Spencer Thomas
Sophomore,
History
The U’s football win over Georgia Tech in the Emerald Bowl!
It sort of solidified a season of disappointment. I didn’t go, but I wanted to-I had to work.
Nationally, I would say the West Virginia mine collapse.
That was just sad, to hear those initial reports and then realize it was just the opposite.
I think the reactions of the families were interesting.
The first thing on their minds was suing the mining company.
We’ve got this “sue, sue, sue” mentality, and no one’s willing to give anyone a break. It was a tough situation.
Katie
Pedersen
Freshman,
History/
English
I just transferred, but I know about the athletics at the U and stuff.
On a national level, obviously it’s Katrina-kind of a clich answer, but it had the biggest, most widespread effects.
I was in Nevada, and a lot of people didn’t even know what had happened until after.
The whole country was caught off-guard, and it wasn’t taken too seriously until later.
The blame lies in many places because there’s only so much that can be done, but we don’t take the time to think of how to react to things like that.
Christian Curry
Junior,
Pre-
Pharmacy
On campus, I’m gonna say the BYU game. I went, and it was awesome. Never have I seen the MUSS stick together so well. Nationally-well, the hurricane, obviously. I think a lot of racism went into the reporting. The media was depicting white people as getting supplies and black people as looting. I think there was a lot of media bias.
And then there’s the war in Iraq and all that fun stuff. I have mixed opinions on that. I’m glad Saddam Hussein was taken out of power, but we went in for the wrong reasons. We still haven’t found weapons of mass destruction.
The capture of Saddam has been the only worthwhile event of what’s been happening over there.
Jenny Gill
Senior, Mechanical Engineering
One of the biggest stories for me is that they’re building a new engineering building that will be finished next year-it will have better lab facilities, offices, classrooms. It will really help the graduate program, especially.
Nationally, I’d say the Iraq War. A couple of my friends are serving right now, and the stories they tell are so different from what the media reports. One of them is working in a machine shop, building desks for schools.
They’re helping get a fresh water supply.
It’s not that everybody in Iraq is against America-they say a lot of them love the soldiers.
Sara Oldroyd
Graduate
Student,
Nutrition
ASUU funding has affected me. I’m in a student advisory committee, and we didn’t get all the funding we wanted.
They were good to work with, though, and fair to everyone. It’s obviously hard.
Nationally, it’s the troop that got called to Iraq from my hometown of Richmond.
It really makes the war more real and personal. The 222nd-one of the guys died recently, he was our first casualty.
Warren
Anderson
Sophomore,
Chemistry
Bowling class, right here-that’s the biggest story of the year!
Man, it’s so early in the morning to be talking about this.
The earthquake in Pakistan was devastating for sure-I saw that on the news, how many people that affected.
I did Ramadan at the U because a friend of mine is Muslim, and he asked me to do it. It was to fund raise for the earthquake victims, and then we went to the dinner afterward.
Jeremy Hema
Freshman,
Behavioral Science
I think the biggest issue in our country is that people take families for granted. People don’t have good values and our nation is breaking because of it. A lot of people put the president down, but what’s important is what happens in the home-raising and nurturing children, since they’re the next generation.
If you watch TV, it lures people in with sexual content and violence. We need to strengthen our values and principles.
Bryan Burge
Junior, Business Marketing
The tsunami-the utter destruction that occurred. I don’t think any relief effort can be effective against something like that. It’s unimaginable.
As for locally…I’d like to say the Fiesta Bowl, but frankly, I’m a BYU fan. I’m not a student at the U, but the Eccles School of Business.
Vanessa Vicente
Freshman,
International Studies/
Political Science
Kelli McLaughlan
Freshman,
Political Science
Vicente: Nationally, it’ll probably be Hurricane Katrina-just how the federal government and FEMA didn’t react quickly.
No one really had any idea how bad it was.
McLaughlan: Didn’t it take Bush a long time to go down there and visit?
Vicente: Then there was that whole drama over the frat that stole the papers.
McLaughlan:Shame, shame.
Vicente: Bad Pikes, that was too bad.
Some kid wrote in about I-Week stuff.
Then there’s the construction of the library and stuff.
Freshman like us, we don’t know what we’re missing out on.
Kirsty
Massman
Freshman,
Undeclared
All the disasters.
The tsunami relief effort was better than the Hurricane Katrina relief effort, mostly because more countries were involved.
With Hurricane Katrina, other countries offered help, but Bush said we could do it on our own.
We did an OK job, but it could have been faster, and put less strain on us, if there had been more resources.