Opinion

Dear Annie: I am also a parent of a child who lost his battle with addiction in 2022. There are so many of us with difficult stories to share.

A favorite quote from the recent campus conflicts comes from Adam Young, a freshman at the New School in New York. After student trespassers were arrested and hauled to police headquarters, he complained, “This is not OK ... We’re 18 years old.”

“This may be Biden’s Vietnam.” Bernie Sanders’ warning couldn’t be starker. The campus protests that have raged for weeks feel like 1968 in miniature.

The national media consider themselves essential in educating the electorate, so what happens when the electorate does not consider them a trustworthy guardian of democracy? The Associated Press and the American Press Institute just released a poll on the 2024 election and found only 14% of their sample expressed “a great deal of confidence in electionrelated information they receive from national sources.” By contrast, 46% have little or no confidence at all in the information they receive from national news organizations. About half of Americans, 53%, say they are extremely or very concerned that news organizations will report inaccuracies or misinformation during the election.

If there’s one thing that has defined my nearly decade of political reporting experience in Oklahoma, it’s been budget turmoil and shortfalls. In 2014, I hadn’t even had time to unpack before drama exploded over a $171 million budget hole and angst from state agencies told to cut their already shoestring budgets by 5%.

Dear Annie: You recently said you rarely get letters praising mothers-in-law. Well, here is one! I grew up in an abusive family with a mother who has severe borderline personality disorder and refuses to get medication or therapy.

Homelessness is a growing issue in the United States, with the number continuing to rise following the Covid pandemic. Homelessness has a ripple effect on the community. It reduces healthcare, increases crime rates, lowers workers in the workforce and uses thousands of taxpayer dollars.

Dear Annie: I grew up never allowed to have pets. I’ve been married almost 30 years to a man who allowed me to have a small inside dog, and he doesn’t mind her so much but hates the two we have outside. Both are rescues, one from his oldest son that had him tied to a tree, the other from a rescue group. Both weigh under 7 pounds. He hates them and looks for any excuse to get mad about them. One is a thief but doesn’t chew up her finds. The other digs tiny holes that a pecan can fit in, but not very many, two or three at any given time.

Within the past 48 hours, student protesters occupied Hamilton Hall at Columbia University and then were forcibly removed by New York police. I knew that building well when I was an undergrad there in the 1970s.

As the philosopher and baseball player Yogi Berra once (supposedly) said, it’s deja vu all over again. Student protesters are occupying campuses of famed universities across the country. In New York, Columbia University protesters occupied administrative offices in Hamilton Hall and were cleared out by police, exactly 56 years to the day after student protesters occupied and were thrown out of that building in 1968.