Startling to see so many reports of sexual abuse
I recently read Curry Health Center’s 2008 College Health Assessment and was aghast to learn that 10 percent of University of Montana females (and 3 percent of males) reported having been sexually touched against their will. Four percent of women (3 percent of men) reported being the targets of verbal threats for sex.
And all of these statistics were just for last year. On a campus of 13,952 students that’s 53.1 percent female, that translates to roughly 937 sexually assaulted individuals in the last 12 months alone.
Even this number is likely an underestimate, due to bias in self-reporting or other reasons. Student Assault Resource Center statistics report that one in four college women report surviving rape (15 percent) or attempted rape (12 percent) since their 14th birthday.
The gravity of these statistics motivates Take Back the Night, the UM Women’s Center’s annual rally against sexual assault and violence, occurring this Oct. 24. SARC will facilitate a healing circle for survivors at 5 p.m. in University Center, Room 326. A candle lit vigil will begin by the campus oval’s grizzly statue at 6 p.m. and proceed downtown, where speakers and music will start at 7 p.m. at Dauphine’s, lasting until 9 p.m.
Please come to express your support for survivors and opposition to violence. And let’s all work, every day, to expose and end violence in our beautiful community.
Svein Newman, Missoula
There is too much conflict of interest in Congress
Our government wants us to feel confident in our financial systems again. The “bailout” sure has not done that for the average Joe.
How can we be reassured when we know that the guys who caused the crisis are playing golf with our legislators and contributing to their campaigns for re-election? Nothing matters to our officials more than getting re-elected.
My ideas for “change” are: term limits for congressmen, throw out the crooks and criminals from Congress that their ethics committee won’t, change the laws so big shot crooks can’t shelter their money in Florida, make all our legislators write “deficit” 100 times every day on a blackboard.
Our problem is Congress and the big pork, like Baucus dishes out, gets them elected till they are nearly dead.
E. Campbell, Lolo
Climate plan will cost taxpayers money, rights
Gov. Brian Schweitzer, along with seven other governors, was targeted by the Center for Climate Strategies, an environmental group out of Pennsylvania, to establish the Governor’s Climate Change Advisory Committee. The governor and the Pennsylvania Environmental Council (parent company of CCS) believe man is the cause of global warming. If this plan is implemented, it will cost Montanans millions of dollars as well as placing restrictions on property rights, vehicle usage and growth.
I am concerned our governor is so willing to change our lives forever based on Al Gore’s lies about global warming. Roy Spencer, University of Alabama research scientist, told the U.S. Senate that Gore forgot to mention that 75 percent of carbon dioxide comes from natural causes, not human-induced.
Schweitzer is also supporting the Clean Water Restoration Act. If this bill passes the federal government, environmentalists will control all water and land in America. The governor asked Rep. Denny Rehberg to support this bill in the House. Rehberg wrote the governor a letter and said he would not support this bill. He ended the letter by saying, “No, nope, no way, hell no.”
The Democrats want you to believe that big oil is the enemy and that they make too much money and do not pay their fair share of taxes. The truth is they pay a lot of taxes. Exxon Mobil employs 85,000 workers. One thousand other companies depend on Exxon Mobil. In 2007, Exxon Mobil made $40.6 billion in profits and paid out $30 billion in taxes. Exxon Mobile pays as much taxes annually as the entire bottom 50 percent of individual taxpayers, which is 65 million people, and this is just one oil company.
We need big oil and the jobs and wealth they create. What we don’t need is an environmentalist for a governor with his green team.
Patti Kanduch, Philipsburg
Republican attack ads show party’s desperation
The Republicans are desperate. Take, for example, the attacks on Gov. Brian Schweitzer. Is that the best they can do - come up with some bully ad? Joke or no joke.
By the way, how many pregnant nuns do we have in Montana? Please take, rather, the accomplishments of the Schweitzer administration - the budget surpluses, for one. It’s not just the governor being attacked. It’s people like Steve Bullock running for attorney general under attack with false ads.
What about fellow Democrats? Six thousand were supposed to be disenfranchised. The legacy the Republicans leave for us is deregulation of Montana Power Co., leading to higher energy costs.
We have many good Democrats leading our state, like Sen. Max Baucus, Sen. Jon Tester and, of course, Schweitzer, who are looking out for Montana. Let them continue. And thanks to Tester and the good people who voted for him. And bully to us all for Tester ridding us of a questionable Conrad Burns.
Bill Hilzendeger, Missoula
Now is not the time to take chance on Obama
“Mark my words; it will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We are about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old president of the United States of America.
“Remember I said it standing here, if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we are going to have an international crisis, to test the mettle of this guy. And he’s gonna have to make some really tough - I don’t know what the decision’s gonna be - but I promise you it will occur. As a student of history that served seven presidents, I guarantee you it’s gonna happen.
“I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate.”
These words were uttered by Sen. Joe Biden at a Seattle rally on Oct. 20.
If this speech from Barack Obama’s vice presidential running mate doesn’t open your eyes to how the world regards Obama’s ability to protect our country, I’m sorry for you. But I for one do not want to take a chance on how Obama will react if terrorists show up on our doorsteps again. And don’t think you would be safe because you live in Montana. It could happen here when one or more of our dams could be destroyed and our clean water compromised. Just remember Obama’s response when Russia invaded Georgia earlier this year he said Georgia “should show restraint”!
We don’t want a president who invites testing from the world at a time when our economy is in crisis and we are already fighting two wars.
Think before you vote.
Marie Wolff, Missoula
Medication not always the answer to disorders
What does it mean to experience bipolar disorder, depression, schizophrenia or ADHD? The answer is as varied as the millions who suffer from these disorders. One person’s experience of the realities of depression may be vastly different from another’s. Just as one person’s experience of schizophrenia or bipolar is their own and no one else’s.
The truth is we are all individuals, with individual hopes, dreams, desires and fears. When looking to help someone close to us that suffers from mental or emotional distress, it is tempting to want to find an easy way to relieve their pain. Medical science claims to have an easy cure that will work for anyone, but the reality of this claim is false. While Patty Duke (“Duke puts celebrity face on bipolar disorder,” Missoulian, Oct. 11) and others like her do find relief through the use of medications, not everyone does. For those who continue to experience symptoms while on medication, or who suffer some of the severe and often times irreversible side effects, there has to be another choice.
The truth is there are many choices.
The medical model of psychiatry has fallen flat for millions of sufferers not only in this country but across the globe. These people must be allowed to have their voices heard, as well as the National Alliance on Mental Illness and Patty Duke. We all must be allowed the right to choose how we get well if we are sick. Unfortunately, most who suffer from psychiatry have only one choice: medication, whether it works or not, whether you have side effects or not - and that is no choice at all.
Genevieve Andrus, Missoula
Why cut programs when state has a surplus?
I am writing this letter in response to Rep. Mike Jopek’s Oct. 17 letter in which he states that “our fiscal budget is in order with enormous surpluses.” If this is true and our system is so great, how is it that we cut funding for our schools year after year and public assistance has all but gone out the window? If there is such a surplus, where is it and why does it not, as Bush would put it, “trickle down” to the people who need it the most, namely our children and the disabled?
As you have said, our jobs should be to make people’s lives better. Well, I do believe that my children, who by the way will be changing your Huggies when you are old and disabled, are people, too. Not only are they people, but they will be the people who are going to be running this nation and continuing our legacies. So why don’t we make their lives better and make them want to stay in school instead of cutting the electives that motivate them to stay in school so they can fix this mess that we call a nation? For those of you who are in the government and have the ability to change things, why don’t you?
Kevin Forshey, Florence
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