First lady welcomes military families to kick off the holidays

WASHINGTON – Military families were welcomed into the White House Wednesday for cookies, cider and crafting as the holiday decorations were presented to the public for the first time this holiday season.

First lady Michelle Obama thanks military families for their service. “And that’s why, once again, we are celebrating our military families with our holiday decorations here at the White House.” SHFWire photo by Kara Mason

First lady Michelle Obama greeted the families in the East Room and then took the children to the State Dining Room for cookie decorating.

“I have to tell you that your presence here today is a powerful reminder for all of us about what this season is really all about,” Obama told the families. “So often we get caught up in the holiday rush, all of the plans and the logistics … the making your list and checking it twice. … But ultimately, that’s not what this season is about. It’s really about serving others. It’s about giving more than we receive. And it’s about showing those we love how much they mean to us.”

This year’s theme is “A Children’s Winter Wonderland.” Each of 14 rooms and 26 Christmas trees in the public rooms represent a sense of pureness that the holidays bring through the eyes of children.

There was, however, a modern twist among the traditional decorations. Winners of a 3D printing ornament design contest were placed throughout the decorations. More than 300 designs were submitted by students, engineers, artists and designers from across the country in the challenge, which was also sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution and Instructables, a website that specializes in 3D printing projects.

There are also animated statues of Bo and Sunny, the first dogs, which were equipped with motion sensors allowing them to turn and look at visitors as they pass by.

A total of 106 volunteers, 20 of whom have been in the military or have family in the military, helped decorate the White House. Nearly 65,000 visitors are expected to see the decorations throughout the holiday season.

Great Shakeout to prepare millions of people for earthquakes

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  Click on photo to enlarge or download: FEMA volunteers show the best way to “drop, cover and hold on” Tuesday during an event about earthquake safety at the National Building Museum in Washington. SHFWire photo by Kara Mason

  WASHINGTON – More than 25 million people across the world are expected to “drop, cover and hold on” Thursday at 10:16 a.m. as they participate in the Great Shakeout, an annual earthquake preparedness drill.

  Most of the time, people have only seconds to take action when there is an earthquake, U.S. Geological Survey Director Suzette Kimball said Tuesday at a discussion promoting the Great Shakeout event at the National Building Museum.

  But people should know what to do, she said, even if they live in an area that isn’t prone to earthquakes. Getting away from falling debris is the most important thing – under a desk or table and away from windows.

  The Great Shakeout started in California in 2008, and has grown to a global event as earthquakes have become more frequent in parts of the globe where seismic activity isn’t common – such as the southeastern portion of the U.S.

  In August 2011, a 5.8 magnitude earthquake struck central Virginia. Millions of people across the region, stretching as far as northern New England, felt the ground shaking. Nearly 450 aftershock quakes followed.

  “We learned we need to better prepare people for hazards,” Brian Baker, D.C. Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency chief of staff, said.

  Click on photo to enlarge or download: The National Park Service was removing scaffolding from the Washington Monument in March. The monument reopened in May after more than two years of repairs. SHFWire photo by Alejandro Alba

  Damage to the Washington Monument took $15 million and 33 months to repair. It reopened to tourists in May. The only other building with severe damage was the Washington National Cathedral, which is open. But it could be years before repairs are done as the cathedral continues to raise money.

  “A lot of our West Coast friends snicker when we say ‘earthquake,’ but we felt it here and it did have implications,” Baker said.

  Due to the 2011 Virginia earthquake, scientists from Virginia Tech and the USGS will begin installing 30 seismometers around Washington in November to track ground tremors and better estimate the intensity of ground shaking for future earthquakes.

  “The surprising amount of damage to buildings here in Washington, D.C., during the 2011 Virginia earthquake – despite its relatively modest 5.8 magnitude and the epicenter being nearly 90 miles away – raised questions on how much seismic shaking is amplified by local geological conditions,” Kimball said in a news release.

  Installing the seismometers should answer some of those questions, she said. The seismometers will help scientists to better predict the intensity of shaking during future earthquakes.

  Closer to the epicenter in Louisa County, Va., more reconstruction has happened.

  An elementary school and a high school were destroyed, leaving 40 percent of students without a classroom, Doug Straley, assistant superintendent of administration for Louisa County Public schools, said at the discussion.

  “Before the earthquake, we didn’t feel the need to participate in the Great Shakeout,” Straley said. “We didn’t even know what it was.”

  After surveying the damage after the shaking was over, Straley said he realized how lucky the district was. Bricks littered the cots laid out for kindergartners who were about to return from recess for a nap. There weren’t any major injuries.

  Click on photo to enlarge or download: Workers at the Washington National Cathedral were building scaffolding in July 2012 to move and replace stones damaged in the 2011 earthquake. Repairs will continue for years at the cathedral. SHFWire photo by Chris Jessen

  Tyson Smith, a high school senior at Louisa County High School, was seven days into his freshman year when the shaking started.

  He thought it was a nearby train rattling the windows of his second-floor classroom until the ceiling tiles began falling.

  Middle school and high school students have been sharing one building. The high school is set to reopen next school year.

NASA says drier climate means more wildfires

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  Click on photo to enlarge or download: Doug Morton, forest carbon expert for NASA, says the predictability of wildfires depends on information about climate change. He spoke Thursday at the Library of Congress. SHFWire Photo by Kara Mason

  WASHINGTON – By the end of the century, some places across the U.S. may be drier than California is during this year’s drought, according to recent NASA projections. That means more of the country will be prone to more devastating wildfires.

  “Across the most important burning regions, there’s been a trend toward warming and drying conditions during the fire season,” NASA’s forest carbon expert, Douglas Morton, said Thursday at a discussion about climate and wildfires in the 21st century at the Library of Congress.

  The most important component in areas where wildfires are likely is increasingly drier conditions, he said.  And as dryness has increased, so have wildfires.

  More than half of California’s top 20 largest wildfires have occurred in the 21st century and have burned nearly 2.3 million acres, according to California’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

  “This question of how do extreme events come out of our fire projections is one of the sort of frontiers of climate science,” Morton said, “and one of the ways in which we’re trying to take the most recent climate projections and look at them through the lens of the fire activity.”

  Last year, 47,579 wildfires burned 4.3 million acres across the U.S., according to the National Interagency Fire Center. 2013 was considered a quiet year for wildfires, especially compared to 2012 when 67,774 wildfires burned more than 9.3 million acres.

  In 2012, Colorado lost more than 600 homes in wildfires. Damage estimates total $567.4 million, according to the Rocky Mountain Insurance Information Association.

  Data from 12 NASA satellites give researchers information related to climate and how it’s affected by wildfires and vice versa.

  “This type of Earth science fundamentally depends on having a time series of satellite information,” Morton said.

  Large-scale climate changes, such as surface temperature changes in the ocean, can affect weather patterns, Morton said. That means some areas experience more than average amounts of rain and others get very dry, which is the perfect condition for fire. That information can be tracked via satellite.

  The way climate affects wildfires is important, Morton said. It makes predicting wildfires easier.

  Scientists using sea surface temperature research were able to explain 70 percent of variability in fire activity in the Amazon Rainforest, where Morton does much of his research. Sea surface temperatures affect El Niño rains, which affect dryness in a region.

  They were able to reproduce patterns NASA satellite observations made in low-fire and high-fire years and noticed that the relationship was strongest three to six months before fire season.

  By knowing that information, he said, policy makers, resource managers officials would have the opportunity to allocate resources to regions that might be most affected.

Police say legal marijuana allows them to focus on more serious crime

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October 7, 2014 4:17 pm

Click on photo to enlarge or download: Graphic by Sean McMinn

Three jurisdictions, Washington, D.C., Oregon and Alaska, are following Colorado and Washington’s path to legalizing marijuana. It’s on the November ballot in all three jurisdictions.

But the effects of doing so are still largely unknown, including the states’ main reason for legalization – freeing law enforcement officials to focus on other crimes.

There is only one report that chronicles the trends after the 2012 vote in Colorado that includes law-enforcement data, according to Allen St. Pierre, executive director for NORML, which promotes marijuana legislation reform. There are no complete studies available for Washington state, where recreational shops have been operating only since July.

In the District of Columbia,  63 percent of voters in an NBC4-Washington Post-Marist poll  taken in mid-September said they are in favor of legalizing marijuana. In a July poll in Alaska, voters opposed the initiative  49 percent to 44 percent. And a SurveyUSA-KATU TV poll of 568 likely voters in Oregon in late September found 44 percent in favor and 40 percent opposed.

The status report from the Drug Policy Alliance says there was a 10.1 percent decrease in overall crime, a 5.2 percent decrease in violent crime and a drop in burglaries and robberies of marijuana dispensaries in Colorado in the first six months. The alliance supports legalizing marijuana.

“That by definition says the police are doing something different,” St. Pierre said.

The numbers aren’t directly correlated with the legalization of marijuana, but rather show the opposite of what many citizens feared, said Bryan Vicente, a Colorado lawyer who helped draft Amendment 64. A lot of people thought crime would increase after  Amendment 64 passed, but it’s done the opposite, which was a main goal for the ballot initiative.

“I felt like it would set the tone for part of what we were trying to accomplish, which was essentially to steer law enforcement in a direction that was a better use and have more resources in the community,” Vicente said.

Anthony Johnson, chief petitioner for Oregon Initiative 91, had the same idea in mind when he first started advocating to legalize marijuana.

“Really, it’s just common sense that police have bigger priorities than non-violent people using marijuana. Every state has unsolved murders, unsolved burglaries, untested rape kits and missing children,” Johnson said. “Arresting and citing more than 100,000 people for the last decade has taken up more than two years of time which could be better spent.”

The several thousand citations for misdemeanor marijuana possession issued in Oregon each year have no real consequences on people’s lives, Johnson said. Plus, legalizing marijuana in the state would give police departments more money on top of time.

Initiative 91 would send 15 percent of the revenue from recreational marijuana sales to state police and 20 percent to local police.

Statistics from the ACLU Washington state chapter show court filings for misdemeanor marijuana possession have decreased from 7,964 arrests in 2009 to 120 filings in 2013, after Initiative 502 was passed.  A drop in filings from 2011 to 2012 is most likely explained by district attorneys not prosecuting marijuana cases after the November vote, according to Mark Cooke, criminal justice policy counsel for Washington’s ACLU.

“The data strongly suggest that I-502 has achieved one of its primary goals – to free up limited police and prosecutorial resources. These resources can now be used for other important public safety concerns,” Cooke said in a March news release.

Some retired police officers in Washington and Colorado say they dealt with marijuana in their careers, which is proof enough that legalization has freed up time for agencies.

For much of his 36 years as a Denver police officer, Tony Ryan said he constantly heard calls on the radio asking for a car to respond, but there weren’t enough officers to cover them.

“Some of that is because of a distraction of narcotics enforcement under the prohibition we have for most narcotic substances, and it’s taking officers off the street. The fact is when you’re enforcing narcotics laws, you’re probably enforcing marijuana laws,” Ryan said Tuesday in a Drug Policy Alliance teleconference.

“So, having this changed in Colorado relieved the police department of a lot of things and gives them more of a chance to do what cops are first and foremost supposed to do – which is answer calls for service,” he said.

In Seattle, I-502 has bettered the relationship officers have with the community, Norm Stamper, who retired as Seattle’s police chief in 2000, said on the call.

“It’s no secret that the relations between police officers and the communities they’ve been hired to serve are our most strained between cops and young people, and poor people and black and Latinos. And a huge factor contributing to this strain is marijuana enforcement,” Stamper said.

“A vast number of young people, poor people, and people of color have been arrested for marijuana possession over the years in Washington, but with I-502, we’ve seen a major shift in enforcement priorities, which means law enforcement can in fact focus on crimes.”

In 2013, there were 2,580 offenses related to marijuana – the second highest, following methamphetamines with 3,334 cases – according to statistics compiled by the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs.

“There’s still going to be some marijuana-related behavior that will require police attention. We don’t expect that to exceed the level of enforcement of it did prior to the change in law,” Seattle Police Department Sgt. Sean Whitcomb said.

Even before legalization, there weren’t very many calls for marijuana crimes, Whitcomb said. For the past decade, marijuana has been decriminalized in Washington, which has left Seattle police free to handle other crimes.

Drug offenses in Colorado increased from 2011, before marijuana legalization, with 12,859 adult arrests to 13,568 adult arrests in 2012, when Amendment 64 was passed, according to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. In 2013, the number of arrests fell to 9,397.

But it’s still too early to tell how Amendment 64 is affecting staffing at the Denver Police Department, Communications Director Sonny Jackson said.

“It’s kind of a balancing act. Now we have people who are driving under the influence,” Jackson said. “It’s changed some areas and added in others.”

Airstrikes in Syria lead to debate over strategy

Click on photo to enlarge or download: Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., left, tells Ken Gude, senior fellow at the Center for American progress, that he agrees the U.S. should go after the Islamic State group but that President Barack Obama needs authorization from Congress first. SHFWire photo by Kara Mason

WASHINGTON – Jihadist forces were sent running from a network of facilities in Syria after being hit with 14 airstrikes Monday and Tuesday, but there are still concerns about whether President Barack Obama’s plan to destroy the Islamic State group will be effective in the long and short term.

Several members of Congress have questioned whether the airstrikes are within the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, which gave former President George W. Bush authority to go after al-Qaida after 9-11. Obama says the authorization gives any administration the ability to use force against terrorist cells related to al-Qaida.

“The president should not be doing this without Congress. Congress shouldn’t let this happen without Congress,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., in a speech Tuesday at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. “Calling ISIL a perpetrator of 9-11 is torturing the English language.”

The Islamic State group has been associated with al-Qaida in the past, which gives Obama authority under the 2001 authorization, a senior official administration official said Tuesday in a conference call with reporters.

“This is the same cast of characters we’ve had for many years,” the official said.

A staple in Obama’s strategy is a partnership with Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain, which helped carry out the airstrikes. With support in the region, Obama said in a speech last week, there would be no need for boots on the ground.

“The strength of this coalition makes it clear to the world that this is not America’s fight alone. Above all, the people and governments in the Middle East are rejecting ISIL and standing up for the peace and security that the people of the region and the world deserve,” Obama said in a statement Tuesday before departing for three days of meetings at the United Nations.

Click on photo to enlarge or download: Fourteen airstrikes were carried out by the U.S. and regional partners Monday and Tuesday in the northern and eastern part of Syria controlled by the Islamic State group. Defense Department map

With regional allies, Obama said the United States will not need to send soldiers to destroy the Islamic State group.

But former ambassador to Turkey and Iraq James Jeffrey said that might not get the job done.

The president’s use of the word destroy is interesting, said Jeffrey, the Philip Solondz distinguished visiting fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, in a forum at the institute on Monday.

“Defeat, of course, usually refers to a state or military force that can decide it’s taken enough lumps, it’s been driven off the field, or driven back, and it wants to stop fighting and go back and lick its wounds,” Jeffrey said. “The Iraqi army was defeated in February of 1991 – signed an agreement and pulled back. That’s not the kind of thing that’s going to happen with this group.”

To combat the Islamic State group, Jeffrey said the U.S and its allies must take back territory, which has happened in only a few places in Iraq.

The 14 targets that were hit in the strikes were very relevant, a senior administration official said on the conference call Tuesday after Obama spoke.

“We know we hit what we were aiming for,” he said.

Regaining territory shows the region the Islamic State group is losing control, and that’s very important, Jeffrey said. The 6 million to 8 million Sunnis the Islamic State group controls is a big military resource, especially with Obama’s promise not to send U.S. soldiers.

“Retaking the ISIS state, truly destroying it, is a task of an entirely different magnitude. This will require, eventually, a ground offensive by large formations of well-equipped forces. It’s hard to imagine those forces being trained, created and supported in the field, even with U.S. air power without U.S. boots on the ground,” Jeffrey said.

More than 40 nations have offered to help confront the Islamic State group by taking out terrorist targets, training and equipping opposition fighters and cutting off financing, Obama said.

Reach reporter Kara Mason at kara.mason@scripps.com or 202-408-1492. SHFWire Stories are free to any news organization that gives the reporter a byline and credits the SHFWire. Like the Scripps Howard Foundation Wire interns on Facebook and follow us on Twitter​.

Reporter Kara Mason, interning with the Scripps Howard Foundation Wire in Washington, D.C.

The Colorado State University-Pueblo Foundation has chosen four new board members and a chairman to serve the university’s fundraising arm, which is responsible for the “On the Move” campaign which will bring Occhiato University Center upgrades, six new sports set to debut this semester and more scholarship money to the university.

Russell DeSalvo, new Chairman of the CSU-Pueblo Foundation, is a 1991 alumni.

Adam Carroll, Big R Corporation, Angela Giron, Former State Senator and youth advocate, Louis Nazario, H.W. Houston Construction, and Michael Occhiato, Former City Councilman and realtor have been chosen as director trustees. Long-time board member Russell DeSalvo will act as the chairman.

This news comes after former Chairman Dan De Rose and board member Louie Carleo quit their positions in May. It’s still unclear why the two left the Foundation. Both CSU-Pueblo President Lesley Di Mare and Foundation Executive Director Todd Kelly said they knew of the resignations but the reasons why were never given.

In emails between Carleo and DeRose obtained by the Pueblo Chieftain the resignations seemed to be a result of a local contractors “not being considered” during the bidding process for the OUC renovations. Neither DeRose nor Carleo commented on their resignations.

An earlier version of this article stated, “H.W. Houston Construction got the bid for the project.” The OUC renovation is just now in the resubmittal phase of the bids process and no contractors have been selected. H.W. Construction has worked on the LARC and Massari arena. 

Mass shootings such as the Aurora theater shooting and the Newtown, Connecticut, school shooting prompted Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper to improve the state’s mental health care, which would “reduce the probability of bad things happening to good people.”

Among the changes in the nearly $20 million system overhaul is a mental health crisis hotline that is set to go live in August and walk-in centers that will be open 24-hours a day and seven days a week.

Gov. Hickenlooper at a news conference in Dec. 2013. (Photo by Karl Gehring/The Denver Post)

Denver based Metro Crisis Center has a $3 million contract with the state for its services, but the bidding process didn’t come with effortlessness, according to the Denver Post.

The plan to launch the call center was delayed because of a failed bidding process, which resulted in one company taking the state to court over a revoked contract.

Currently, Metro Crisis Center receives around 100 calls per day related to mental health, but that is set to jump to around 500 calls each day when the center opens up statewide.

Metro Crisis Center’s website says they commonly deal with calls about depression, stress, anxiety, self-harming and suicidal thoughts in addition to calls about relationship problems, grief and loss, concerns about friends and family members, recovery support, resource questions and many other issues.

Patrick Fox, deputy director of clinical services for the states Office of Behavioral Health, told the Denver Post that the system will be a huge benefit for Colorado. For Hickenlooper the overhaul is as much about reducing violence as it is about improving the system.

Talks between Hickenlooper and Human Services Director Reggie Bicha about the reform began in the days following the Aurora theater shooting in 2012.

“We have a number of indications that trained personnel can identify … . Oftentimes, a relatively short period of restraint allows someone to get through a difficult phase,” Hickenlooper told Denver Post in December 2012. “Again, one of the key points is to make sure we have trained professionals in position in real time to — where necessary — intervene in these cases.”

Other aspects of the overhaul include rewriting three mental health laws, allowing court proceedings regarding mental health issues to be entered more quickly into the Colorado Bureau of Investigation’s firearm registries, so that gun dealers would have more up to date information, and more funding for additional beds at prisons and mental health hospitals.

Tracy Samora is responsible for keeping graduates connected to the university, and whenever they are in the news she is likely one of the first to know. Photo from http://alumni.colostate-pueblo.edu/

Tracy Samora, director for the Colorado State University-Pueblo Alumni Association, usually starts her day by checking local newspaper headlines and Google alerts for any bulletins or announcements from Colorado State University-Pueblo alumni.

She is responsible for keeping graduates connected to the university, and whenever they are in the news she is likely one of the first to know. Whether it is a wedding announcement, a birth announcement or news related to an alumni’s career, Samora laminates the article and sends the featured graduate a hand-written note.

“It doesn’t always start that way,” she confessed, “It really depends on the time of year.”

She is a one-woman department, and though the Alumni Association is composed of a board, Samora is the only paid staff member. That means any event planned and hosted by the association involves a lot of work from her.

From August until December she is busy planning homecoming events and the home-game tailgate parties put on by the association in addition to working with the board.

Events are one of the best ways alumni get involved with their alma mater, Samora said. During homecoming week, the association, in conjunction with the Office of Student Engagement and Leadership, offers a breakfast, a football tailgate party and a dinner for alumni and students to help welcome them back too. It’s one of the best ways for alumni to rally around the Thunderwolves, she said.

Samora, when she’s not tailgating or hosting an event, can be found in her dimly lit office tucked right outside of the Occhiato University Center Ballroom.

As the only staff member for the association on campus, her day would seem remarkably busy and overwhelming. After all, there are more than 40,000 graduates of CSU-Pueblo to keep tabs on, but she often takes time out of her day to chat with alumni who stop by the office.

“That’s probably my favorite part, the human element,” she said.

The alumni who drop in usually want to see what they can get, Samora said. It’s one of the main reasons her and the association’s board has decided to offer a discount program to alumni much like the student program. There are a lot of benefits to graduating from CSU-Pueblo, but it’s nice to have something tangible, she added.

Her job is to keep alums connected to the school, but why are alumni so important to the university?

“Our alums hold that history, that school pride. They are a walking billboard of what this institution can provide,” Samora said.

If asked about her connection to the university, her first response is always, “I’m a very proud alumna.”

Samora graduated from the mass communications department 1994, when the school was still the University of Southern Colorado. If anything could have prepared her for her job as the association’s director, it was her degree, she said.

“You don’t really go to school to be an alumni director,” Samore jokes. She’s been asked before how she ended up in her job.

Since her graduation, Samora said she hasn’t spent a lot of time off campus. In 1996, she returned to the campus to work with Rocky Mountain PBS. After working there for five years, she joined the Alumni Association as a program coordinator for a year. As USC was making the change to CSU-Pueblo, Samora’s position was dissolved, so she found herself working in healthcare.

Five years ago, the position for director opened up, and she knew it was the perfect career move.

“A lot of the skills that I’ve been able to acquire through other positions I’ve held really all culminated into being an alumni director, oddly enough,” she said.

Samora describes the job as a mesh of everything else she’s done. She does a lot writing, public speaking, event planning and volunteer management.

So, it really made sense for her to take the position. Even though it wasn’t the political reporter job she first had her sights on as a young college freshman or the well-paying radio job she hoped for as a graduate, she said every job she’s had in her career was within her field of study.

“I love this institution because it did change my life,” she said. “I decided to stay here (in Pueblo) and come to my local university. I would not have it any other way.”

High school students receiving college credit at Colorado State University-Pueblo in Southern Colorado will have fewer opportunities to get ahead due to Provost Carl Wright’s mandate that every Senior-to-Sophomore dual enrollment program instructor have a master’s degree.

Cutting an opportunity that requires STS instructors to attend classes at CSU-Pueblo, submit portfolios and proof of classwork is a mistake, if administrators insist on creating a brighter future for a university already facing low enrollment and a $3.3 million budget crisis.

Wright said in an interview on Rev 89’s T-Wolf Talk that marketing initiatives fell short of university hopes. President Lesley Di Mare also conceded during a meeting with faculty that the no-rise in tuition campaign failed to meet expectations of increasing enrollment.

That being said, it simply doesn’t make sense to cut a program when nearly 4,600 students at CSU-Pueblo are in-state students, and nearly half of those students, 2,308, call Pueblo County home.

Goals for the program include motivating students to attend college and increasing their likeliness of graduating college on time.

And while District 60 has a graduation rate that is below the state’s average of 76.9 percent, District 70 graduates 82.8 percent of its students, which means there is a huge pool of revenue for CSU-Pueblo.

Motivating students to finish high school in Pueblo County and attend college becomes increasingly important to CSU-Pueblo because the easiest place to recruit students is at home. The statistics show it.

Limiting the program limits opportunity in Pueblo County. It also limits the mission of the program.

I put my journalism cap on Friday afternoon. I put it on every time I set out to interview somebody or cover an event, but Friday afternoon was different.

Usually, I’m focused and confident, but as one of my fellow mass communication students sat down beside me at the CSU-Pueblo campus forum regarding the budget “crisis,” she said I seemed nervous. I admit I was because everybody there was nervous.

Imagine covering the layoff announcement of your own employer. It’s weird. My job is to be as unbiased as possible and report accurately, but I’m also sitting there listening to President Lesley Di Mare say 22 filled positions will be cut.

I don’t technically work for CSU-Pueblo, I’m just a student reporter, but my friends do and the people who are making my passion for journalism a reality do.

By the time Di Mare started taking questions, it became clear to me this is no longer an issue of losing positions to the people in attendance. It was an issue of confidence.

Students don’t believe Chancellor Michael Martin cares about them or their future. One student told me before the meeting that he’s not here, so he could never understand. I suppose in part that is true. He sees CSU-Pueblo with a bird’s eye view. His job is to oversee our university.

Faculty members don’t believe Martin understands their importance to Southern Colorado. We’re all aware Pueblo is in need of more movers and shakers and our best bet is that they’re going to come from CSU-Pueblo. I imagine they wonder how we improve the region when we cut educators. But does Martin see the struggle here? I honestly don’t know, maybe.

Leaving the Occhiato University Center, I felt the energy of the people who had attended, and it felt a lot like defeat. So many tried to convey their feelings for their university, and it felt like nobody was listening. Nobody could change the minds of the administrators. Nobody could offer an alternate solution that was appealing enough.

This feeling worries me. It worries me because I’m afraid people will give up on CSU-Pueblo. I’m afraid students will be discouraged from trying to make a difference in their community. I’m afraid that faculty and staff will quit pushing students to change their community.

More now than ever, CSU-Pueblo needs to be a community. Students chanted si se puede before the forum, and we can’t forget what that means. We couldn’t save those 22 jobs, nobody could, but yes, we can still make a difference in Southern Colorado.

Losing hope has far more of an economic impact than 22 jobs, and our community can’t afford any more losses.