In the Media
After ending the annual brutal two-game road swing to the University of Alaska Fairbanks and Alaska Anchorage University Saturday, Jan. 14, with two wins, Western Washington University men's basketball became just the second school in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference to ever accomplish sweeps in back to back seasons.
While it's apparent the Vikings brought the frigid Alaskan weather back to Whatcom County, Western is also banking that its strong play up north will accompany WWU back to Carver Gym.
FAILED political leadership has left Washington state's university system disjointed and financially imperiled. Access to higher education has declined. Because of limited resources, the institutions do not produce enough bachelor's degrees, forcing employers to hire workers from out of state — and from out of the country.
Times editorials have made this point repeatedly. Powerful validation now comes from a damning report by the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education. Penn researchers looked at states underserving their college-age students.
Democratic Rep. Laurie Jinkins of Tacoma has introduced a 5 percent capital-gains tax that she says could bring in anywhere from $215 million to $650 million a year, based on recent flux in the economy. It comes on the heels of another Democratic proposal to impose a 1 percent income tax and eliminate or reduce other taxes that was introduced last week in the Legislature.
A year from now, Gov. Chris Gregoire hopes to be riding shotgun in a big RV, headed to a national park somewhere with her husband, Mike.
Anywhere but Olympia, where she has spent her second — and last — term trying to pump money out of the dry well of the state budget, and watching the education and health programs she put in place go hungry, like kids she just can't feed.
"My agenda really was just set aside," Gregoire told me the other day, in an interview before she addressed a Seattle business group.
In Washington, it's the law that ferry boats be built in-state. But when it comes to taxpayer-funded art, the world is the palette. There's no requirement that public art contracts go to Washington artists. Now a Democratic state senator wants to change that. But his proposal is meeting resistance from Washington's art community.
I'm standing on the campus of Olympic College in Bremerton, Washington looking at a large sculpture called 'Signs and Symbols.' It's basically a big archway made out glass blocks that light up at night. This sculpture was paid for by Washington taxpayer dollars, but the artist who made it is from Arizona.
On Wednesday, the EPA released a new interactive map letting people check out the biggest stationary sources of global-warming emissions in their area. It’s a nifty tool. But could it actually lead to less pollution? Quite possibly, yes, if the past is any guide.
In a conference call with reporters Wednesday, Gina McCarthy, the EPA’s assistant administrator for air and radiation, compared the new greenhouse-gas reporting law to the agency’s Toxics Release Inventory (TRI), a database that was passed by Congress back in 1986 to measure and publicize the release of more than 320 toxic chemicals from industrial facilities around the country. “[The TRI] had a tremendous impact in terms of providing opportunities for reduction, and we’re really hoping this information will do the same,” McCarthy said. And, in fact, a variety of analyses suggest she might be onto something.
Graduate students in Western Washington University's Psychology Department are offering free counseling for adults, teens and children starting today.
Jim Graham with the Psychology Department at Western says the counseling sessions are held under faculty supervision.
Even Van Gogh, O’Keefe and Warhol had to start somewhere. So it is for any artist looking to start a lifetime of creating art — the first brushstroke, the initial inked line, the first framed image brought into focus takes place and art is created.
But then what?
Western Washington University men's basketball guard John Allen has been named Great Northwest Athletic Conference Player of the Week for Jan. 8-14.
Allen, a 6-foot-1 junior, scored 33 points as the Vikings swept their Alaska road trip for the second straight year and third time in the past four seasons.
Western Washington University's Sanford-Hill Piano Series presents a concert by the Anderson & Roe Piano Duo at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 26, at Western Washington University Performing Arts Center's Concert Hall.