Fail: Maine voters reject gay marriage law
Election day was a sad one for gay marriage supporters. According to an Associated Press article, voters in Maine repealed a state law that would have allowed same-sex couples to wed. The New York Times referred to the New England area as “”more accepting of same-sex marriage than any other region of the country,”” and this makes the election results all the more discouraging and disappointing.
This is reminiscent of California’s voter-approved ban on same-sex marriages in May, and it leads many to wonder about the future of gay marriage. Only five states have legalized same-sex marriage in the first place. The rejection of this law sends the message that supporters’ efforts will continue to be ignored. Supporters can only hope that determined same-sex marriage proponents will stay strong and fight until more states make this change. Iowa did so in May, and one can hope that this advancement will encourage those who have been let down by Maine’s situation. For not joining Iowa, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecticut on gay marriage legalization, Maine voters get a fail.
Fail: No excuse for WebMail failure
Most students and staff members didn’t need to read yesterday’s
Wildcat to learn about the WebMail outage, which was reported as the longest in its six years of use. Major WebMail delays began Monday and lasted for nearly 10 hours. Unfortunately, there were further delays on Tuesday morning.
With all the technological advancements of the past few years, university e-mail accounts are crucial educational tools. Students use their UA e-mail address to contact professors and other students, e-mail and save documents, communicate with professional sources and a myriad of other functions. In this day and age, students don’t always create a back-up plan in case their e-mail account is down for up to 10 hours at a time, and they shouldn’t have to.
Associate Director of the University Information Technology Services-Frontline Services Thomas Rees told the Wildcat that the major outage highlights the need for a new e-mail system, which the UA has just opted into. This was not the first time students have experienced WebMail difficulties, especially this semester, so Wildcats can only hope that Catmail will be more competent and reliable. For the slow-moving fix, WebMail gets a fail.
Incomplete: Lots of ‘no’s on major Tucson propositions
Yesterday, the majority of Tucson voters voted no on all four major propositions. Some propositions got more of a negative response than others. Proposition 200, which would have required 2.4 police officers per ever 1,000 citizens in the City of Tucson, saw an embarrassing loss. Proposition 400, which would allow the city to spend what it collects in revenues even if it exceeds what is normally allowed under state-mandated spending caps, was deemed too close to call as of press time. Education-oriented propositions 401 and 402 were also rejected by Tucson voters.
Proposition 402 would have funded more technological resources for the Tucson Unified School District, but the schools can survive without newer computers. Proposition 401 would have budgeted for full-day kindergarten. While 5-year-olds shouldn’t be forced into long school days as well as immersed into mainstream education if they’re not ready, it’s a shame that full-day kindergarten isn’t available due to budgetary constraints.
At the same time, Tucsonans cannot simply throw around their money during a recession, so perhaps these propositions, particularly the school district-targeted ones, are not what many voters need at present. In the past, voters may have been more enthusiastic about these sorts of propositions, and maybe they’ll be better received when the economic situation improves. For clearly voting with fiscal concerns in mind, Tucson voters get an incomplete.
— Editorials are determined by the opinions board and written by one of its members. They include Shain Bergan, Alex Dalenberg, Laura Donovan and Heather Price-Wright.
