Photos, videos and text from the OKC area.
According to The Norman Transcript, a new Starbucks store will be opening in the OU Memorial Union on October 1. Starbucks only recently announced the closings of 600 stores nationwide, so this announcement comes as a bit of a surprise, especially with the recently opened Campus Corner store remaining.
The new Union store will be a franchise, owned by OU, with proceeds returning to Starbucks. The new coffee shop will replace STA Travel near Crossroads.
School’s steadily getting busier. I’m taking two upper-division history classes, American Revolution and Contemporary China, and these classes have heavy reading assignments. Both classes assigned 5 books each for reading, and nightly I’ve been attempting to read 2 chapters from at least 2 per class. My eyes are getting overworked.
Bill Clinton was a keynote speaker for a political forum at OU Wednesday. I didn’t go due to schedule conflicts, but from the people I’ve spoken to, Clinton delivered another terrific speech. Of course, his purpose was to campaign for Hillary to the state of Oklahoma, and since Oklahoma only holds 7 delegates in the electoral college and is a strong Republican state, Hillary decided not to make the trip herself. Other presidential candidates have visited recently, including Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, and OU held a political forum with speakers, including NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg, in early January.
Oklahoma holds its primary on Super Tuesday, which is Tuesday, Feb. 5. I’ll be sure to vote; make sure you vote, too.
Time to go play Army for the weekend.
Wednesday, almost over. This week seems to be even longer than normal. I guess 3-day weekends do that.
OU’s back home this weekend, hosting ESPN’s College Gameday and the Missouri Tigers. It’s the school’s homecoming weekend, and all the fraternities/sororities have been building decorations and floats (for Saturday’s parade) this week. Many of the themed statues are on display on the South Lawn; I’ll make it a point to snap some photos tomorrow or Friday. They were taken down in lieu of the weekend.
I think I’ll be part of the flag detail again, for the game. It’s tough work getting ol’ glory 75+ feet into the air, but it’s worth the employee pass I get. This means at halftime I can walk down to the soon-to-be-closed McConnell’s and grab a beer, and then get back in!
Tomorrow’s the longest day of the week, but I’m looking forward to it, because it makes Friday so much easier.
![OU Daily [dot] com](http://media.oudaily.com/vimages/default/logo.png){kind=logo}
The school’s newspaper OU Daily started a podcast today. It’s exciting to see the school embrace the fad technology.
Today’s episode was just an outline of some happenings from the weekend & the beginning of the week. The podcast is very bland & doesn’t have a page yet, but it has an RSS feed… which is the most important.
Yesterday was the day for nationwide [or was it worldwide?] protests against combat in Iraq. World Can’t Wait, an organization whose tagline is “Drive Out the Bush Regime”, sponsored the protests. A number of students participated in the protest on campus, in front of Dale Hall.
The 3 students in the pic are dressed as war prisoners, yelling sentences such as “If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention!” and “Stop the abuse and the torture!” Other, less agressive students simply held signs asking for the fighting to cease.
A few students lashed back at the protesters, including Courtney Johnson, an education senior who fought in Iraq. Johnson walked up and screamed defiantly at a man holding a sign “You can’t tell people who’ve been there what it’s like!” But, he didn’t understand. The protest is not against the troops, it’s against the occupation of Iraq. This protest called for the return of troops.
This is the report of another student’s reaction, from the OU Daily:
Adrea Clark, public affairs and administration sophomore, was offended by how everyone walking through the South Oval was forced to watch men dressed as torture victims deride the current military effort.
She confronted the protesters, pacing in front of the three kneeling figures and shouting. “You don’t understand!” she screamed. “You’re liars!”
She turned to leave the circle of onlookers that had gathered around the men, but when one of the protesters said something about her family member in Iraq, she whirled around.
“No!” she said. “I don’t have a family member over there! There’s a man I want to marry over there!” Again she turned to leave, but a protester’s voice stopped her.
“Why are you letting him die?” a hooded man called out.
“I’m not letting him die!” Clark screamed. She rushed through the bystanders, pausing about 10 yards away, where she was briefly comforted by a friend before sinking to the ground.
Tears rolled down Clark’s face as a man came up to comfort her.
“They think this accomplishes something, but it doesn’t,” she said. “That’s not how you solve things.”
Maybe this isn’t the most beneficial way of protesting. I’ll agree to that. But is sure beats doing nothing, which is what the rest of us are doing.
I’d rather do something wrong to surface the issue than do nothing.
