[ OUR OPINION ]
UH should go ahead
with dorm expansionACRIMONY that led to the firing of Evan Dobelle as president of the University of Hawaii should not result in the trashing of his initiatives. The student housing crunch besetting the Manoa campus as the fall term approaches necessitates prompt action by the Board of Regents to build more dormitories, a top priority for Dobelle.
THE ISSUE
The University of Hawaii has received far more applications than it can accommodate from students who want to live in dormitories.
The university has only 3,000 dormitory rooms in Manoa for the 21,000-plus students who might enroll this year. Dobelle proposed building dormitories with an additional 5,000 rooms to help provide space for students, including student athletes, from the mainland and abroad. A proposal to authorize a public-private partnership to construct dorms is pending before the regents.
The university received nearly 5,000 applications from students for dormitory housing. About 900 students who applied on time for housing, plus an additional 500 who were late in applying, are on the waiting list for dorm and apartment openings, says Margit Watts, UH-Manoa student housing director. Waikiki hotel rooms that had been used for student housing in recent years no longer are available, adding to the shortage.
Soon after Dobelle was hired as UH president two years ago, he included developing Manoa into a "college town" as one of his top 23 "things to accomplish." His vision was that of a campus where students would be encouraged to live in dormitories or stay on campus after class to hear guest speakers and performers -- an environment that would "celebrate who we are."
The idea evolved into a plan to create the college town in Moiliili instead of Manoa, in cooperation with Kamehameha Schools. The former Bishop Estate owns about eight acres in the area, including Puck's Alley, a potential college downtown setting if there ever was one. Kamehameha trustees agreed last year to begin planning projects to develop vacant land and renovate existing properties.
Priority for dormitory housing this year goes to incoming freshmen and then to international, mainland and neighbor island students, respectively. Students in outlying areas of Oahu who had wanted to live on campus instead might have have to learn that TheBus can serve as a mobile study hall.
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Marriage amendment
was political theaterSENATE Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee declared dead last week a bill aimed at controlling class-action lawsuits -- and with it a measure providing for federal recognition of Hawaiians -- because of the upcoming party conventions and election. "We're out of time," Frist said. However, it turns out they had plenty of time to spend more than three days debating a constitutional amendment prohibiting gay marriage, a proposal that its proponents knew was doomed from the start.
THE ISSUE
The Senate voted to block consideration of an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to prohibit same-sex marriages.
This exercise in political drama was aimed solely at making the issue of gay marriage part of the presidential campaign by creating a wedge between the two parties. Sens. John Kerry and John Edwards, the presumptive Democratic ticket, oppose both gay marriage and a constitutional amendment.
The strategy of Republican senators, urged on by President Bush, instead drove a wedge within their own party. Six Republicans voted to block the amendment, and proponents of the measure were short of votes even at the vice president's dinner table; wife Lynne Cheney, herself a conservative cultural activist, said the states, not the federal government, should decide such issues, obviously taking into consideration their lesbian daughter, Mary.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., called the proposed amendment "antithetical in every way to the core philosophy of Republicans. It usurps from the states a fundamental authority they have always possessed, and imposes a federal remedy for a problem that most states do not believe confronts them." Republicans who wished that McCain would replace a politically weakened Dick Cheney on the GOP ticket this year can hunt for someone else.
Sixty-seven votes are needed for Senate approval of a constitutional amendment, and Frist knew from the outset that it lacked that support. Only 48 senators voted in favor of breaking a procedural logjam to force a vote on the amendment, 12 short of what was needed to do so and 19 short of the votes required for the amendment itself.
The outcome was so certain that Kerry and Edwards felt no need to leave the campaign trial to be on the Senate floor. Kerry said he would have voted with the majority against the measure.
"The unfortunate result is that the important work of the American people -- funding our homeland security needs, creating new and better jobs, and raising the minimum wage -- is not getting done," Kerry said. We would add Hawaiian recognition to that list.
