It’s funny how time has flown by so quickly this past year for me as a Daily Lobo columnist.
This year, I received the opportunity to be on the same page as some of the Lobo’s heavy hitters such as Richard Berthold and the always-controversial Jeremy Reynalds.
Other contributors of note would include campus rebel Ben Tucker and Laura Valdez, who always had an interesting point about being a Hispanic woman holding her own in a competitive world still dominated by men, many of Anglo/European stock.
Where does this place me? I never set out to be a columnist. I wrote a piece intended as a letter or guest column relating to an article I read on the Internet about dating and relationships, which dealt with whether the nice guy could finish first. I argued that many popular culture norms pitted the nice guy to finish last, though I personally feel that nice guys can finish first or with something more lasting.
I did not expect a regular column to come about from such a piece, yet I was invited to hop aboard the train called the Daily Lobo. It has been an interesting ride for a first-year writer.
Other columns that rank as my favorite include my piece that poked fun at the media-driven beauty standards of our time, the Halloween column about American satanist Anton LaVey and the controversial piece about the NMPIRG campaign to prohibit the Phillip Morris Company from appearing on campus for job fairs and promotions.
On that note, I just want to clarify that it was not about a personal liking for Phillip Morris, but the concept of censorship. When one needs to resort to censorship of another’s point of view they do not like, it shows their argument must not be strong enough to stand on its own merits in the marketplace of ideas.
It also sets a bad precedent because, today, we may not like Phillip Morris, and tomorrow, it may be a drive to censor Hershey Chocolate. Free speech is not always for the speech we like but also for what we do not like.
I would like to thank the Daily Lobo, and its staff for allowing me the privilege to write and to be as eccentric as I can be within its framework. I’d like to thank outgoing editor James Barron, who offered me the column when I did not expect to be granted one, and the copy editing staff, who received the dubious honor of editing my rambling pieces.
I would like to thank Richard Berthold for providing me with some material to write about, particularly free speech. I’d also like to thank Jeremy Reynalds, who was willing to have coffee with yours truly and discuss some of his viewpoints, which often are the cause of controversy on campus.
I cannot say what I will write about in the future. As of now, I have not gotten hot-headed enough to write about much, and I am very focused on the end of the semester.
I’d like to thank the UNM community for reading my work and responding from time to time, pro or con. I can only become better by reading the feedback.
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My final thanks goes out to my buddy Sabra, who has provided a good ear for some of my zany opinions, ideas and pipe dreams. She has been willing to listen to me carry on for longer periods than the movie “Gladiator.”
On that note, I want to wish the students of UNM a good finals week (what an oxymoron) and a great summer vacation.
