Hoekstra, who is running to be the Republican nominee against second-term Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow, should end his campaign for producing an ad which is unacceptable in modern society. The ad featured a young Asian woman speaking about the threat of Chinese economic growth and Stabenow’s fiscal policy.

“Thank you, Michigan Sen. Debbie ‘Spend-It-Now,’” the woman says at the beginning of the ad. “Debbie spends so much American money. You borrow more and more from us. Your economy get very weak. Ours get very good. We take your jobs.”

Tellingly, she never stumbles over the ‘Spend-It-Now’ or ‘Spend-It-Not” titles for Stabenow or Hoekstra, respectively. She’s Asian, perhaps Chinese, and apparently threatening, but she certainly stays on message.

What’s worse, the scene honestly opens with a gong. The absurd music, intermittent grammar issues and pointed straw hat that follow are all designed to remind us that this is a foreign culture, a people apart — something different from our wounded, reeling America. This sort of race-baiting is simply unacceptable for a person running to represent Michigan at a federal level, but of course it does not belong in any campaign or conversation.

There is no acceptable move Hoekstra can make other than to withdraw from running for the nomination. His appearance at the end of the commercial reiterating the points in front of a fireplace, ending with “I’m Pete ‘Spend-It-Not” Hoekstra, and I approve this message,” tells us he cannot legitimately distance himself from the controversy.

Hoekstra may actually believe both the content and strategy of the ad are acceptable and see no problem with them, in which case he has no business running or holding any elected office. The only other alternative is that he was unaware of the extent of the ad’s racial bias and stereotyping, that he gave into the pressure of a cut-throat campaign team, which demonstrates he lacks the spine and foresight a U.S. senator should reflexively display.

Resorting to the depths he did with this ad sets back the tone of political discourse decades, if not a century. It is an offense to Asian-Americans and other minorities, but it stings basic human dignity. Hoekstra worked hard to portray himself as the moderate candidate in this race, earning endorsements from national figures including Mitt Romney, but that hard work was undone instantly with this embarrassment.

Instead of trotting out evasive half-apologies or jingoistic defenses, it’s time for Hoekstra to step aside and allow the process to continue without him. He has done more than enough already.

Michigan has long battled a poor reputation nationally and internationally. We have suffered as a punchline for industrial decline and social backwardness.

If we are to move forward, tactics such as the campaign commercial must be shelved permanently.

To help us move forward, Pete ‘End-It-Now’ Hoekstra must stop his campaign.

With its loss of regular funding in 2003, the Speaker Series continues to scramble for donations and one-time “gifts” from the President and Provost’s offices. As a result of lack of funding and planning, the Speaker Series was unable to bring a speaker for the 2008-09 school year and constantly experiences brief hiatuses.

Without committed funding, targeting speakers for future events is impossible. As a reflection of its role in society — the beacon of progressing cognition — the university should fund the Speaker’s Series.

The absence of a selection committee or guaranteed money to bring in these A-list voices leaves what should be a key component of any campus schedule uncertain.

While Program Board is a funded and highly-organized body designed to bring in entertainment, something they do well, there is no parallel body tasked with funding and scheduling of guests with a slightly more (mentally) stimulating body of work than LMFAO.

The genuine and pervasive excitement surrounding Jane Goodall’s scheduled speech in March shows that our campus is capable of being interested in something other than pop music or paint parties. While it is not to say those events aren’t worthwhile — they’ve proven to be some of the most anticipated and attended — where’s the middle ground between attending classes and whipping paint at one another while dancing?

It seems the walls between education and enjoyment have been standing firmly in place, something that doesn’t give the students of CMU enough credit. We have many great minds attending this university, and not to bridge the gap between what we do in class time and what we do in our personal time fails to encourage real-life learning.

Instead of putting energy toward seeking funding, the Speaker Series could focus on finding influential speakers for the student body.

Or, we can just stick with throwing paint.

The scandal shows the influence personal conviction regarding the issue, however well-intentioned, has on Americans, and it is an example of politics interfering with a universally recognized good cause.

The conflict boils down to a rule adopted by the foundation to suspend funding to any organization under formal investigation by a government body. Upon its investigation by Florida Congressman Cliff Stearns, a staunch anti-abortion advocate, the Komen Foundation immediately suspended funding of Planned Parenthood’s breast cancer screening program for low-income women.

The move appears to be a calculated tactic by Komen’s Senior Vice President for Public Policy Karen Handel, a former Georgia gubernatorial candidate and anti-abortion campaigner. The intention of the inquiry policy was transparent enough that upon its adoption, Mollie Williams, Komen’s head public policy expert, resigned in protest when the decision was made last December.

The Komen Foundation has done an incredible job of increasing breast cancer awareness and advocating for research and care.

The color pink itself, from ribbons to yogurt lids to Major League Baseball bats, has become a recognized advocate for awareness and support.

Their accomplishments as a nonprofit deserve and regularly receive praise — all of which makes the Planned Parenthood controversy even more upsetting.

Though Planned Parenthood is indeed an organization that provides abortion services at some clinics, cutting off funding for purely breast cancer prevention-related services because of that fact paints an extremely radical picture of their work.

According to 2009 data obtained by The Washington Post, abortion services made up only 3 percent of Planned Parenthood’s $11.4 million worth of provided services. Far ahead of abortion, cancer screening and prevention makes up 16 percent, statistics that clearly refute the notion that Planned Parenthood is an organization strictly focused on providing abortion services.

The organization pursued a policy of appeasing those on one side of a divide and potentially irreconcilable political issue rather than practice its stated goal of advocating for and treating breast cancer.

Breast cancer ultimately wounds and often destroys the lives and families of women on either side of the debate surrounding abortion.

The Komen Foundation has made breast cancer an issue well-known to every American household, and now is the time to fund action designed to prevent and treat the illness it has publicized so cleverly. Giving in to the political maneuvering of a Pro-Life politician may be causing preventable deaths, and that’s simply unacceptable.

The sudden arrival of the RSOs to voice their dissent against a proposal created largely in response to inactivity and poor attendance by SGA representatives was a bizarre, kind of self-incriminating hypocrisy, but it’s one well-known to many governing bodies.

Their vocal arrival is little different from the normally-stale school board meetings that suddenly explode with participation the minute budget cuts make the agenda, or city council meetings packed with citizens because of a proposed ordinance.

Or the typical college student, apathetic of the political process until an issue comes to the forefront that they become interested in.

Everyone, no matter their varying degrees of interest, deserves an opportunity — a forum — to let their voice be heard. Whether the SGA decides to listen is another story, but a fierce opposition to a proposal should at least be considered.

Toeing the line between mob rule and an oligarchy is a problem which has plagued representative democracies since their first inception. So simply doing away with more than half of campus’ representatives is going to cause some understandable backlash — despite however much representing those representatives actually do.

The problem simply is not that easy to fix.

The self-interest betrayed by the swollen attendance could be damning, but if anything, it reveals something more complicated. If RSOs only show interest in the goings on at SGA when they are facing an existential threat, then how can we expect a unicameral Senate to avoid making self-preservation its primary goal?

It’s all gotten a bit cliquey, really.

How can we, or the E-Board of SGA, say for sure what course is best for student government? Fittingly, the issue will be placed on the general election ballots. Let’s hope students with an interest in the fight remember their voices then.

Following CMU’s 67-53 win against the Bobcats, highlighted by a first-half fight that resulted in the ejection of two players, players did not speak to the media, and head coach Sue Guevara would not speak about the incident.

Instead, the department issued a four-sentence statement from the university and Athletics Director Dave Heeke touting sportsmanship and accountability before closing: “The incident will be reviewed by the department and by the conference office. Until that process is done and we clearly understand what occurred, it would be premature to comment any further.”

It was clear sportsmanship was thrown out the window during those few minutes, so why not spend a few minutes after the game taking accountability for it? Every one of the 543 listed people in attendance saw what happened. Thousands more that evening on YouTube did, too (and still are).

Officials should have immediately said players involved in the fight would be suspended.

Instead, athletics waited to comment until after the Mid-American Conference had handed down a two-game suspension to CMU freshman guards Crystal Bradford and Jessica Green and freshman forward Jas’Mine Bracey, along with OU junior forward Porsha Harris.

Punches were thrown, benches cleared and, while most tried to stop the melee from worsening, others tried to get involved. Let’s call it what it was: a schoolyard fight on a basketball court. And for what reason? Bracey and Harris may be the only ones to know.

So why not come forward right away and take accountability for the situation? Instead, the athletics department tried sweeping it under the rug by diminishing the incident and not directly addressing it. To this day, no mention of the fight, ejections or suspensions have been made on cmuchippewas.com.

A passionate, unfiltered reaction from Guevara after the game could have gone a long way in taking responsibility for her players’ actions. Letting Crystal Bradford and Jessica Green speak on the team’s behalf, apologizing for what transpired on the court, would have been the adult thing to do.

It wasn’t until 36 hours later, after suspensions were handed down by the MAC, Guevara and her players — reading off a prepared statement apologizing to the school, fans and community — were allowed to discuss the situation.

CMU should not have waited until it was punished to apologize or admit something wrong happened on the court Wednesday night. Enforcing self-imposed suspensions immediately would have been the responsible way to handle the situation.

The punches thrown and reactions caused hits to not only players but to the reputation of this university and, even more so, the reputation of CMU’s athletics department.

The worst part is that the $550,000 and nearly seven-month delay since it was pushed back from its August release date could have easily been avoided.

Cmich.edu’s current iteration is confusing at best and broken at worst for users hoping to find anything but the most common information.

Three or four different pages seem to exist for any given topic, with the most relevant and useful of them often buried in search results.

Different departments and programs exist in wildly different places, with no coherent structure or common design.

There can be no question that the site was long since due for an overhaul.

But CMU is privileged to retain a very competent Office of Information Technology.

The full-time professionals employed by CMU could, with aid from consultants and computer science and information technology interns, have easily brought the site up to par with modern expectations of design and user experience — saving thousands and providing valuable real-world experience for students.

This is a clear example of administrators being unfamiliar with the technology and throwing money at a problem rather than using our own resources — not unlike out-of-touch congressional representatives signing off on SOPA without bothering to familiarize themselves with its technological implications.

By placing the project in the hands of a outside entity, the school has decided in favor of professional experience rather than familiarity with the campus and university, something that may ultimately backfire.

All of this would be excusable if the new and improved cmich.edu had launched by now. However, there is still no hard deadline for the site’s launch.

The reaction from educators, students and other individuals in Michigan was, no doubt, a sense of relief, but this does not guarantee an affordable education nor does it make up for the damage that has already been done.

Most college students are already thousands upon thousands of dollars in debt, and this announcement should hardly appease students enough to forget how screwed over they have gotten in recent years by destructive cuts to education.

With average college tuition closing in on $10,000 per year at Central Michigan University, the better question to be asking Snyder is what plan he has in mind to help compensate for the money we have already spent on our ongoing educations — educations more and more students are considering applying to out-of-state jobs.

According to an article from The Washington Post, “Brain drain: States that lose the most college students,” Michigan is listed in the “Brain Drain” category, with a net loss of 1,071 students per year.

Nationally, about three-fourths of students choose to complete their education in their home state.

With a blind future about which road higher education is traveling down, students tend to agree with one of two drastic opinions. The first: Students who realize a simple undergraduate degree, rocking a hefty price tag, no longer satisfies employers seeking new hires. Continued education is what gives students an upper hand in the now more-competitive-than-ever job market. But what happens to those who can hardly pay off loans for their undergraduate degrees?

The second: Some are choosing to veer more toward playing a game of risk. This group includes students who receive little to no education after college but start out in a job and work their way up in hopes of gaining a respectable career without the mess of loan debt trailing with stress for years.

While for some years we were beginning to think success in life was now almost wholly dependent on receiving a college education, it’s no longer boldly evident, and for many, evaporating all together as being considered an option.

Moody’s Investors Service does an annual survey released in January, recently reported about in The Chronicle of Higher Education, that stated, “A majority of colleges — those dependent on tuition or state money — will continue to face challenges in the next 12-18 months. Those challenges will, in part, stem from the public’s scrutiny of rising tuition and from pressures to keep it down.”

With these statistics, it’s no surprise college students already feel a sense of defeat, making them question the day-to-day attendance and effort put into classes and wonder if one day it will all be worth it.

Snyder deserves to be thanked for promising no more cuts to education, but most of us are so far in the hole it doesn’t seem to matter anymore — unless money starts appearing back in our pockets.

The Sunday passing of Joe Paterno, the winningest coach in college football history, was a tough pill to swallow for many. Paterno, 85, was a fixture on the sidelines at Penn State, one many admired and respected. His knowledge of the game and brazen personality — he wasn’t afraid to tell it like it was — made him an icon in the Big Ten Conference and around the country.

Like his colleagues and followers in State College, Pa., we also celebrate his decorated coaching career. Paterno won 409 games and helped lead 250 players to the National Football League. No one else in college football history had that type of positive influence, both on and off the field, with young men.

Paterno’s death, however, also recasts light on the string of serious allegations against Jerry Sandusky, a former assistant coach under him in the ’80s and ’90s alleged to have molested 10 boys during a 15-year span. While it has been reported Paterno was made aware of the illegal and extremely inappropriate actions going on within his program, and he reported them to university officials, no action was ever taken.

Could Joe Paterno have done more? Of course he could have, and should have.

But his passing, while sad and unfortunate, should serve as a wake-up call to other universities.

The culture many university administrators and public relations officials cultivate of putting their organization first and treating it like a business simply cannot get in the way of maintaining integrity and protecting those who cannot protect themselves.

If the administrators whom Paterno had informed of Sandusky’s alleged crimes had taken the necessary investigation seriously, they could have prevented more evil being done, and come out as the good guys in this story.

Instead, secrecy justified by claims of “protecting a legend” allowed several boys to be violated while the truth waited to be uncovered.

So when the detestable truth of the matter rose to the surface, Paterno’s legend was indeed tarnished. Instead of dying at the head of the team he brought to national prominence, the team which under his direction became the starting point of many legends of their own, he died a pariah.

Paterno did not do enough, but those who tried to protect his and the school’s reputation by sweeping the problem under the rug did more than any to dim their shining legacy.

It seems unlikely bills as broadly written and surface-level directed as the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act would actually curb the machinations of those on the razor’s edge of information technology and would instead only get in the way of regular, law-abiding users.

The bill directed at protecting a small percentage of copyright holders’ profits has the potential to effectively destroy the way the most vibrant and productive parts of the Internet operate.

In a bleak economic climate, it makes very little sense to clip the wings of one of the few aspects of U.S. business that shows continued exponential growth.

It may sound melodramatic, but the Internet is the defining hallmark of human engineering and ingenuity. Nothing of this magnitude and scope has happened to human culture ever before, and it is still expanding.

The Internet and its World Wide Web have been technological, commercial and creative marvels since their advent, but the events of the past year, particularly the Arab Spring, have demonstrated the social and political importance of online interaction.

We are, more than ever before, an interconnected species.

Tampering with the rules of the Internet while we are only beginning to get a glimpse of its true potential is a backward and uninformed idea that reeks of corporate influence.

Media corporations have put up serious fights when frightened by new technology before. But the VCR did not destroy the movie industry, cassettes and compact discs came without making radio obsolete, and there’s no reason to think YouTube and Tumblr will spell the end of popular culture.

Rather than imposing short-sighted rules to maintain increasingly irrelevant business models, Congress should celebrate the efforts of those who embrace the new potential for economic success of online interactions.

They need only look to the example of popular comedian Louis C.K., who recently released an exclusive stand-up performance on his website with absolutely no protection against piracy for the price of $5.

By trusting consumers and offering them an easy and affordable way to access his product — completely unlike the convoluted and backwards rights-protection processes big media imposes on its customers to retain a profit margin — he made hundreds of thousands of dollars with absolutely no middleman.

C.K.’s success and many others like it show that in the future, business will be done and money will be made differently in the future, but they will still happen.

Shackling the Internet’s growth in the U.S. to perennially stubborn and selfish groups like the MPAA and RIAA could be one of the worst decisions Congress ever makes.

Faculty Association President Laura Frey

After months of admonishing the administration for secrecy, Faculty Association leadership seems to have become what they hate.

Following the Thursday announcement that a three-quarters vote of FA members was in favor of a contract agreement with Central Michigan University, FA President Laura Frey refused to give details of the voting to media outlets and, more importantly, to FA members.

As tensions erupted between administrators and FA members following a strike on the first day of fall classes, Frey rightfully spoke out against the university for its lack of transparency.

Too often information has been hidden from the public eye until an outside organization forces the university’s hand. The perfect example is in documents related to the College of Medicine, which weren’t released until Central Michigan Life, the Academic Senate and the FA all requested the information be made available through the Freedom of Information Act.

And as the old adage goes, one must practice what they preach. Refusing to release numbers and reveal potential division with the FA’s ranks to its own members makes the leadership lose its transparent righteousness, and instead the union looks just like another organization out to serve its own ends.

While the FA isn’t required make the numbers public, deciding not to release them to union members could cause unnecessary tension by not knowing how close or far from consensus they ultimately came.

Had the members been informed of the count on Thursday, it’s unlikely there would have been much, if any, conflict. Granted, the information would have almost assuredly leaked to the media, but that’s just a reality of maintaining a large organization.

How much does the FA really benefit by keeping tight control of these figures?

After all, voters would have been none too pleased if the 2008 election was boiled down to a simple “Yep, Obama won!” from the polling places instead of an actual breakdown of where the nation’s choices were made and why.