On a recent episode of “United Shades Of America” entitled “Hawaii For Hawaiians,” host W. Kamau Bell came to Hawaii to ask a blunt yet legitimate question: can you visit or move to Hawaii and not be an asshole?
It’s a challenging and provocative question, one that’s not easy to receive for those of us who flew here – either directly or via family who settled here in the past – instead of grew here. But it is nonetheless a necessary question to wrestle with…
If you follow the discourse about student loan forgiveness, one point comes up routinely: young people have been told since childhood that a college degree is the definitive road to higher pay and a better life. This is true in many ways, but that road has become increasingly potholed with near certain and significant debt, all while wages across various sectors have stagnated.
Though there are many culprits responsible for the trillion-dollar student debt crisis — outrageous spikes in tuition, interest that forces students to pay back multiple times the amount they borrowed — it is undeniable that society funnels most kids toward university enrollment.
We claim to know that everyone learns differently and that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to education, but we haven’t done a good job of putting that into action.
A potential answer, then, is to offer alternative models of school before university…
My mail-in ballot has sat on my desk, unopened, since it arrived a few weeks ago. Even though mail-in ballots have made voting easier and more accessible than ever, turnout for this year’s primary election has so far been lower than in years past. Clearly I’m not alone.
Election seasons are exhausting, if not downright dispiriting. My fellow columnist Denby Fawcett recently pinpointed how the coronavirus pandemic and technology have made political campaigns less personal, and thus duller.
Meeting with a few hundred voters face-to-face risks Covid exposure, and can devour entire days. But a single Instagram post only requires a few minutes of effort – likely from a young campaign volunteer – and it can reach tens of thousands of people, without the candidate having to share the same breath with any of them. In olelo Hawaii, by the way, sharing one’s breath is called “aloha.”
All of that is true and worth noting, but I think there’s a deeper reason behind the sluggish turnout. People are tired of being told this election is the most important one … until the next most important one. We’re disillusioned by the mailbox-to-trashcan pipeline of campaign flyers from candidates who seem less concerned with proposing solutions or clarifying ideas and more interested in creating an image and solidifying power…
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