If the U.S. flag had 51 stars. Thanks to Traveler’s Today

One of the extra points to come out of the U.S. Presidential election is the non-binding referendum from Puerto Rico (a U.S. territory) calling for statehood. Don’t believe all the hype

There doesn’t appear to be an active majority in Puerto Rico for any of those options and holding multi-part, multi-choice referendums confuses the issue further.

Like in the U.S., Republicans faltered in the gubernatorial election. Alejandro Garcia Padilla of the Popular Demorcratic party came out on top

Spiraling drug-related crime that left 1,100 dead in 2011, an unemployment rate of nearly 15 percent and a long-struggling economy tipped the balance in favor of Garcia Padilla.

With an economy worse than ours and a post-colonization struggle that’s lasted more than one hundred years, it’s going to take more than one iffy referendum to get it together.

Most Puerto Ricans live in the U.S. anyway, due to the lower unemployment rate. For more on this commonwealth/territory relationship, read here.

Alumni representing a multiple Greek organizations gathered last month during Homecoming to celebrate the 25th anniversary of UMBC’s chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity. Nearly 100 SAE alumni and active members attended the event at the Sheraton in Columbia on October 13, said Jim Lotfi ’89, visual and performing arts, who advises the student fraternity.

In addition to recognizing some of the group’s founding brothers, Hugh Clifton Carr, III ’89 and Shawn Walker ’99 were presented with the “Order of the Lion” for outstanding Alumni service to the fraternity, Lotfi said.

“I was very happy to see so many Alumni attend the reunion,” he said. “Many attendees hadn’t seen each other since graduation but we had conversations as if we had seen each other yesterday. The bonds we developed in the fraternity have lasted all these years.”

SAE was granted its charter at UMBC on October 10, 1987. Currently there are 29 active members on campus. Its mission, Lotfi said, is to promote the highest standards of friendship, scholarship, and service for our members based upon the ideals set forth by our Founders and as specifically enunciated in our creed, “The True Gentleman.” Visit the SAE site.

• I used to imagine that the adults around me had gone through some mid-life personality reboot that totally separated them from their younger selves (and caused them to drive more slowly, and care about money and housekeeping). I've never experienced such a reboot. I've learned a great deal, understand situations better and make different choices, but my college experience is still alive for me, and my younger self still sees through my eyes. College is real life, and you are experiencing a part of your forever self.

• What changes a lot after college is that situations and habits tend to become sticky, in the sense that they evolve more slowly. The pressure you feel right now about choosing a major or planning for a job or graduate school turns into a kind of gravitational pull, pinning you wherever you land. Nobody calls "time" at the end of every semester and moves you to a new schedule and new classes. The kind of self-motivation you can experience and develop in college student organizations becomes a crucial life skill if you want to continue growing and blazing your own trail.

• Maybe your experience in student government, or in some other community that matters to you, is like mine: You identify with the group almost as a living thing of which you are a part. Its history is your history. And maybe you know, in the back of your mind, that one day you too will pass into history. Your chance to make a difference is time-limited, and therefore poignant and powerful. Embrace this knowledge!  It is what makes you alive, makes you real. You will have many years, later, never to regret having been truly present and given your all while you could. 

• A related thought: For the gathering 25 years ago, we tracked RSVPs using Post-It notes on the glass in front of the presidents' photographs; blue for attending, pink for not, yellow for no response, white for deceased. By the time we were done, the Post-Its formed a clear pattern: nearly all blues and pinks in front of the photos from roughly the 1940s onward; then a mix of yellows and whites from the 1930s; and before that, back to first president in 1919, a sea of white notes. 25 years later, the RSVP list shows that the sea of white has surged ahead, and some of the presidents who attended that long-ago gathering have passed away. No president who served prior to 1944 is yet alive. While I hope it is many, many years distant, your own white note is on its way. So seize the day.

The newest of the display cases, showing the most recent presidents (My photo is in the top row, fourth from the left)

November 12, 1987

Kimberly Moffitt, assistant professor of American studies, served as an election expert for two radio program in the days leading up to and following the November 6 election.

On Monday, November 5, Moffitt appeared on the “Marc Steiner Show” to weigh in on the final day of a tight race.  Moffitt questioned whether the race was actually as tight as the media portrayed it to be.

“I see it as the media’s role to make sure we are engaged in this way and to believe that there is something to tune into, so that we make sure to either tube into their station, or show up at the polls tomorrow.  I’m not sure it’s as neck and neck as we are positioning it to be, but I believe it is good business for it to be neck and neck,” she said.

Following the election, Moffitt appeared on “Midday with Dan Rodricks” on Thursday, November 8 to discuss the results.

“We’re now at the place where I think the GOP has often acknowledged the 80s as its heyday.  And largely that’s linked to Reagan and his time representing and serving our country. But he himself always counted the 50s as America’s heyday.  And I think where we are now, the reality is that neither of those decades mean anything significant or monumental, especially to the under 40 crowd and certainly to ethnic minorities.  And based on that, the GOP seemed to be a political party that disconnected and removed from any sense of what those two populations in this country would be able to support and endorse,” she said.