About 30 people found themselves in KSC Interim President Melinda Treadwell’s living room last Monday. They squeezed in shoulder-to-shoulder and sat on folding chairs, old furniture and piano benches. They confined themselves to claustrophobia to celebrate two young Nepali girls and the partnership they represented between Keene State College and the Little Sisters Fund of Nepal.

contributed by Benajil Rai

KSC Professor Emeritus Len Fleischer is one of the individuals who is responsible for KSC’s partnership with the Nepali Scholarship fund. “We envision an international partnership of reciprocity between our Keene community and the incredibly vital work of this organization,” he said.

Fleischer’s vision began when he was in Nepal during a massive earthquake in April of 2015. The earthquake was devastating. According to The Atlantic, around 9,000 people were killed and more than 600,000 structures were destroyed.

Fleischer said 10,000 of the destroyed buildings were schools, and the destroyed schools led to a rise in an already prominent rate of sex trafficking of Nepali girls.

contributed by Benajil Rai

Fleischer then got in contact with the Little Sisters Fund, a scholarship fund based out of Nepal that helps underprivileged girls go to grade school in the country.

A girl going to school in Nepal is a big deal. Benajil Rai, one of the first KSC Nepali exchange students and direct beneficiary of the Little Sisters Fund, explained in a presentation the pros and cons of Nepal and its culture.

Rai said Nepal is a beautiful country, has diverse people and has hospitable people. “[But] Nepal has some dark facts,” she said.

Rai’s presentation showed that the education system there is oppressive and ignorant. It revealed that there is discrimination, and typically, only boys really go to school.

contributed by Puja Thapa

It said that Nepali girls are viewed as “financial black holes,” people who suck up money without any payoff.

The Little Sister’s Fund seeks to counter those conceptions by educating and empowering young Nepali women.

Rai said she wasn’t going to school when her father founded the Little Sister’s program. Without them, her education may have ended at grade three.

Rai said before she was accepted into the program, she had to go through a background check to make sure her family was financially disadvantaged. The fund does this to make sure it’s giving money to families that actually need it.

KSC Professor of Environmental Studies, Dr. Renate Gebauer, participated in Fleischer’s vision of international partnership by taking honors program students to study in Nepal. She said she has been going to Nepal since 2010 and takes students every two years.

contributed by Puja Thapa

The last time she visited Nepal, she visited one of the schools that the Little Sisters Fund operates out of. According to the Little Sisters Fund website, the organization serves 2,113 girls in the program in 70 schools in 20 school districts in Nepal. There are nine girls studying in the U.S. through the program.

Gebauer said she feels very highly of the school she visited, and that the schools do a lot to strengthen confidence and dignity. “They’re really doing a lot to make a difference,” she said.

She said she likes that they recognize sending a kid to school is not enough. The schools that are run by the Little Sisters Fund goes as far as making sure the children get the right amount of vitamins to stay healthy.

contributed by Puja Thapa

Gebauer also said it is important that the organization is run by Nepali people. She said she thinks it causes less confusion and means more than it would if westerners came in and ran the organization. “Even though I know a lot about Nepal, I think I would make a lot of mistakes, even with good intentions.”

Fleisher and Gebauer said they hope to continue and grow the mutual exchange between the Little Sisters Fund and KSC.

“The main reason I do all my work in Nepal,” Gebauer said, “is because we can learn so much. Just because someone is poor doesn’t mean they are uneducated.”

Editors note: Both Benajil Rai and Puja Thapa work as staff photographers for The Equinox.

Alex Fleming can be contacted at afleming@kscequinox.com

The classroom can be a daunting place for anyone with a learning difference. School can leave students feeling stupid, misunderstood and like they’ll never amount to anything due to their disability.

Keene State College alumnus and winner of the 2017 KSC Alumni Achievement Award Marcus Soutra is living proof that even with a learning difference, anything is possible.

Photo contributed by Rachel Carey

Soutra was awarded the KSC Alumni Achievement Award for his work at Eye to Eye, a national organization dedicated to helping people who are diagnosed with learning differences.

The KSC Alumni Achievement award is “Given to one whose professional achievement in his chosen field brings honor to Keene State College,” which according to KSC Professor Stephen Bigaj and Director of Disability Services at KSC Jane Warner, Soutra undoubtedly does.

According to the Eye to Eye website, Soutra was diagnosed with dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) when he was young. The stigma of his learning difference followed him throughout his childhood.

After high school, Soutra came to KSC specifically for KSC’s secondary education program. He said he knew he had a strength for working with young people through his work with the Boy Scouts and working as a camp counselor.

Soutra said when he first arrived at KSC, he struggled with the transition to college life. He eventually found Warner, who was “a huge asset.”

Photo contributed by Rachel Carey

Soutra is a big supporter of learning difference advocacy. While he was a student teacher, he told his students about his dyslexia and ADHD. He said his students, especially those with learning differences, responded positively.

They were willing to ask for help and were being bullied less.

During Soutra’s junior year, he stumbled upon the seminar that would shape his professional career. The seminar was given by Bigaj, and the topic was working with students with disabilities.

The seminar talked about secondary education and what teachers need to do to nurture higher aspirations in students with learning differences.

“For some reason, whatever I said really hit home with him and we just started connecting,” Bigaj said.

Soutra said the presentation really spoke to his core values and he wanted to learn more. “It exposed me to new thinking and I agreed on the strategies. It helped me understand how I learned,” Soutra said.

Soutra then started working with Bigaj, who mentored him throughout the remainder of his college career.

Bigaj founded an Eye to Eye chapter at KSC in the early 2000s with Warner. The program provided mentoring to children with dyslexia and ADHD from college kids with the same learning differences. Bigaj suggested Soutra get connected with the program.

“He took the opportunity and just ran with it,” Bigaj said.

“He ended up getting connected really assertively,” Bigaj said, and by his senior year, Soutra was leading the KSC chapter. He said they even wrote a grant together to get funding to keep the chapter running.

Bigaj said since Soutra was elected as head of the KSC chapter of Eye to Eye he got to go to an intensive training at Brown University on how to run a chapter.

There, he met David Flink, who worked at the Admissions Office at Brown University and founded Eye to Eye.

After Soutra graduated from KSC in 2006, he applied for a job at Eye to Eye, where he got the job and started working with Flink.

Soutra became Eye to Eye’s very first hire, both he and Flink have spent the past 10 years building up the organization.

They started with only the two of them working out of an apartment in Brooklyn, New York, and have continuously scaled up their model.

Soutra said they’ve expanded to 20 full-time employees and two national offices, one in New York City and the other in San Francisco. The organization operates in 22 states, has 90,000 hours of community service and works with around 900 mentors.

Soutra is concerned with the status of his original Eye to Eye chapter, the one here at KSC. He said he heard it’s having a rough semester and that it needs more mentors.

He said it’s a big concern of his to teach mentoring skills and learning strategies to young people.

Warner had nothing but good things to say about Soutra. “He’s someone that Keene State should be very proud of,” she said.

According to Eye to Eye’s website, its current mission “is to improve the life of every person with a learning disability. We fulfill our mission by supporting and growing a network of youth mentoring programs run by and for those with learning differences, and by organizing advocates to support the full inclusion of people with learning disabilities and ADHD in all aspects of society.”

If Eye to Eye’s message speaks to you, Soutra said he’s always looking to hire KSC graduates.

KSC Director for Engagement of Alumni and Constituents Sara Barrett, was unavailable to comment on the award and the award process.

If you wish to get involved in KSC’s chapter of Eye to Eye, please visit Jane Warner or Lisa David in the Office of Disability Services, located in the Elliot Center.

Alex Fleming can be contacted at afleming@kscequinox.com

The Magic of Monadnock Colloquium: Poetry Bridging Continents, started building its bridge with its first event called The American Renga.

On Monday, Oct. 9, Keene State students and faculty members gathered with American and Chinese master poets in the Mabel Brown Room to write their very own renga poem.

Angelique Inchiercha / Equinox Staff

Renga is a form of Japanese collaborative poetry in which a group of people write a poem on a long sheet of paper. The poets alternate writing stanzas until the entire page is filled.

Event organizer and Journalism, Multimedia and Public  Relations Adjunct Professor, Rodger Martin, said the event adapts the renga to English. (It should be noted Martin is a Co-advisor to The Equinox.)

In Chinese, words are written top to bottom, right to left. Martin said the event fused English and Chinese writing styles by adapting the poem to the English writing style, right to left and top to bottom. Colorful three stroke glyphs were painted onto the borders of each stanza, and visiting Chinese poets traveled around the room to write stanzas in Mandarin.

“It brings two languages into one American renga,” Martin said.

The event started with a traditional Chinese toast led by Martin to honor imagination, the poetry and the art.

KSC senior Erza Richardson, came to the event with his entire Basic Chinese 101 class. He said his class was invited by Martin. “I’m excited, but it’s my first time writing a renga,” he said.

Chinese Poet Yihai Chen was among KSC’s honored literary guests.

Yihai Chen was born in Dongtai, Jiangsu Province. He holds a Ph.D in comparative literature and is the professor and Dean of School of Chinese Language and Literature at Yancheng Teachers University.

Chen is a free-verse modernist poet and translator,  influenced by T.S. Eliot and Sylvia Plath. He writes in both English and Chinese, but learned English in the United Kingdom and began to translate his own poetry. He prefers to translate it himself because he said it’s easy to translate the language, but it’s hard to translate the culture.

“I am the master of my own poetry,” he said. “I know what’s easy to translate and what’s hard. I can translate creatively.” Chen said he must manipulate his translations to make them more acceptable and readable to the audience.

Chen was joined by famous Chinese poet and calligrapher Zi Chuan.

Chuan was born in Gaoyou County, Jangsu Province. He is a professional writer and poet, a member of the China Writers Association and the Vice-Chairmen of China Association for Poetics Studies. He writes in the styles of modernist and Chinese traditional poetry. His focus is in pastoral and rural life, and his works have been published in six different languages.

“It is very significant to have collaboration,” Chuan said. “We do not have enough translations of contemporary poets.”

Chuan said he wishes for more publications on both sides. “We know our poets, but we don’t know each other’s. With communication, more poets will be known.”

The rengas written during the event will be on display at the L.P. Young Student Center until Thursday. The poems will then be read to the public in the Marion Woods Room at the Mason Library at 2 p.m., and then will be put into the care of the Mason Library’s Head of Special Collections and Archives, Rodney Obien.

“We have a very large collection of poetry,” Obien said. “At the end of the week, the poems will find their way into the archive.”

Alex Fleming can be contacted at afleming@kscequinox.ccom

The way people consume music has changed.

People threw out their tapes, records and CDs long ago and traded them for digital notes produced by an iPod. iPods and MP3 players have their benefits. They can hold thousands of songs without making their owner look like a hoarder. You don’t have to get up off your bum and change the album every time you want to listen to a different artist. You don’t even have to buy an entire album. You can just buy your favorite song for a buck and listen to it over and over and over, or until you never want to hear it again. Consuming music this way is easy, cheap and very profitable for those who make it.

The digital music market is a godsend for one-hit wonders and overnight successes. These marketplaces are set up to profit the most from singles. Why risk spending $19.99 on an album that might be vomit-inducing when you can spend .99 cents on one song that you know is good? It’s a low-risk investment, so spend away. One-hit wonder, Soulja Boy, made five million dollars off his hit single “Crank That.” I’m going to say that again. Five million dollars off of one song. Digital music is great for consumers and producers, but there are virtues in the old ways of consumption.

I used to have an iPod loaded exclusively with singles on my hip. Vinyl changed that. My co-worker’s boyfriend was about to move. He couldn’t take his record player with him, so he decided to bequeath it to me. I accepted his offer and started to build a meager record collection. I would walk down Main Street to Keene’s local record store, Turn It Up, after work and buy what I knew, a few The Who albums and some Dad Rock I knew I’d enjoy. One day I walked in and saw a used copy of “Abbey Road” by The Beatles for $20.

I used to hate The Beatles. I actually felt more like meh towards them; their happy tin can guitar licks had no place in my dark, angst-ridden, music elitist teenage brain. I decided to give the album a chance; how could I pass up one of the most iconic records of all time? I took it home, and after listening to it in its entirety, I had a whole new outlook on the pioneers of pop. “Abbey Road” is more than “Here Comes the Sun” and “Come Together;” it’s one long, intertwined, beautiful song.

Listening to albums all the way through allowed me to fall in love with Eminem, Jay Reatard, Green Day, Queen, Gorillaz, Pixies, The Violent Femmes and countless other artists.

Masterpieces known as concept albums can be lost in digital consumption. “The Wall” by Pink Floyd and “Quadrophenia” by The Who cannot be understood or appreciated in one or two songs off the albums.

An artist’s hits or singles are like the first sketches of their Mona Lisa; it’ll look nice, you may walk away pleased and impressed, but if you don’t listen to their albums in their entirety, you’re never going to see what the whole picture has to offer.

Alex Fleming can be contacted at afleming@kscequinox.com

Keene State College’s parking policy has undergone a change.

According to KSC Assistant Director of Campus Safety Leonard Crossman, people now must have a parking pass at all times if they want to park on campus.

According to the old KSC parking policy on the college’s website and old parking lot signage, students only needed a permit to park at the Commuter and Spaulding lots from 12 a.m. on Monday to 4 p.m. on Friday.

Photo illustration by Colton McCracken / Equinox staff

Crossman said that Campus Safety is working with KSC’s Grounds Department to improve parking lot signage. He said Grounds plans to put in new signs, which KSC has already obtained, in the near future.

The parking policy page on KSC’s website has not been updated to reflect these changes.

Students have always needed a parking pass to park at certain areas of campus, such as the Pondside II and Owl’s Nest lots, and to park on campus in the evening.

Crossman said Campus Safety tried to blast out emails to get the word out. “Unfortunately the only way you can get compliance is enforcement. You can send out as many emails as you want, but it only does so much,” Crossman said.

Crossman said Campus Safety is now more prepared to do the job. “[Parking] culture got really relaxed,” he said. “Now, we have a staff who is more proactive and perceptive to that part of the job.”

Crossman said that Campus Safety is upping their enforcement on new and old parking policies to increase campus security and compliance.

Crossman said the main reason Campus Safety requires students to have a parking permit is quick, positive identification of the car’s owner.

Campus Safety can quickly look up a parking permit number and associate it with the student or member of KSC faculty, staff or administration who owns the permit. Campus Safety must go through Keene Police Department to look up the owner of a car without a parking permit, which takes longer.

Parking permits are not around just to create revenue for KSC or to give Campus Safety an excuse to write tickets. Crossman said parking permit numbers can also allow Campus Safety to contact someone if his or her car is in danger. “They help us reach out during times when there’s bad weather and the parking lots by the river starts to flood,” Crossman said.

The new policy encourages visitors of KSC to get a parking pass. Crossman said it’s Campus Safety’s job to know who’s on campus at all times. Visitors must register with a KSC student. Crossman said this helps Campus Safety find the student and the visitor if anything goes wrong.

Students can register their guests and purchase a parking pass at keene.thepermitstore.com The website issues all sorts of parking permits, like Winchester Lot permits, event parking permits and temporary student parking passes. Guest and event parking passes are free of charge.

KSC senior Jason Macie said the new policy “seems a little excessive.”

“There’s a lot of empty, unused space on campus. It’s kind of unfair to those who want to come to a weekend event.”

KSC senior Kevin Aruilio doesn’t have much of a problem with the policy change. “I thought that was the policy all along. I have no problems with it,” he said.

“I feel like it would be better to have an opportunity to park on campus though,” he said. “It would make it easier for off-campus students.”

Students can get in contact with the parking office either by emailing them at parkingservices@keene.edu, or visiting them at the Campus Safety Office.

Alex Fleming can be contacted at afleming@kscequinox.com 

Keene State College  students may not know it, but their college bookstore has gone through some big changes over the summer.

KSC’s bookstore is now owned and operated by Barnes & Noble College (B&NC). B&NC is a subsidiary of Barnes & Noble  Education. According to their website, they operate over 700 campus stores in the U.S.

KSC’s Bookstore Manager Drew Nichols said he is excited to be at KSC. Nichols is a California-native and said he knew New Hampshire was the place he wanted to be.

KSC’s bookstore may be under the Barnes & Noble name, but that doesn’t make it a Barnes & Noble.

Nichols said that it is the store’s job to bend to the needs of the school. There is no cookie cutter plan for a B&NC bookstore.

Nichols said that KSC’s robust art, architecture and music departments require their store to carry many items that other B&NC stores do not.

“We get to mold ourselves to the needs of the college; we’re the Keene State Bookstore,” Nichols said.

There’s a lot of preparatory work that goes into running the KSC Bookstore, according to Nichols.

Nichols and his staff began prepping the store in May. Usually, the bookstore would start prepping for the fall semester in March.

The KSC Bookstore has to order books for over 1,000 sections of classes and has to coordinate with the needs of KSC faculty and staff, most of which were not at KSC during the summer.

This can cause some confusion, but Nichols says that this comes with the transition period.

B&NC brought some benefits to the KSC Bookstore. The bookstore can now price match with Amazon.

Nichols said there are more books available for rent and more digital titles than before.

Eighty-three percent of titles offered in the store can be rented, and 33 percent of titles are available digitally.

Nichols said these first few weeks are their busiest time of the season by far.

With long lines wrapped around the store for most of this week, some students stood patiently, while others expressed their frustrations to others in the queue.

KSC junior and bookstore employee Dylan Rychlik helped prepare the store over the summer.

He said they had to move and stock books, clean up and rearrange the store and pull orders for student pick up.

He said he likes his job, but there have been some rough times this week because students have gotten upset that the store doesn’t have their books or supplies yet.

“Especially the [first-years],” he said. “It’s something they don’t want to hear. It’s stressful for both of us, we want things to go as planned.”

Some students left the bookstore content; others left frustrated. KSC junior Dorothy Arroyo said the store was “better tenfold.” Arroyo said she enjoys the new store’s ability to price match with Amazon.

KSC junior Benjamin Buckley was not quite satisfied with his visit to the bookstore.

“The organization needs to be better,” he said. Buckley had trouble finding some of his books.

He said he wandered around for a while to find a book for his Holocaust and genocide studies class. He eventually found it, but it was in the wrong section.

Buckley was also disappointed with the store’s art supplies section.

“It didn’t seem like they had a lot of [art] supplies,” he said. He was unable to find a canvas that he needed.

One thing that Buckley was impressed with was the bookstore’s absorption of the Owl’s Roost, Keene State’s old convenience store.

“Anything was better than what we had,” he said.

He said the Owl’s Roost was too expensive and sometimes had expired snacks.

Buckley said he thinks that the food in the new bookstore is better priced and it has a better variety of items.

The KSC Bookstore under B&NC tenure has just begun. If students need any textbooks, they will be able to find them on the first floor of the student center.

Alex Fleming can be contacted at afleming@kscequinox.com

President Trump signed legislation on April 13 that aims to cut off federal funding from Planned Parenthood and other companies that provide abortions.

According to The New York Times, President Trump supports some of Planned Parenthood’s health-related services, despite the cut in funding.

“As a middle ground, Mr. Trump has proposed preserving federal funding for Planned Parenthood if it stops providing abortion services,” stated The Times.

Government funding for abortion is already prohibited.

Samantha Moore / art director

According to the Hyde Amendment of 1976, abortion is excluded from health care services provided to low-income people by the federal government through Medicaid, except through cases of rape, incest or life threatening

conditions.

Communications Manager of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England Molly Cowan said Planned Parenthood’s patients who are in need suffer the consequences when elected officials play politics with funding for critical health services.

“Unexpected and arbitrary funding losses result in reductions in patient access whether through reduced hours, hiring freezes or other measures, which prevent us from fully meeting the need in our communities,” she said.

A KSC student, who wished to remain anonymous, doesn’t know where she’d be without Planned Parenthood.

The student was a victim of date rape in the summer of 2016.

She felt like she couldn’t tell her parents and she did not want to take legal action because then her name would be free to use everywhere.

“I couldn’t call ghost busters,” she said. She did not know what to do.

She decided to call Keene’s Planned Parenthood, located on 8 Middle Street.

Planned Parenthood was busy that day, but after informing them of her situation, Planned Parenthood fit her in that day.

She arrived for her appointment, received a morning after pill and a Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI) test.

She consulted with nurses afterwards. “They knew the right questions to ask and they had all the answers,” she said. “I had many [questions].”

Planned Parenthood scheduled follow-up appointments for her and provided counseling about legal action and support groups once the appointment was completed.

She said they got the morning after pill, the STI test and the counseling for free.

According to Planned Parenthood’s website, people without insurance or those who decline to go through insurance, pay on a sliding scale based on their income.

She was a student and students get health services for free.

According to Rite Aid’s website, Plan B, a common over-the-counter emergency contraceptive, costs around $50 at their stores.

“If [Planned Parenthood] wasn’t there, where would’ve I gone?” she said.

“It feels really safe there. It felt like they dealt with my situation a lot.”

At the KSC’s Center for Health and Wellness, students have options when it comes to reproductive health.

According to KSC’s website, the center offers birth control medication, STI screening, emergency contraception and women’s health exams.

The center also offers many other services that one would be able to receive at a hospital.

Nurse Practitioner and Assistant Director of The Center for Health and Wellness Deb Coltey said any student is welcome at the center.

KSC’s tuition includes a student health fee, which allows them to visit without having to make a co-pay.

The drugs, however, do cost money. According to Coltey, birth control pills cost $12-$15 for a month’s cycle and $14 for Plan B.

Coltey said the center also writes prescriptions.

If a student knows their co-pay is lower than the cost of the pill at the center, they are allowed to take their script and get it filled at a local pharmacy.

The center does not provide abortion services and does not do Intra-Uterine Device (IUD) implants.

Alex Fleming can be contacted at afleming@kscequinox.com

A backpack disappeared from the Spaulding Gymnasium under mysterious circumstances on Friday, April 7.

Late Thursday night, KSC student junior Jake Genest left his backpack in the gym. A student worker spotted the bag and took it behind Spaulding’s front desk for safekeeping.

When Genest returned Friday morning to reclaim his forgotten bag, the gym staff discovered that it had disappeared. Genest’s bag contained a laptop, an essential tool for every college student.

Photo illustration by Luke stergiou

Spaulding Gym student employee David Dunham said valuables like Genest’s laptop do not get lost or stolen often. According to Dunham, a valuable item gets left behind maybe once a month. The items that usually get left behind are shirts, shorts and reusable water bottles. By the end of the year, Spaulding Gym has around 100 water bottles floating in its lost and found.

Dunham said shirts, shoes and shorts that are not picked up by the end of the year get donated to Planet Aid, a non-profit organization that recycles and sells used textiles.

Expensive items that get left behind are transported to and locked in the assistant director’s office. A student who comes by the front desk to retrieve their lost item must be able to prove that the item is theirs.

If nobody comes to claim the item, the staff gives it to Campus Safety, Dunham said.

According to KSC Director of Recreational Sports Lynne Andrews, this didn’t happen to Genest’s bag because Spaulding’s staff was unaware of its contents.

Andrews said it’s hard to tell who took Genest’s bag. According to Andrews, there is a reported theft maybe once or twice a semester. She said she knows the bag was in Spaulding Gym when they locked up for the night and that it had disappeared when her staff returned in the morning.

“It’s hard to gauge who’s in the building after we close for the night,” Andrews said. “Usually, it’s just the cleaning staff and maybe the sports teams, but they usually don’t come in.”

She said when and if KSC’s sports teams decide to come into Spaulding after close, it’s when they’re returning from an away game. If the athletes come inside, they go to the locker room and then leave.

Spaulding Gym’s staff encourages students to use a cubby to lock up their personal items while they’re working out instead of putting their belongings on the bench underneath the gym’s cubbies.

Students can also register and use a permanent locker in one of Spaulding’s locker rooms, they just have to provide a lock.

Things still get stolen despite the gym’s efforts to get students to lock up their stuff. Andrews said this usually happens because someone stores their items in a locker without a lock, “but it’s rare.”

When this happens, the staff responds by posting signs in the locker rooms that alert students of the theft and remind them to lock up their personal items.

The thief’s identity remains a mystery. Jake Genest was unavailable to make a statement for this story.

Alex Fleming can be contacted at afleming@kscequinox.com

Hillary Clinton (Democrat)

Personal Information: 

Hillary Clinton (Democrat)

Born: October 26, 1947 (Age 67)

            Chicago, Illinois

Alma mater: Yale Law School

Spouse: Bill Clinton

Children: Chelsea Clinton

Positions held:

–  Sixty-seventh Secretary of State (2009-2013)

–  US Senator from NY (2001-2009)

–  Co-founder of Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families

–  Former First lady of The United States 1993-2001

Campaign Views:

Environment: Wants to put 100B per year by 2020 towards climate change mitigation 5 billion towards green-collar jobs

We could put hundreds and hundreds of young people to work right now, putting solar panels in, insulating homes.

Marijuana: should people be able to smoke marijuana on their own accord? Wait and see on recreational marijuana, medicinal now. States should decide “We have at least two states that are experimenting with that right now. I want to wait and see what the evidence is.”

LGBT: Pro-gay marriage and LBGT equality

“I re-evaluated & changed my mind on gay marriage”.

Education: For common core, bible should be taught as history and literature

“Schools may not provide religious instruction, but they may teach about the Bible or other scripture in the teaching of history or literature, for example.”

Promises to funnel 350 billion federal dollars towards colleges

Jobs and minimum wage: Wants to raise minimum wage. There are those who have opposed an increase in the minimum wage, arguing that it will cost jobs, and there are some people who say we need more studies. They are wrong.