Opinion Editor: Joe DelNero Page 4
The Arkansas Traveler Newspaper
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
UAPD Takes No Chances Joe DelNero Opinion Editor Futrall was evacuated last week for a bomb threat. The architecture department was evacuated last Friday because of suspected “terroristic threatening.” While the first was a false alarm and the second resulted in Carlos Guzman Martinez having a hearing Monday about the allegations, questions remain: Are events, tweets and parts of everyday life are being misinterpreted as threatening? And is the UA administration overreacting with these evacuations? Lindell Avenue by Futrall Hall was closed off for almost 45 minutes, according to Arkansas Newswire, because there was a “suspicious device” with running cables on the sidewalk. Facilities Management couldn’t identify whether or not this was a dangerous device, so while Lindell was closed, the K-9 unit was called out only to discover this was simply a remote water transmitter. A false alarm. Secondly, the architecture department was evacuated because a Twitter message was interpreted as a threat. The message by Martinez read “UPDATE: Someone screams over the mezzanine and shoots all the forth [sic] year,” according to a news release. UAPD Lt. Gary Crain said the department sent students home from two of the studios for the “peace of
mind of their students, faculty and staff,” in a Traveler staff report on Monday. I’ll be the first to admit I cannot stand false alarms. Since elementary school, unscheduled fire drills and tornado alarms drove me crazy. The first drill, yes, I was likely scared and followed procedure and my teacher to the letter. But because I see them over and over again, it’s just a habit for me to snag a frisbee or a book knowing it’s always a drill and I better have something to do. Every time it turns out to be a false alarm, I just say it is an inconvenience for everyone. However, despite these personal impressions, I would like to commend UAPD for handling these events. They have stuck to following this precautionary principle where it is better safe than sorry. Seeing violent movies and hearing about campus shootings and crime, it seems like these things could never happen to us. However, UAPD is going the extra mile to ensure this violence stays away from our clean campus. Pulling out the K-9 unit, evacuating a street a lot of campus residents use going to class and evacuating architecture studios are steps that would typically upset me, especially if I’m working on a deadline. But precaution is so intensely necessary on a campus like this. Weighing the risks and ensuring students continue to take them seriously is the job of UAPD. Through these two recent events, I’ve seen UAPD is willing to act, and that makes me even more confident working on this campus. Joe DelNero is a senior broadcast journalism major and the opinion editor of the Arkansas Traveler.
Traveler Quote of the Day
“I just received a text saying, ‘I’m OK, but I’m shook up.” Doug Allen, Co-Owner, Jose’s in Fayetteville “Local Runners Safe After Boston Bombing” Page 1
Corrections
In the April 9 article “Northwest Arkansas Fights Child Abuse,” “childhood abuse month” should read “childhood abuse awareness month.” While Helen Ward, outreach advocate for Peace at Home Family Shelter encourages social work majors to volunteer, she also would like to express the importance of a variety of majors helping with child advocacy “agencies,” not “groups” as previously reported. The Traveler reported “the most common type of child abuse is neglect, Ward said.” We redact that neglect is “the most common type of abuse.”
Editorial Board
Editor-in-Chief Managing Editor Opinion Editor
Chad Woodard Brittany Nims Joe DelNero
The Arkansas Traveler welcomes letters to the editor from all interested readers. Letters should be at most 300 words and should include your name, student classification and major or title with the university and a day-time telephone number for verification. Letters should be sent to traveler@uark.edu.
Hebron Chester Staff Cartoonist
There’s No Cure to Sleep Deprivation Hebron Chester
Staff Columnist After staying up until three in the morning dropping a friend off at the airport, I began to think about sleep deprivation. I’m sure we have all pulled an allnighter studying for a test or writing a paper at some point in our college careers. And, of course, that occasional late night is part of the college experience. But data shows many college students make non-sleep a habit that can have nasty consequences. According to GetSleep, a website operated with the Harvard Medical School, only 11 percent of college students claim to have good sleep quality. Our health and thinking abilities might be affected by sleep deprivation more than we realize. Students who don’t sleep during periods of stress are “sabotaging their physical and mental health,” according to Roxanne Prichard, assistant professor of psychology at the University of St. Thomas. She goes on to say that drawbacks in immune and cardiovascular systems along with weight gain are
health risks that come with lack of sleep. Several studies claim college students get an average of less than six hours a night, and often much less. That’s quite a difference from the seven to nine hours recommended by sleep experts. Experts have concluded that students who do not get enough sleep in school have lower grade-point averages because they perform worse on tests. Lack of sleep decreases concentration, and the brain simply does not perform at top level. Experts also recommend not pulling an all-nighter to study because it reduces the ability to retain information by 40 percent. So, go to sleep for just a little bit. It will pay off. So what advice do the experts give to help this national sleeping problem? They say get softer sheets and a more comfortable mattress. They say get a whitenoise machine to block out noise. They say if your college roommate has a different sleep schedule, have a “friendly” discussion. Yeah, I’m sure that will go over well. These ideas all work on paper, but I have trouble be-
lieving they would work in the real world. What about the students with jobs to pay for school? A lot of them don’t have the time to get the recommended amount of sleep, and that’s without socializing or playing video games or watching television or doing whatever else keeps college students up. Getting a softer bed or investing in a white noise machine won’t solve their problems. Neither will sticking to a sleep schedule, which experts advise. Many would love one but just can’t have one because of other priorities. In my mind, students will be sleep-deprived in college. There is no solution for some of us who work latenight shifts after morning and afternoon classes. We live in a 24-hour world, and that means we don’t sleep as much. Rather than leaving you depressed about how tired you are without any interesting or useful advice, unless you want to quit your job and extracurriculars, I do have a few fascinating facts: If you drink coffee right before a nap, you will wake up more alert and energized
because the coffee takes 20 minutes to take effect, according to lifehacker.com. Exactly 26 minutes is the best length for a nap. NASA found that it improved performance by 34 percent and alertness by 54 percent, on lifehacker.com. Albert Einstein would take power naps by holding a pencil in his hand so when he went into deep sleep, it would fall and he would wake, refreshed, in the Salvador Dali napping technique, according to ArtofManliness.com. Einstein believed these naps helped him think more clearly, and considering what he accomplished, it seemed to do him good. Regardless of fun facts about sleep, missing out on this necessary routine is detrimental to our health. Unless we quit our jobs, abandon the extracurriculars we enjoy or choose not to get an extra few hours of studying before our big tests, we will continue to miss our sleep cycles. Hebron Chester is a staff cartoonist and writer for the Arkansas Traveler.
Better Gun Background Checks Would Help Sen. Pat Toomey MCT Campus Is there a way that we, as Americans, can improve our ability to stop guns from getting into the hands of criminals and the dangerously mentally ill, without denying the freedom of law-abiding people to own firearms? That’s the question I have grappled with as the U.S. Senate turns to the issue of gun control. I did not enter this debate with a blank slate. My record is one of support for gun rights, in the bipartisan Pennsylvania tradition. I have also long supported common-sense, criminalbackground checks before someone can purchase a gun. The agreement I have reached with Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., would responsibly expand the background-check system and make it more effective. Background checks are not a cure-all. Determined criminals can find ways to obtain weapons. But background checks are helpful.
Since checks began in 1998, more than 100,000 people who are ineligible to own guns have been denied them each year. For every horrific Newtown-type tragedy that has happened, and thankfully there have been few, many more may have been averted among the 1.8 million gunsale denials that have already occurred under the current background-check system. More than half of those denials have been because the gun buyer had a felony criminal record. Thousands of denials have resulted from domestic-violence records and serious mental-health problems. These are exactly the kinds of people who present serious dangers to public safety. It is already illegal for them to own guns. The backgroundcheck system is merely a tool to help enforce the law and protect the public. Unfortunately, that tool is applied very unevenly. For 15 years, it has been the law of the land that criminalbackground checks are re-
quired before purchases at gun dealerships. However, purchases at gun shows and over the Internet have not required such checks. These loopholes have clearly allowed many dangerous people to illegally obtain guns. I’m convinced that the gunshow and Internet loopholes should be closed. I respect the sincerely held concerns that many people have about erosions of constitutional rights. The good news is that we now have many years of evidence on this question, and it has not proven to be a problem. For more than a decade, federal law has required background checks for dealership sales, and in Pennsylvania, for 18 years, virtually all handgun purchases of any kind have been subject to background checks. The system has not led to an erosion of rights. It’s very simple. If you pass a background check, you can buy a gun. It’s the people who fail a criminal or mental-health background check who we don’t want having guns.
Washington is a bizarre and in many ways a broken place. Things that should not be controversial often are. Things that should achieve consensus often don’t. Partisanship frequently gets in the way. The way the gun debate was heading, there were some sweeping proposals that really would have infringed on personal freedom, and there were other forces against doing anything, despite the glaring loopholes in our system. Both of those approaches have their passionate supporters, but I believe both are a disservice to the public. We can do better. We can make it harder for criminals and the dangerously mentally ill to obtain guns, while preserving the rights of law-abiding people to do so. There is common ground here. I hope we can achieve it. Pat Toomey is a Republican U.S. senator from Pennsylvania. This story was retrieved from MCT Campus.