, The
Jamie Schanbaum was passed by the Legislature in 2009, re-
quiring all students living in college dorms to be vaccinated.
Howard’s concern is students living off-campus have slipped
through the cracks and need to be protected as well. Nicolis
Williams, a 20-year-old Texas A&M student was one of the
students House Bill 4189 does not apply to. Williams lived off
campus, and died from complications of bacterial meningitis
in mid-February, according to a Houston Chronicle article.

An open letter to the Internet

By Chip Wozniak
Opinions Columnist
T o the Internet,
the unfathomable infrastructure you
operate over, my family across the coun-
try would have few opportunities to
share this with me. But, you’re also in-
volved with some shady characters and
aren’t afraid of letting my dearest aunts
and uncles co-mingle with these vile
bastards. In fact, you showed my dis-
senting opinion of FMAFE’s Caucasian
male scholarship to a couple hundred
loonies at StormFront.org, a white su-
premacist website (Whose logo reads,
“White Pride, World Wide”), according
conflict is obvious, Internet, you are a
great resource for information and mo-
tivation but, at literally the exact same
time, provide any and every distraction
imaginable to keep me from putting
that information and motivation to use.
I sincerely cherish the convenience of
research database access online from
home. No longer are students forced to
trek to Alkek Library to do work, thank
you. However, you also bring me Red-
dit.com, Flasharcade.com, and Netflix
whenever I want and, more often than
Howard’s House Bill 1816 would close the gap and require
all students both on and off campus to be vaccinated. Howard
said, “It is imperative that this bill be passed into law this ses-
sion. Nicolis’ death was both preventable and unnecessary,
and passing House Bill 1816 will ensure that no other young
Texan loses their life from such a terrible and preventable
illness,” as reported by FortBendNow.
Requiring all Texas college students to be vaccination for
meningitis is advocating the forced medication of those who
otherwise wouldn’t give their consent. Don’t get me wrong
— getting the vaccination is a good idea. Being vaccinated is
a responsible decision that could prevent possible complica-
tions of contracting the disease, as well as mortality. Making
the vaccination mandatory, however, is not.
Dawn Richardson, president of Parents Requesting Open
Vaccine Education, an Austin-based group opposed to man-
datory vaccinations, believes those in favor of the mandate
are basing their position more on emotion than data, accord-

Over the Spring Break holiday, we

seldom saw each other and I must come
clean — this was intentional. I needed a
break from the disheartening exposure
to negativity and constant distraction
from my life’s ambition you’ve encour-
aged. In our time apart it was important
I entertained and educated myself dif-
ferently than how I was accustomed to
with you. Now, I’m writing you to say I
accept you (and the billions of individu-
als you represent) and am ready to lay a
few issues to rest so we can continue to
move forward.
First, let me say I love seeing my
name on The University Star's Opinions
page every week, and if it weren’t for
to The Star’s Web statistics.
The caricature one commenter, SCD-
harmaBum, drew of my FMAFE opinion
was especially entertaining, outlining
what he or she believes to be my solu-
tion to racial problems and ultimately
criticizing said plan for wanting “to in-
stigate genocide against blacks.” I firmly
believe your allowance for anonymity
enables individuals to be more honest
than in a public forum but with you
there’s always a catch, where it benefits
my protesting commenters to remain
virtually unknown to me, I may never
realize someone I one day work with
(or sit next to in Spanish, for instance) is
bashing my point of view online.
Lastly, let’s talk about how your
ubiquity affects my work ethic. The
not, when you probably shouldn’t (ad-
mittedly thanks to a few shortcuts I
made, but still). There’s an inverse cor-
relation between my Alkek database us-
age and time spent on sites like Reddit,
a relationship dangerously hazardous to
my academic progress.
The bottom line is I love you. It’s easy
to see I need you, regardless of minor
misgivings. I can’t ask you to end asso-
ciations with certain individuals I don’t
agree with or hold you responsible for
my poor time management. So, I may
hold close to my friends, avoid some of
yours, and not necessarily see you every
day but just know it’s not you, it’s me.
— Chip Wozniak is an advertising
senior
ing to a Feb. 23 Texas Tribune article.
“It’s a machine gun approach to try to prevent an isolated,
rare event,” said Richardson in the article. “We are in a bud-
get crunch in Texas, and this vaccine is available to anyone
who wants it. If a family decides not to take it, that should be
their decision.”
Exactly. The decision of whether or not to inject something
into your body should be yours, not that of a politician. Men-
ingitis is obviously an extremely contagious, lethal disease
that needs to be prevented by all means possible. However,
the ends of this bill don’t justify those means. I’m not anti-
vaccination, and I do believe measures should be made to
protect the lives of college students. However, while I believe
this piece of legislation does have good intentions, the way
in which it seeks to go about accomplishing its goal is ag-
gressive an unreasonable. If you believe you have complete
control of what happens to your body, then you should agree
the only justifiable option in this situation is to let the choice
remain an individual one.

— Caitlin Clark is a pre-mass communication freshman

HB2454 proposes entrance of

intelligent design into higher
What do
YOU think ?
education curriculum D
What do you think the act of students
was a violation of the Establishment Clause removing candy from the Art Gallery
of the First Amendment.
I spoke with the representative, and was
represented?
surprised to learn his bill was neither fu-
eled by public outcry nor constituent re-
quests. He said he was just “looking out for 4%
the little guy” by protecting teachers and
working to ensure academic freedom.
When you take a step back, and consider
Other
this bill in terms of the man who is propos-
By Asha McElfish ing it and his political ambitions, it becomes
Opinions Columnist clear “academic freedom” is the last thing

T here are a few truisms about Texans

and their mindset that tend to hold
firm throughout the course of our great
state’s history. One that rings truest of all is
the unabashed love of God, guns and coun-
try. Namely that of a Judeo-Christian God.
on Rep. Zedler’s mind.
In a conservative political climate like 10%
Texas’, it is common to see bills spawned
from a legislators’ “good intentions” or per- Don't care
sonal convictions. However, none in recent
37%
Artistic
memory have worked to so blatant and
flagrantly disregard the boundary between

This mindset doesn’t personally bring me
too much stress, because when I enter my
classrooms each semester I know the clear
divide between church and state will still be
there. Well, maybe — until now.
On March 8, Rep. Bill Zedler (R-96) in-
troduced HB 2454, a bill that would pro-
hibit discrimination against students and
faculty who wanted to research (or teach)
the theory of intelligent design, or “other
alternate theories of the origination and
development of organisms.” This would be
a great act on behalf of academics, save for
two pesky little problems. Intelligent de-
sign isn’t taught as a theory in classrooms
because it is religiously based (grounded in
Biblical theology), and disregarded by the
scientific community as an unsound theory.
i.e. Not science.
In 2005 U.S. District Judge John E. Jones
III ruled in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School
District that intelligent design "cannot un-
couple itself from the creationist, and thus
religious, antecedents" and therefore was
not science. This ruling made it illegal to
teach these ideas in a public classroom, as it
expression
church and state in the academic environ-
ment. This bill implies intelligent design
“researchers” across Texas are being disen-
franchised professionally because of their
beliefs. A claim that is simply false.
I spoke with James Ott, associate profes-
sor of biology, about the impact this bill 19%
would have on Texas State academics, facul-
ty and published research. He explained the
bill is unnecessary as academic freedom is
Theft
already vigorously protected by the univer-
sity’s own volition. Noting the bill “encour-
ages the university to promote academic
fraud, and we are simply not in the business 31%
of doing that,” said Ott. Furthermore, the
major professional societies in the scientific
community have all drafted policy state-
Vandalism
ments in support of evolutionary biology —
not intelligent design.
As it stands, HB 2454 is not the purported
beacon of academic protection it claims,
but a self-serving publicity stunt by another NEXT WEEK'S QUESTION:
Palin-band-wagon-wannabe. Who are you planning on voting for in the
— Asha McElfish is a public administration Associated Student Government elections?
senior — Caitlin Clark is a pre-mass communication freshman
D
Vote online at UniversityStar.com