By Ashley Virnoche
This year has been a whirlwind of current events. College of Southern Nevada’s students are concerned with a few issues including a local law-enforcement scandal, national elections and terrorist threats.
Rich Bukowski, student at CSN, mentioned the recent issue with a Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Officer James Henry who was arrested and charged with counts of possession and distribution of child pornography.
“[On] Oct. 23, 2014, approximately 7:00 a.m., Officer Henry surrendered to investigators at the Clark County Detention Center where he was arrested on the above charges,” according to the LVMPD’s press release dated Oct. 23. “Henry will be placed on unpaid administrative leave pending the outcome of these allegations.”
Bukowski said, “[This is] a negative incident that involves child pornography and an officer of the law. Although this is an isolated incident, other police officers are being labeled and generalized because of this.”
Another important current event that affects people locally and nationally was the recent election.
On Nov. 4, 2014, the general elections resulted in big wins for the Republican Party. Now the U.S. Senate and Congress is Republican run. Nevada saw its Republican Governor reinstated and a shift in the Congressional seat.
According to Clark County’s website election result’s page, 41 percent of registered voters turned out to vote. That was a low number.
“It worries me that not enough of the population that is eligible to vote exercises their right to do so,” said Anthony Irvey, student at CSN. “I also worry that the individuals running for office spend more time killing their opponents’ campaigns rather than telling the people how they plan to improve the economy.”
From national to global affairs, some students are most concerned about the uprising of terrorist group ISIS, or ISIL.
Liliana Galvan, CSN student, is focused on the United States’ airstrikes on Syria to combat ISIS.
According to President Barack Obama’s White House blog dated Sept. 10, 2014, he said, “We can’t erase every trace of evil from the world and small groups of killers have the capacity to do great harm. At this moment, the greatest threats come from the Middle East and North Africa where radical groups exploit grievances for their own gain. And one of those groups is ISIL, which calls itself the Islamic State.”
ISIL is located at the Iraq-Syrian border and is taking advantage of sectarian strife and the Syrian civil war. Although ISIL calls itself the “Islamic State” the President emphasized that the terrorist group is neither Islamic nor a state, according to the White House blog.
“It’s getting a lot of attention because the U.S. is taking an effort to prevent ISIS,” Galvan said.
Coyote Student News at the College of Southern Nevada 