The Ranger (San Antonio, Tex.), Vol. 81, No. 22, Ed. 1 Friday, April 20, 2007 Page: 29 of 31
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34 • April 20, 2007
www.theranger.org • The Ranger
College needs to nurture j-students
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Texas Council on Family Violence gave are
Despite war in Iraq, 130,000 apply for political asylum here
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Viewpoint by
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Viewpoint by
Jared Solis
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gees today are as fortunate
to get out of harm’s way as
\ I was in 1991. I had lived.
the first 17 years of my life
overseas prior to coming to
the U.S. in 1996 right after
1 had finished high school.
My parents came to the U.S.
in 1979 while my mother
was pregnant. The plan was
for me to be born in the U.S.
so I would be a U.S. citizen.
That plan proved to be ben-
eficial to me' later in life.
Right after I was born, my parents went back
to Kuwait where I lived for the next 12 years until
Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi army invaded Kuwait on
Aug. 2, 1990.
My . mother, who is Palestinian, was born in
Kuwait, in J956, along with all of my maternal
■ uncles and aunt. On the other hand, my father,
who also is Palestinian, had moved to Kuwait from
the West Bank in 1970.
I recall that day when we learned of Iraq invad-
ing Kuwait. I was 12 years old and my brother was
8. We were all in shock and disbelief.
My father was in Baghdad on a business trip.
Our apartment building was right across a soc-
cer field from Prince Saad Al-Subah’s palace, the
experience of being the voice of the campus, it
must first be earned through disciplined writing
and responsible behavior.
The second misconception is that The Ranger
is a public relations publication. Journalism is
about telling the story as truthfully and respon-
sibly as possible, even if that means a party
involved is shown in a negative light.
Irresponsibility on our part lies within our
failure to afford the opportunity for all sides to
tell their story, and not necessarily their refusal
to tell us that story.
While there are departments that benefit
from the publicity that an article may generate,
if you read the stories carefully, you will find that
there is no agenda being pushed by the reporters
themselves. The only time opinions are given by
newspapers, is when editorials and viewpoints
are published like the one you are reading.
Finally, I believe that this campus may some-
times forget that The Ranger is a student-run
newspaper. This is important to put in perspec-
tive because as students, we are supposed to
be on a learning curve. It would be a huge
undertaking to put together a weekly newspaper
with a paid staff that has no other professional
responsibilities, yet the majority of the reporters
for The Ranger do it not only for the learning
experience but also for a grade. A lot of the
reporters are first-time students in the program
with other classes as to worry about as well.
I will be the first to admit we get things
wrong from time to time. We are taught that if
we cannot get something as simple as a phone
number correct, which I recently failed to do,
how can we be trusted as journalists to provide
other information correctly?
As an aspiring journalist, I can take that
blame and responsibility. I can take the cold
shoulder of someone refusing to give an inter-
view. I can take the snide criticism from others
on campus who don’t have the guts to do what
we do. That’s just part of the job.
As a student, however, my learning experi-
ence should be nurtured by the community on
this campus, just as it should be with any stu-
dent, and that should be the prevailing reputa-
tion of our newspaper and our school.
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the ACCD will help these numbers decrease.
I feel that Dr. Pamela Hill, who suggested
we start this program, really knows what an
asset this program can be for young ladies and
kaw I really hope she pushes this further.
I hear about numerous young ladies who Teaching young adults the warning signs
have been badly beaten and even killed on of violent relationships and how to prevent
and outside of campus because they are in them is an asset to them, not only in college
abusive relationships, and don’t know how to but in life in general.
get out of them before it’s too late. Vanessa Riojas
The numbers from the survey that the public relations sophomore
Texas Council on Family Violence gave are
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Determining which
school to go to,can depend
entirely on its reputation.
It was the reputation of
The Ranger and the jour-
nalism program at this
. college that first brought
me here. If you live in San
Antonio and you want to
be a newspaper reporter,
there is only one place to
go: The Ranger.
In my first semester
here, however, I quickly found that The Ranger
had another reputation altogether. The sentiment
around different parts of the campus seemed to
suggest that this paper never gets anything right.
I found faculty members to be apprehensive in
dealing with this newspaper and even refusing to
speak with me. I also have encountered depart-
ments that were upset that their events never get
enough coverage.
This is puzzling to me because having visited
and attended different schools in the past, this is
by far a superior journalism program that pro-
vides a tremendous service to this campus.
If not for The Ranger, how else would the
majority pf students be informed about the
possibility of additional parking -spaces? How
else would they know about the delayed arrival
of printed fall and summer class schedules?
How else would they know about deadlines for
upcoming scholarships? And all of these stories
were just in last week’s issue.
So if this college supposedly has it this good,
why all the negativity?
I believe the answer lies in the three
The Ranger may be falsely perceived.
Misconception No. 1 is that The Ranger is
composed of irresponsible tabloid reporters out
to sensationalize stories. This couldn’t be further
from the truth as evidenced by the newspaper’s
rigorous adherence to the Associated Press style
of newspaper reporting and the importance
placed on journalism ethics.
This is a tough course that doesn’t shy away
from the rules like a lot of other campus news-
papers do. For our reporters to benefit from the
Bank. They were both Jordanian citizens because
the West Bank was annexed to Jordan from
1948 until 1967, so our destination was Amman,
Jordan.
We left Kuwait on Jan. 15, 1991. That was the
deadline President George Bush had given for Iraqi
forces to withdraw from Kuwait. For us to get to
Amman, we had to drive through Baghdad.
There were no flights out of Iraq or Kuwait to
anywhere, so we had to drive. We got to Baghdad
about 6 a.m. Jan, 16, 1991. We decided to spend
the night at the Sheraton Hotel and head for
Amman early the next morning.
That night when I went to bed, I felt that some-
thing bad was going to happen.
Sure thing at 2 a.m., we woke up to the sound
of sirens and anti-air. guns.
The Gulf War had started!
We ran to the parking lot downstairs under the
hotel. It was transformed into a bomb shelter and
we spent our next three nights in it.
Here I was so glad to get out of Kuwait to get
out of harm’s way and now I’m stuck in Baghdad
while bombs are dropping all over the place.
We managed to get out three days later on Jan.
20. It took us 10 hours to get to Amman, and boy,
we were glad to make it.
I spent the next five years in Jordan attending
high school, and after I graduated, I came to San
Antonio.
Not so many Iraqi refu- royal heir to the throne at the time.
The palace was the second target on the Iraqis’
hit list for their first day of the invasion.
I can still see it as if it happened yesterday. The
Iraqi artillery parked on the highway by the.beach
and started the shelling.
I was on the patio, completely oblivious to the
long line of tanks on the beach. Then it started.
Having never heard gun shots or bombs before,
I thought somebody was chopping wood.
Well, they were not.
The noise was a semiautomatic machine gun
being fired inside the palace to warn the guards.
Right after that, hell broke loose and I ran
inside to my mother. The Iraqi tanks kept on firing
for at least 90 minutes before they stopped and
their paratroopers claimed the palace.
Between our apartment building and the palace
was a soccer field, one-quarter of a mile wide, so you
can imagine how close those bombs were dropping.
Our whole building was shaking so badly we
thought it was going to collapse any minute.
My mother, brother, house maid and I were all
holding on to each other and crying. We had never
experienced anything like this before."
Two weeks later, my father was back in Kuwait
once things calmed down.
Five months later, my parents decided to leave
Kuwait permanently for Jordan. _
Both of my parents’ roots go back to the West
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Jenifer A. Kane
..
When I look at the Iraqis today and what they
are going through because of the current war
conditions, I feel very fortunate that I was born in
the U.S. At least I had a country that is willing to
accept me any time.
There are 2.1 million Iraqi refugees all over the
Middle East today.
Every month there are estimates that say more
than 5,000 Iraqis are trying to leave their homes
because of the war, but nobody is willing to take
them.
One hundred and thirty thousand political
asylum applications are pending for the year 2006,
and the U.S. is only accepting 4,000 of them.
• Shisha Cafe owner Abdel-Majeed Al-Obaidij
an Iraqi fortunate enough to have married a U.S.
citizen of Iraqi descent, said that his family still
lives in Baghdad because they have no other place
to move to.
He came to the U.S. in 1999 and married his
wife in 2000. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen
in 2004.
“I got lucky and got a chance to come to the
U.S., and now I have a business and I’m doing
well, thank God, but what about all the Iraqis that
can’t afford to go anywhere, and they are stuck in
Iraq?” Al-Obaidi said.
“Will my family have to go through hell and
back just to visit the United States, and my mother
will never leave her home?” Al-Obaidi said.
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awful, and there has to be a way for the com-
Hopes to see prevention program munity to get those numbers down.
I truly believe that educating the first year
Editor: I really think the idea of trying to put or transferring students about this problem at
a program together to teach young adults --------’----J-------
about domestic and dating violence, sexual
assault, and stalking is one of the best ideas
the Alamo Community College District can
do for their students.
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San Antonio College. The Ranger (San Antonio, Tex.), Vol. 81, No. 22, Ed. 1 Friday, April 20, 2007, newspaper, April 20, 2007; San Antonio, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1354398/m1/29/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting San Antonio College.