Commentary Review, Haruka

In this commentary I’m reviewing today is classmate Anairisprieto, Murder of Haruka Weiser on UT campus should shake us all.  This article is about how University of Texas at Austin immediately reacted to its students to help give warning and identify the suspect that murdered Haruka Weiser. From my understanding the writer has agree with these actions that has been taken over the investigation.

They have provided evidence that shows proof of the University’s care towards their students. In the end the actions that U.T. has taken has been proven successful, as the suspect has been caught this April.

U.T. Austin has at least over 70,000 students and informing them is important even though they can’t be available to head count every student that was warned.

What I don’t understand about the article is the title. “Should shake us all.” It kind contradicts because in the article it informs how successfully it went. Making an assumption that this article is actually gives off a positive outcome when reading.

What I find interesting about the article that fits better with the title is the last paragraph.

 “Although UT didn't mention this but the Statesman post did, mentioned that this kind of stuff distressing lot of women, who must look over their shoulder's in dark places.”

This could be expanded more because it’s important to know that women should be able to feel safe.

Taken from the Statesman article they provided,

“Sunday night to the female victim was likely to rock the feeling of safety and security on the Austin campus and in this city for some time to come.”

This makes me wonder how is U.T. going to react from now. Will they enforce more security? What can they do to make women, yes women, feel safer on campus? Does this anger students knowing that even though they pay tuition to a big University that they can’t make more efforts of protecting their students? Will there be a larger boundary against the homeless?

There are so many questions that are left unanswered but what has been done in the past is done. What I agree about the article is that the Campus did its job to inform the students and then the Police was able to get the suspect.

Toll Talk, we need a small loan of 30 billion dollars.

The way how tolls are discussed over time has evolved. It was only last year were it was a face that greeted you at some point then to just pay as you go. Except, we can all agree that nobody likes paying tolls. There is enough tolls in Texas and I state that Texas should not support any more projects involving tolls. In fact the better idea is to reduce them, instead of paying for more roads that we are going to be charged more than once on. 

Currently, Texas Transportation is already in debt in an increasingly amount of $30 billion, according to James Bass, executive director of TxDOT. Although $30 billion was a guess estimate back in late March 2016 for 2053, now you can find other articles (i.e. Texas Tribune or Dallas News) related to debt up to $50 billion.

Where does the money go from the tolls?

TxDOT (Texas Department of Transportation) has a partnership with the RMA (Regionally Monthly Authorities) and as they are not a funded organization they get to exercise the money with new projects toll related and non toll related. The money is usually to reconstruct, update existing free lanes, and making more tolls. It's really a never ending cycling but the only thing that goes up is the debt and the money wasted.

 

There is already a report in motion lead by Rep. Joseph Pickett, from the transportation committee, proposing about eliminating all toll roads in Texas. As this may seem promising the question is

"Who is going to pay for it?"

When we all know that the state's "financial assistance" is the Texas Citizens. Which makes me have to disagree on their process as that idea sounds too good to be true.

Another idea was just as optimistic that I support as perhaps its time to look at the regions with the most debt and use the money revenue used from our taxes and put it there to narrow down some costs of that debt. But this notion may be hard as TxDOT states that they "wouldn't be able to pick and choose which roads get paid off early." BUT this shouldn't stop them to not use the money wisely.

I can agree that a good pro to tolls is that they are fuel friendly of promising less stops and just go at 85 mph. But when the bill arrives in the mail in a week later or so, it becomes a pain to see that passing through one toll is just about equivalent to a gallon of gas. So please stop taking our money.