It’s
a new year with many changes occurring both at EPCC and the world.
Whether we started off violently with soldier body counts rising or
some of us buried peacefully beneath a layer of snow is something
I ponder these days.
A war that started just four years ago, with a clear objective and
not much opposition, is now under a microscopic scrutiny of many American
people. It rages on with a rising death toll.
For those who know me and have seen me read my poems “Soldier
Boy” and “Blood in the Trenches Like Wet Painted Benches,”
there is a sense of anti-Bushism sentiments harbored, relaying sarcastic
details of this seemingly never-ending war.
I am an open-minded person and gave George W. Bush a chance that I
never offered his father, but did not vote for him the second term
and felt, from the beginning, that the numbers never matched.
I felt the war was a selfish indulgence to clear his father’s
mistakes, one that later became a hide-and-seek game with Osama bin
Laden, whom I believe, Bush let slip right out the noose by not closing
in on him in the mountains of Afghanistan. With what seems to me to
be a two-sided face of treachery, sits in every American’s living
room, propaganda playing on TV. From there all I heard was “blah
blah … more troops” and “blah blah… stay the
course” and once in a while, something horrendously funny due
to his deep Texas mentality.
East Texas is a different world, so I could believe how the internet
hoax that showed Bush reading an upside down book to a group of children,
unaffected visibly while being told a twin tower had been hit by a
plane. I can also see how the media might want us to think he’s
that ignorant.
Really, Bush created the great divide that politicians fight across
by trying to maintain his one-sided views on marriage for men and
women only and his belief that abortion is murder, but then later
contradicted himself by allowing some embryonic stem cell research
if they were in progress before Aug. 9, 2001.
We all have a right to believe as we do. That is after all what makes
America a democracy, but many things have changed in the media since
the school newspaper started in the early 70’s.
War has rocked the nation several devastating times and much protest
has come about on many diverse topics. Expressing views without censorship,
bilingually and to share those views in print was the reason the paper
came to be and the reason it should continue.
America is a place where people have to be diverse in thought and
should agree to disagree on many things, because that is democracy
in addition to allowing others to think the way they do.
Another thing that has changed is the way we uphold mascots in society.
Over time the meaning of the word “conquistador” has obtained
a bad rap. Though it was meant to be a positive name for the paper,
the ideal that students should conquer their educational obstacles
rather than conquer countries, the “I want it my way or no way
idealism” of the original conquistadores tends to be destructive
and initiative of war, rather than an emblem of inspiration.
I can’t change the president and he said no one can change his
mind about this war, but we can change the name of the paper and have
civilized conversations about our conflicts and views.
Do you think the name of the paper is appropriate today? If there
is a consensus that the name should be changed, we can certainly considerate.
Perhaps even, we can have a contest. Send us your letters.
