Wise Monkey News is here to provide young people an opportunity to discuss the issues that affect their lives. We hope that, through your participation, this website serves as a forum for the development, exchange, and expression of ideas that will prepare us to assume our positions as the leaders of tomorrow's world. Have something to say?
Seeds of mass destruction in slow motion
by: Mono Vergara - printed on 11-07-2001
I was thinking about the hundred of miles that I have walked freely. I thought about people playing in the fields on a sunny evening. I thought about a Cambodian kid chasing his dog after they went fishing. But suddenly I heard an explosion; the innocent child?s life is over. As another seed of death explodes, another life is taken.
According to the Red Cross, 26,000 people are either killed or injured by Anti Personal [AP] land mines every year.
Are the two Koreas ready to shake hands?
by: Boo Yoo - printed on 10-18-2000
Korea is the only country that is divided into two different governments, economic systems, cultures, and militaries. It was portioned along the 38th parallel, with the Soviet Union occupying the north area and American troops occupying the south area ever since it was independent from Japan in 1945. The North and South fought a fierce war from 1950 to 1953 and have never singed a permanent peace treaty.
Our business world
by: Meghan Molenda - printed on 10-24-2001
Many of us know no other way to exist other than by relying on millions of other people everyday. We may not personally have contact with them, but we encounter different objects into which they have put their labor. The great majority of us cannot make our own clothes; much less sew on a button. A box of macaroni-and-cheese is the extent of our cooking experience. These are just two of the simple everyday challenges that we do not have to worry about, because we do not have to know how to make clothes or cook a meal.
Corporate world different from reservation
by: Stephanie Nichols - printed on 02-14-2001
I walk to the “bus barn” and hear the snow crunch beneath my feet. As the cold crisp South Dakota air touches my face, I feel alive and ready to begin the day. After fifteen minutes of warming up the school bus, I embark on my route, which will bring 65 children to school in one of the most remotely isolated places in the country, the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. As I make my way across the reservation, the rising sun glistens off the morning frost that blankets these beautiful hills, and once again, I’m reminded that I’m privileged to be here.
Questioning nature's world view
by: Isaac Vanderburg - printed on 04-25-2001
Last Thursday night, some 2000 years after the death of Jesus, a group of UP students gathered in Buckley Center auditorium to discuss two videos about the salmon in the rivers and the smoke in the air. After 60 Minutes assured the students that economists and salmon don’t get along, Ted Koppel assured them that neither do politics and the global atmosphere. Enraged by the evident injustice, students eagerly chortled over the issues, assuring each other that Bush is bad, alternative energy is good and the woman on Koppel’s program who had opposed the Kyoto clean-air agreement was typical of those damned pro-oil types.
Setting up and making Me, Inc. work for you
by: Meighan Doherty - printed on 11-07-2001
I have discovered a disturbing trend among seniors here at UP: we have no idea what we want to do next year! When we were seniors in high school the decision for us was simpler - college or a job. Now we must decide what our four years here on the bluff have prepared us to do with our lives. Sure we say we are a nursing/business/biology/social work/theology/theatre or whatever major. But what does that mean for our lives? If you haven?t noticed, the economy and the job market are pretty darn pathetic right now.