What Constitutes an Amendment?

Recommendations: Texas Constitutional Amendments by Michael Quinn Sullivan details the nine proposed amendments for Texans that will be on the voting ballot starting today for early voters. Sullivan gives his opinion on each of the amendments on whether voters should support or oppose them when they are filling out their ballots. His audience is predominately right-leaning voters but is extended to any registered voter. Michael Sullivan is the president and CEO of the Empower Texans blog and it’s side project Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, which gives into the blogs right-leaning nature. I believe Sullivan's post is informative, while he is definitely biased for a republican agenda, he states for the readers the purpose of each amendment, and then goes forward to explain what both supporters and opponents say. I appreciate that Sullivan details each side of the amendment but believe that he could have further explained what each proposed amendment is intended to do.  

The sixth amendment which would appropriate money from the “Rainy Day Fund” to create the state water implementation revenue fund of Texas, that would help Texas in future droughts. Sullivan opposes the amendment, and while he does not give his direct opinion on it, he states that opposers of the proposal feel that it would be a mistake to allocate these funds in the event that Texas were to have a natural disaster and that it would hinder Texas borrowing money from the government. I personally support the bill and feel that the $2 billion is not going to deplete the “Rainy Day Fund.” This is the intended use for the fund, and I think it would be a mistake not to prepare ourselves for upcoming droughts that have devastated counties in our past. 

A Problem in Any Language

Lauren Franklin wrote an article for The Daily Texan aimed at current and future university students about the faltering foreign langue curriculum in America. Franklin is a linguistics and Middle Eastern languages and cultures senior from Sugar Land Texas who believes that the United States as a nation is comprising its future by not putting more importance into the foreign languages. She notes that only 15-20% of Americans identify as bilingual, where as with our neighbors across the pond 56% of the population identifies.  She continues to stress the importance of foreign languages and argues that our reliance on English makes it difficult for Americans to compete globally on both a linguistic and cultural level.    

While I agree with the importance of multi-lingual education that Franklin supports, I think she’s incorrect in her assertion that the majority of American students are disinterested in foreign languages. Maybe her status as a linguistics and foreign culture major have exposed her directly to many of the cultural biases our society has, but the majority of students I know are very interested in foreign languages because they want to travel, or they view them as romantic, or even because they want to do scholarly work on a global level. Unfortunately, most of these peers seem intimidated by the traditionally difficult rigor of the courses, or they have inadequate preliminary training in the language from elementary or middle school. I feel this is an important distinction that Franklin fails to make mention of in her article, since it shows that the solution to the problem lies in how we approach foreign language curriculum through all levels of education instead of merely heightened awareness. I appreciate that Franklin has brought this issue to the table, but I don’t believe she proposes an adequate solution in this article.