First lady Michelle Obama visited Wayne State U. to promote leadership and growth in education. She addressed more than 5,000 people seeking a glimpse Wednesday morning.

“I hope you realize how much potential you have and how capable you are of living up to that potential,” she said to the gathering of students and mentors.

Obama focused her attention on student educational growth but also recognized the challenge present during difficult times.

“This city in particular has known its share of hard times,” she said, “you have experienced more grieving than any one city should have to bear.”

But she shifted to a more positive outlook and offered hope to future leaders.

“I’m looking at our future right now, it’s all of you – and it’s a beautiful sight,” she said.

Her encouraging words embraced responsibility and energized students to discover possibilities awaiting them.

Obama continued to relate the importance of community involvement and assistance to the students. She encouraged them to not only take responsibility for themselves but for others and for their community.

She suggested communities that are kept clean and safe will further contribute to educational growth.

Obama also invited students to try new things – things in which she regrets – like traveling abroad and participating in student exchange programs.

She told the students that these endeavourers will show them the similarities shared by students from around the world.

Nevertheless, Obama’s agenda was education. She acknowledged the difficulties of finishing school when the odds are against the student. She also recognized the challenge of uncertainty and the unfamiliar nature of success.

“I imagine that right now there are some of you here at Wayne State who are the first in your families to make it to college,” she said as she continued the need for family support.

As she concluded her address, Obama mentioned that there are two kinds of people in life: those who give up and those who do not and said “it’s the folks who don’t who make all the difference.”

Prior to exiting the stage, the first lady offered her continued support –- along with the president’s –- for hope and educational leadership. She gazed out to the future leaders and urged them to “study hard, dream big, hope deeply and never give up.”

Obama was preceded by a special gathering of local politicians, area business leaders and famous celebrities including Earvin “Magic” Johnson, who led the forum, and famed film producer Spike Lee.

Johnson, who encountered many challenges as a youth, gave hope to students.

“Just because I grew up poor doesn’t mean I had poor dreams,” he said.

Upon final comments, businesswoman Debbie Dingell, who is also a WSU Board of Governors member, pushed for student success.

“You can’t quit, can’t get lazy and can’t blame anyone else,” she said as she encouraged students to fight the odds placed against them.

Wednesday’s forum sought to re-engage a metropolitan area of students and leaders who have lost direction over the years. The fundamental basics of education and leadership potential appeared to be key in instructing a new generation of leaders.

“The simplest and surest way for you to live up to that potential is to do just one thing,” Obama said, “and that ‘s keep focusing on your education.”

The prosecution in the trial of Johannes Mehserle, the former BART Police officer charged with second-degree murder for the New Year’s Day 2009 shooting of passenger Oscar Grant, has filed a request to compel former BART Police Officer Tony Pirone, who now lives in North Carolina, to travel to Los Angeles to testify in the case.

In the request, dated May 4 and made public this week, prosecutor Scott Jackson calls Pirone a “necessary and material” witness for the prosecution’s case, and requests that he be present between June 7 and June 25.

Citing Pirone’s “hostility towards the prosecution in this case,” Jackson asks for an “attendance hearing” to be held in North Carolina, and says that the prosecution will ask for his extradition if he does not appear.

Pirone was on duty at the Fruitvale BART station on New Year’s Day 2009, when Mehserle shot Oscar Grant.

Cell phone videos recorded by onlookers depict Pirone striking Grant and using a racial epithet prior to the shooting, making him a controversial figure in the case.

Pirone’s lawyer Bill Rappaport has argued that both actions were defensive moves, claiming the officer struck Grant only after Grant himself had become violent and that he had only parroted the racial slur after Grant had said it.

Grant family attorney John Burris has called Pirone one of the primary aggressors in the case, claiming the former BART officer’s actions heightened tensions and may have led to the killing.

Pirone was fired by BART in April after a third party independent report recommended that he be terminated for his actions on Jan. 1, 2009. The former officer gave the initial order to arrest Grant before the fatal shooting incident.

Pirone also appears on the defense’s witness list for the trial. His testimony is expected to be crucial in establishing the events leading up to the shooting and Mehserle’s state of mind.

Pirone’s expenses for traveling to and attending the trial will be paid for by the state of California, Jackson writes.

A final pre-trial hearing in the case will be held June 1 in Los Angeles, where the trial has been moved due to concerns about whether Mehserle could receive a fair trial in Alameda County. Judge Robert Perry will rule on a motion by Grant family attorney John Burris to strike him from the defense witness list, and will decide how much, if any, of the testimony of defense video expert Michael Schott will be permitted at trial.

Jury selection in the case begins June 2, with opening arguments expected on June 10.

The government of Greece spent much more than it has taxed for many years, and built up a pile of debt. With the recent economic crisis, tax revenues plummeted, unemployment rose and government deficits soared.

That part of the Greek story is very similar to the United States. What is concerning many right now is what came next in Greece, and what could happen to us in the United States if we aren’t careful.

Greek debt in terms of GDP was already one of the highest in Europe before the crisis hit, and the deficit in 2009 ran up to 13.6 percent of GDP, leaving them a total debt-to-GDP ratio at around 125 percent.

That may just sound like a bunch of numbers, but the simple interpretation is Greece was in major shock, and because of the crisis, it left them no choice but to keep borrowing.

The result was a loss of faith by the credit markets. Investors started doubting Greece’s ability to pay it off, so they demanded higher payments on Greek bonds to account for that risk. This became a self-fulfilling prophecy – higher rates led to increased costs just to maintain debt, and the increased costs made it impossibly difficult for Greece to make its debt payments.

This is called a debt spiral, and one of the lessons from Greece is how alarmingly fast it occurs. Debt can be like a slippery slope that leads right off a cliff.

A few years ago, Greece was highly leveraged, but the markets had faith in their ability to pay. In 2007, credit default swaps (CDS, an instrument whose value indicates the market’s fear of default) on Greek debt were trading at nearly nothing.

Even in the midst of the economic crisis, people were buying Greek debt at a relatively low-risk premium. In September of 2008, CDS on Greek five-year debt indicated a low 0.5 percent chance of default, and in September of 2009, they were still at a meager 1 percent.

But early this year, the markets quickly turned on Greece, with CDS and bond rates shooting up. The country surely would have defaulted if the European Union and International Monetary Fund hadn’t come in with a massive bailout, and even with that, Greece isn’t out of the woods.

So the question is: Should we be concerned about the United States possibly falling into a debt spiral?

The answer is a bit complicated.

For longtime budget hawks and Tea Party-type conservatives who are mostly new to worrying about the budget, the answer is an unequivocal “yes.” They see our large outstanding federal debt, our large ongoing budget deficits and looming unfunded federal entitlement obligations, and see a country not far from where Greece is now.

Many partisans also seem to believe the threat of a U.S. government debt spiral is imminent. They imagine a government takeover that is quashing the free market, and assume runaway government spending is going to soon bankrupt the nation.

Every week, the fair-and-balanced Wall Street Journal publishes another story, editorial or Op-Ed suggesting that the markets are sending signals they are losing faith in U.S. recovery from debt, and we are about to step onto that slippery slope.

Fortunately, economic reality doesn’t exactly share this point of view. The yield on U.S. debt issues is actually low, indicating that capital markets have tremendous faith in our government’s ability to handle its debt right now.

You may have read stories in The Journal about recent yield increases, but notice how they all seem to ignore the fact we’ve only just bounced up from historically low rates to rates that are merely very low.

There are also low prevailing rates on other dollar assets, like a special kind of inflation-protected treasury called “TIPS,” and U.S. corporate debt in general, which show that the world generally regards dollar-denominated assets as a safe place to invest, and that concerns about inflation are low.

The reason for this faith is in the fundamentals. While the United States has unemployment and deficit-to-GDP ratios that are only slightly smaller than Greece’s, other factors are much different.

For one, the United States has monetary independence. Greece doesn’t, as it uses the Euro, which is controlled by the European Union as a whole.

We use the dollar, and it’s our dollar, so our Federal Reserve can tighten or loosen monetary policy as needed. What that means is the country can use inflation as a pressure release valve on debt, making debt repayments easier by deflating the real value of outstanding debt.

This prospect is alarming to some people, because they fear this power will be abused. They are concerned the government will just resort to inflating away debt rather than dealing with it, perhaps leading to damaging hyperinflation.

This fear is misguided, though, for a couple of reasons. First, realize the only thing worse than having the option to print money when debt builds up too much is not having the option to print money when debt builds up.

Second, the fear of hyperinflation is misguided because we simply aren’t there yet. While we have unemployment and deficits that are similar to Greece’s, our government doesn’t nearly have the debt load.

Greece is struggling with a 125 percent debt-to-GDP ratio, while the United States public debt sits at a relatively comfortable ratio of 67 percent of GDP.

More disconnecting than that is how much better the U.S. economy looks going forward. Greece has heavier debt that is forcing their government to take strict “austerity measures,” which, besides causing human pain, also serve to suppress the overall economy. They also, again, lack monetary independence, so they can’t use even mild inflation as a tool to rebalance their economy.

So Greece is projected to have stagnant growth in the near-future. By contrast, the United States is already experiencing economic growth, and should continue to do so.

That’s very important, because all else being equal, a growing economy runs smaller deficits and helps reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio. Economic growth is probably the easiest way to reduce that ratio to safe levels.

For that reason, we should be thankful to have the debt wiggle room – which Greece does not – to afford such significant government interventions in the economy right now.

The budding recovery we are having is thanks in no small part to the bank bailouts, the stimulus bill and the very loose monetary policy that many are complaining so loudly about.

But, while these vociferous complaints seem misguided in the short-run, they aren’t entirely wrong in the long-run.

We do have a serious entitlement problem on the horizon. Even right now, with the surge in discretionary spending on things like the stimulus bill, most government money is just spent on either the military, social security, Medicaid or Medicare.

This leaves us with two major budget challenges. The first is that none of these is easy to cut, for political and practical reasons, making it hard to get the budget in balance.

The second is that Medicare spending in particular is about to explode, as health care costs continue to rise and a huge demographic wave of Baby Boomers approaches the eligible age, meaning the deficit will eventually grow if we just coast on autopilot.

While we aren’t so much like Greece now, if we don’t make a change, in some number of years we will find ourselves in the same situation the Greeks now face.

It would be folly to derail the economic recovery by making cuts now, but at some point not far off, we will have to muster the resolve to make painful decisions about how much our government spends and how much we are willing to tax ourselves to pay for it.

Perhaps St. Augustine described the predicament best with his famous prayer: “Grant me chastity and continence … but not yet.”

– Sanjai Tripathi is an Oregon State U. graduate student in business administration.

First, it was “Reform Wall Street.” Then it was “Reform the Financial Services Industry.” And all the while, where were the voices shouting for a closer look at the regulators? More than the laws, the industry, or the pavement of Wall Street, the real institution that needs to be reformed is the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. When I was asked by a senior member of the House Committee on Financial Services about Mary L. Shapiro’s appointment to the chairmanship of the SEC, I simply said that she was the sergeant at the donut shop while Bernard “Bernie” L. Madoff absconded with old ladies’ pensions. She’s another card in an old deck of the dysfunctional world of financial regulatory oversight. If I sound cynical, it’s because I have been around Wall Street and the financial-services business for over 35 years. And nothing ever changes!

The SEC is the front line in efforts to defend those old ladies from the Madoffs of Wall Street. As an enforcer of the Federal Securities Laws, a reformed and effective SEC would be apolitical and better able to respond in a 21st century manner to regulatory infractions, while addressing and changing outdated rules that hurt America’s competitiveness. Today’s regulatory regime must be replaced. It is ineffective in policing the market and holding people accountable. It must institute common-sense rules, conscious of a rapidly changing landscape that would put America, and our financial marketplace, back in a competitive position within the global markets.

History has shown that nearly every attempt by the SEC to change or introduce an important new rule has been politically and emotionally charged thanks to entrenched SEC staff members who have been asleep at the switch for years, or commission members who are beholden to political interests. Sadly, as a result, many a needed reform takes years to move forward and go into effect—if at all.

The SEC has always been ruled by commissioners appointed by the president. There are four commissioners, two Republicans and two Democrats, and a chairperson. The incoming president chooses two commissioners from his or her party. Once the commission is formed, the inevitable political bickering begins, with nary a beneficial outcome to Wall Street or Main Street.

To those who deny that there are serious flaws with the current procedures for determining commission members, I ask that they seriously consider that the majority of important commission votes have ended up strictly along party lines—three-to-two or two-to-three. Most recently, the vote to bring suit against what President Obama has implied as the center of all evil on Wall Street—Goldman Sachs—broke down to a vote of three Democrats against two Republicans. It was blatantly obvious to everyone that the SEC was politically motivated to bring this suit now so as to move the financial reform bill forward in the Congress. Whether true or not, that’s the perception—and we all know that people buy and sell stocks all the time based on perception and rarely on the reality. On the New York Stock Exchange we’d say, “Buy the rumor, and sell the news.” The perception that Goldman Sachs and many, if not all, of the investment banks on Wall Street are crowded with evil, greedy people fuels a perception that leads to a cancerous cynicism and the erosion of confidence. The American capital markets, which are based upon trust and confidence, hang in the balance. Standing on their own, laws don’t instill trust and confidence. Laws with competent and fair enforcement do engender market vitality, confidence, and trust.

Today’s SEC is too political and a fiendish meritocracy. Underpaid and undereducated, the SEC staff and enforcement personnel must bring home the bacon to headquarters, or their jobs are on the line. (Was Shapiro’s deciding vote against Goldman intended to make up for her sin of oversight with Madoff?) The SEC staff, like the traffic cop at the end of the month, must meet a quota for writing tickets—or, in effect, they must find some dirt on the companies they examine, whether it’s there or not.

There was a time when the regulated worked with the regulators as partners, in the spirit of assisting the regulated to operate within the rules and more effectively. In those days, a first infraction merited a warning, a second infraction for the same offense got you a ticket and maybe a fine, and a third infraction led to stiff fines and much more serious consequences.

The above is not the case in today’s enforcement practices on Wall Street. Today, an SEC examiner comes to do an audit with a preconceived notion that there is something illegal happening. Then he or she finds something that isn’t illegal, forms the perception that it is illegal, and ties up the firms and the SEC’s legal apparatus for years. The only people getting rich here are the lawyers.

Our elected officials and regulators would have us believe that we can regulate the greed out of the markets. I promise you that it’s never going to happen. But what we can have is a shift to a corporate culture in which employees at any firm who see dishonorable behavior known to be illegal or not in the best interest of the firm are encouraged, if not rewarded, to bring their concerns to the compliance department or the company’s office of legal council. This is critically important to restore a code of honor and ethical behavior in these companies where the temptation to succumb to greed is all too great.

Beyond this, America needs an SEC that is independent and not politically motivated, with a staff that is well-educated and knowledgeable about the Securities Laws. Accepting this, I believe we have a chance at building an enforcement and rule-making regime that gives America the best chance to compete in the global capital markets of the 21st century.

– Walter B. Schubert is CEO of The Schubert Group and founding member and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. He is a third generation member of the New York Stock Exchange with more than 20 years of experience on the trading floor of the Exchange.

In November 2010, California voters will consider a ballot initiative that would legalize marijuana in the state. The proposed law includes restrictions on sale and use, such as a minimum purchase age of 21, but the bill gives marijuana roughly the same legal status as alcohol. Early polls suggest the measure will pass, although full-scale debate has not yet occurred.

Marijuana legalization is a far bigger step than decriminalization or medicalization, which have already occurred in California and other states. Decriminalization legalizes possession of small amounts of marijuana, but it does not eliminate the underground market or permit easy taxation. Medicalization is closer to legalization, but it still leaves producers and consumers in a legal gray area and collects less revenue than legalization.

Should California, or the country, legalize marijuana? Yes, for a multitude of reasons.

Legalization will move the marijuana industry above ground, just as the repeal of alcohol prohibition restored the legal alcohol industry. A small component of the marijuana market might remain illicit—moonshine marijuana rather than moonshine whiskey—but if regulation and taxation are moderate, most producers and consumers will choose the legal sector, as they did with alcohol.

Legalization would therefore eliminate most of the violence and corruption that currently characterize marijuana markets. These occur because, in underground markets, participants cannot resolve disputes via non-violent mechanisms such as lawsuits, advertising, lobbying, or campaign contributions. Instead, producers and consumers in these markets use violence to resolve disputes with each other and bribery or violence to resolve disputes with law enforcement. These features of “vice” markets disappear when vice is legal, as abundant experience with alcohol, prostitution, and gambling all demonstrate.

Legalization would result in numerous other benefits. Medical marijuana patients would no longer suffer legal limbo or social stigma from using marijuana to treat nausea from chemotherapy, glaucoma, or other conditions. Infringements on civil liberties and racial profiling would decline, since victimless crimes are a key cause of such police behavior. Quality control would improve because sellers could advertise and establish reputations for a consistent product, allowing consumers to choose low or high-potency marijuana.

Legalization would also generate budgetary savings for state and federal governments, both by eliminating expenditures on enforcement and by allowing taxation of legalized sales. I recently estimated that the net impact would be a deficit reduction of about $20 billion per year, summed over all levels of government.

The one impact of legalization that might be undesirable is an increase in marijuana use, but the magnitude of this increase is likely to be modest. The repeal of alcohol prohibition in the U.S. produced about a 20 percent increase in use, while Portugal’s 2001 de facto legalization of marijuana did not cause any measurable increase; indeed, use was lower afterward. Across countries, use rates for marijuana show little connection to the strictness of the prohibition regime. The Netherlands has virtual legalization, for example, yet use rates do not greatly differ from those in the United States.

An increase in marijuana use, moreover, is not necessarily bad. If the ballot initiative passes, people who would like to use marijuana but abstain due to prohibition would be able to consume responsibly; legalization would allow them to enjoy marijuana without fear of arrest or incarceration and without concern over quality. Some new users might generate adverse consequences for themselves or others, such as driving under the influence, but most irresponsible users are disregarding the law and consuming already.

Legalization will not, of course, eliminate all negatives of marijuana use. But just as the harms of alcohol prohibition were worse than the harms of alcohol itself, the adverse effects of marijuana prohibition are worse than the unwanted consequences of marijuana use. Legalization is therefore the better policy.

The ideal way to legalize marijuana is for the federal government to end its ban, while allowing each state to regulate and tax marijuana as it sees fit. This would circumvent the complicated constitutional issues that will arise if the California initiative passes, as federal law would still prohibit marijuana.

But California’s initiative is nevertheless a valuable step, since the federal government is not yet ready to legalize. The California bill brings attention to the issue and, if adopted, will encourage other states and the federal government to follow suit.

The U.S. experiment with marijuana prohibition is just as misguided as was its earlier experiment with alcohol prohibition. We learned our lesson once; it is time to learn it again.

– Jeffrey A. Miron is a senior lecturer and the Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Economics at Harvard U. and is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.

Christiane Amanpour—CNN’s former chief international correspondent and future host of ABC’s “This Week”—said that her “first act of courage” as the 2010 Class Day speaker at Harvard U. would be to remove her suit jacket in Wednesday afternoon’s “incredibly hot” weather, a reported 88 degrees.

Amanpour urged students to find their passions, travel the world in an age of increasing global interconnectivity, and—above all else—be informed citizens.

Along the way, she alluded to a variety of historical figures ranging from Robert F. Kennedy to Elizabeth Taylor’s seventh husband, the Republican senator John W. Warner.

Most notably, however, her speech referenced former Secretary of State George C. Marshall’s commencement address, delivered on the same spot 63 years before and considered among the most famous in Harvard’s history.

In his June 1947 address, Marshall articulated the need for massive American support for the rebuilding of Europe, which had been devastated during World War II. According to Amanpour, Marshall’s words ring true in a world in which the United States still must determine its role in the future development of countries like Afghanistan and Haiti.

“America’s challenges today remain the same,” Amanpour said, echoing Marshall’s sentiment that “what seems far away will nevertheless affect you even here.”

Amanpour said that as a journalist, she has to come believe deeply in people’s responsibility to keep themselves informed, adding that she hopes members of the class of 2010 will consider becoming journalists after graduation.

“I am a true believer in the power of this profession to be a force for good,” she said. “Where would we be without a press that’s uncovered injustice, corruption, inhumanity—or a press that’s on the cutting edge of reform, civil rights, desegregation and of all the smaller but vital issues that affect us every single day?”

Amanpour noted, however, that she is often troubled by the lack of substantive discussion in public discourse.

“I believe so deeply in the promise of America and Americans that it does frustrate me to see the limited discussion of important issues in public spaces,” she said. “And yet as I travel all over the world, people know everything about you and everything about your country.”

At the end of her speech, Amanpour recounted her own career path, which began after she arrived at CNN in Atlanta after her own graduation with only $100 and a suitcase. She said she worked nights and weekends to achieve her goals and reminded the graduating seniors that “there’s no such thing as effortless success.”

But Amanpour, who said that she, too, will graduate from her “alma mater” of CNN this fall, sympathized with the graduates she addressed.

“I’m sure that all of us graduates here today share same sense of excitement, the same sense of promise of a brave new adventure, the shadow of fear, trepidation, and anxiety as we hurl ourselves out of our comfort zones,” she said.

“I think we are witnessing one of the USA’s worst ecological disasters ever,” Linda Walters, professor of biology at U. Central Florida, said about the oil rig explosion of April 20. “The damaged area will extend for many hundreds to thousands of miles and will persist for many, many years.”

Last month, British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon oilrig exploded 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana. It resulted in 17 injured workers, 11 presumed dead and enough oil leakage to severely threaten industries and wildlife that thrive off the Gulf of Mexico.

According to Walters, the currents and weather patterns ultimately predict the arrival date of the oil to Florida’s shores and inland waters, but state and federal agencies are conducting baseline monitoring on the west coast and Florida Keys to prepare for the inevitable.

“Everything living in the path of the oil will be negatively impacted, from microscopic plankton to swimming turtles, fishes, dolphins, manatees and seabirds to all the sessile organisms living on coastlines where the oil comes ashore,” Walters said.

Scott Hagan, associate professor of Civil, Environmental and Construction Engineering and director of the UCF Coastal Hydroscience Analysis, Modeling and Predictive Simulations Laboratory, worries about the vast flood plains of the Gulf states and the possibility of a hurricane hitting landfall during this year’s hurricane season, which begins June 1.

“A fast moving hurricane could literally swamp the landfall location with oil,” Hagan said.

For the Eco Advocates, a student organization that promotes awareness of environmental issues at UCF, the oil spill hits close to home.

Prior to the April 20 explosion, Eco Advocates had been actively pressuring legislatures to keep oil drilling off Florida’s coast and performing mock oil spills in front of the Student Union to inform the student body of the potential dangers and alternative energy usage.

“I really hope that we can all learn from this environmental disaster and keep drilling off the coasts of Florida,” said Brian Homberger, a UCF junior biology major and the president of Eco Advocates. “I think this catastrophe showed us that off shore drilling is still very dangerous to the environment, wildlife and local communities. Opening Florida’s coasts to drilling will absolutely not solve this country’s energy crisis.”

However, it is unlikely that an event like this will cause a cease in offshore drilling.

Peter Jacques, associate professor of political science at UCF, said that what is happening now is typical of past oil spills.

The pattern is for a reaction only when disaster strikes. Jacques explained that if gasoline prices rise significantly people would forget about the repercussions of drilling.

According to Jacques, an increase in prices at the pump will not be the only blow to the economy. The fishing and tourism industries are two major pillars of the economy for Gulf states.

Federal officials placed a fishing ban of a 46,000 square-mile chunk on the Gulf of Mexico.

As for Florida’s tourism industry, the state’s main source of revenue, the threat of oil has potential tourists thinking twice about vacation plans.

“Florida is one of the most visited states in the United States,” said Chad Persaud, a UCF sophomore political science major and team leader of the College Democrats at UCF. “We attract people from all over the world and our economy thrives on tourism. From Panama City Beach to the beaches of Key West, people are drawn to our waters.”

Katie Deines Fourcin, a spokeswoman for Expedia.com, told The New York Times that bookings to hotels on Florida’s West Coast dropped about 15 percent in the three weeks after the spill.

There is no telling what will happen to that percentage when oil reaches Florida.

“When I read about the oil spill, I knew that it could have great economic ramifications,” Levon Mikaelian, a UCF junior economics major, said. “Since Gulf states have large tourist industries, a loss of tourism-related revenue could lead to a loss of revenue in many sectors of their economies.”

As bleak as the outcome of the oil spill may seem, people everywhere are uniting to help with the effort to have it cleaned up.

Walters explained that many organizations are accepting long term volunteers to help clean Florida beaches of shoreline debris before oil washes up and creates toxic waste.

For a more local approach, Homberger encourages students to get involved with the environmental movement occurring at UCF.

“Students can do anything as simple as biking to class, carpooling, or taking the shuttle in order to decrease our dependence on petroleum,” Homberger said.

Every American remembers how the events of September 11 felt. We remember where we were when we heard the grim news and saw the towers crumble to the ground. We remember our shock at seeing such a violent scene in our own backyard. We remember the immediate pangs of visceral anxiety mixed with fear and hatred. And most vividly, we remember our seething desire for revenge – to receive our just wergild from those responsible in the form of carpet bombs and invasions.

And we received it. As bombs fell on Kandahar and Baghdad, it felt oddly good to know that the innocent lives lost that day would be avenged.

But where did this bloodletting instinct get us as a nation?

It got us mired in two intractable wars, alienated large segments of an entire faith and left thousands more Americans dead. Indeed, the very conflicts intended to make Americans safer from acts of terrorism only gave rise to a new generation of zealots.

So when Faisal Shahzad leaves a Nissan Pathfinder in New York’s Times Square loaded with a homemade explosive, it appears to be time for a gut check. We must consider the plausibility of another attack on American soil and how we as a nation will, and more importantly should, respond.

Today, a new more shadowy form of extremism stands in opposition to the United States. Known widely by the ominously vague term “The Narrative,” Muslim extremists from Yemen to Denver are being radicalized by a particularly simple and intoxicating recruiting tactic.

Playing on growing anti-American sentiments in the Muslim world, Al Qaeda and other organizations preach over the Internet and in coffee shops that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are just the two most salient examples of an American-led Western crusade against Islam. Based on this narrative, newly radicalized apostles are expected to fight back violently on behalf of their family and faith.

This civilizational duel pits Islam against America. And while the vast majority of all Muslims despise such irrationality and violence, it manages to enrage the socially marginal and the criminally insane.

Most notably today, for organizations like Al Qaeda, The Narrative allows them to virally reach out to previously unreachable locales such as Bridgeport, Conn., or Minneapolis. The Narrative creates terrorism from a process akin to spontaneous combustion. No longer capable of traditional recruiting due to increased global vigilance, The Narrative has taken on a more diffuse nature. Its decentralized nature allows terrorist groups licking their wounds to continue to operate.

Shahzad is simply the most recent example in a string of terrorist plots in the United States. US Army Maj. Nidal Hasan killed 13 people at Fort Hood last year after reaching out to a radical cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki. And let us not forget the Christmas Day bomber or the countless arrests made each month by the FBI in regards to terrorism.

Examples abound of attempted acts of terrorism; the consensus in the national security community seems to be that we must prepare for the worst.

While the concept of inevitability scares the daylights out of me, there is no way to prevent every potential individual terrorist plot. Even national security veterans such as Richard Clarke appear convinced that how we react to an act of terrorism is equally as important as how we prevent it.

Therefore, as a nation, we need to combat our chronic, but far too natural, desire to seek retaliation. We need a paradigm shift when it comes to national security: no longer should a terrorist attack mean conformity and a spike in groupthink. No more cartes blanches for needless wars simply because we hurt.

Instead, our reaction must be one of coming together to right the wrongs that underlie the act of terrorism. Bombs at times are tactically necessary, but they must always be overshadowed by development and diplomacy – even in the face of national catastrophe.

Investment and open-armed diplomacy are the only ways to remind the next generation of Muslims that they have a stake in the global community’s future, a community where the United States is a benevolent partner.

And what better time to prove one’s commitment to rapprochement with a nebulous enemy than at one’s weakest and most vulnerable moment? When a nation might be justified in lashing out violently but refrains, that is when there is the most potential for reconciliation.

In my view, one Peace Corps participant goes much further than one soldier in both symbolically and tangibly combating terrorism. Radicalism would drastically decrease if families from Egypt to Somalia could provide food, health care and education for their children thanks to increased American investment.

Going forward, we as citizens and leaders must honor the memory of the victims of 9/11 by not falling prey to the vicious cycle of inane violence which currently defines the war on terror.

The U. Kansas Athletics program has shined in recent years.

Men’s basketball is the top team in the Big 12 and the football team has seen some of its best years in the past decade.

But while all that occurred, Athletics Director Lew Perkins missed a scam worth $1.03 million in tickets.

“It caught me totally off guard,” Perkins said. “Things were going so good. We were raising a lot of money, we were selling a lot of tickets, we were winning. Maybe we just got a little complacent.”

Perkins, along with Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little, University General Counsel Jim Pottorff and investigator Jack Focht of Foulston Siefkin LLP, spoke Wednesday about the newly released reports of a ticket scandal within the athletics department.

According to the report conducted by Foulston Siefkin, a Wichita law firm, at least 17,609 men’s basketball game tickets, 2,181 football game tickets, parking passes and Arrowhead Club passes were sold for personal gain.

Those numbers are just from 2005-2010, but the process began years before.

The report identified six former Kansas Athletics employees or contractors, who were unable to be subpoenaed: Charlette Blubaugh, former associate athletics director of ticket operations and her husband, Tom Blubaugh, a former contracted consultant; Rodney Jones, former assistant athletics director for the Williams Educational Fund; Ben Kirtland, former associate athletics director of development; Brandon Simmons, former assistant athletics director of sales and marketing; and Jason Jeffries, former assistant director of ticket operations.

“It is not easy to learn that people you trusted let you down,” Perkins said.

The scandal went on for years without anyone finding out. Those profiting off tickets not only had the trust of the athletic department, they were also experts.

“You had some of the best auditors in the country auditing this department,” Focht said. “And they fooled them.”

Though it was a large sum of money, the effect the stolen tickets had was minimal. At the worst, Williams Fund Donors would only sit a row or two back from where they could have been. And the pool of available tickets for season-ticket holders was slightly smaller.

Perkins blamed himself upfront for not discovering the wrongdoings earlier.

“I accept responsibility because I am the athletic director and I let this happen under my watch,” he said. “I thought we had just about every safeguard in place.

He said this is the first time he has been involved in a situation like this and he is disappointed, but not discouraged. Now that the problem has surfaced, it can be fixed, he said.

To prevent such acts from occurring again, Gray-Little and Perkins suggested the following may be implemented:

— Strengthening internal control for handling and distributing tickets

— Hiring a full-time forensic auditor to ensure financial integrity

— Establishing a whistle-blowing hotline

Gray-Little made it clear the six scalpers will be punished, not Kansas Athletics, the victim in the scandal. Also, Perkins is not in danger of losing his job nor has the university violated NCAA rules thus far.

Now that the information is out, the rebuilding of the Kansas Athletic reputation can begin.

“Now we know about it,” Perkins said, “we can correct this. Just think if we didn’t have an idea, there would still be something wrong. I look at this as a positive.”