Vol. 1
O
ACLE No. 6
March 4, 2021
Huckabee Sanders to run for OBU awarded $20,000 for research Governor of Arkansas
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders is looking to follow in the footsteps of her father and run for Governor of the state of Arkansas. Juliann Reaper Oracle: CE Reporter As of Jan. 25, Arkansas Republican Communications Consultant Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced that she is running to be the next Governor of Arkansas. Nov. 8, 2022 is the current date set for the general election. She will be competing with the current lieutenant governor and the attorney general both of which
have already won statewide races. However, one of her competitors has already backed out of the race. Arkansas Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin decided not to run against her, running for attorney general instead. Sanders was born on Aug. 13, 1982, in Hope, AR, and raised here in Arkansas. She shows an apparent love of the state.
“Arkansas is God’s country, the natural state.” Sanders said. “You haven’t lived until you float the clear, free flowing waters of the Buffalo River through the Ozark Mountains, or watch the sunrise on a duck hunt in flooded green timber.” She graduated from Little Rock Central High School and then from Ouachita Baptist University. Sarah was a political science major with a minor
in communications. As a senior at OBU, Sanders was the president of the Student Senate. She started following her father into politics a long time before she decided to run for governor. In his 1992 campaign for United States Senate and his subsequent successful campaigns for governor, Sanders helped with her father’s campaigns. Graduating from college in 2004, her involvement in presidential politics began when she served as field coordinator in Ohio for President George W. Bush’s re-election campaign. She was also the national political director for Governor Huckabee’s presidential campaign in 2008. Then in 2016, Sanders served as her father’s campaign manager. The same year she joined Donald Trump’s campaign as a senior adviser. Upon his election, she transferred to a role on the white house communications staff. On July 21, 2017, Scaramucci promoted Huckabee Sanders to the position of press secretary. Almost two years later, on Jun. 13, 2019, President Trump announced that Sanders would be stepping down at the end of the month to return to the great state of Arkansas. According to CNN, Sanders had told multiple people that she was seriously considering running at that time. As for what her plans are after she gets elected. She tells us in her announcement video that she will be standing by law enforcement and the smaller businesses. She has already started to do this with her 30 day fund she and her husband established. The 30 day fund is forgivable loans of up to $3000 to help bridge the gap for small businesses until they receive help from the government or their product or service is once again in demand.
A former editor on the evolution of secular humanism over a lifetime James A. Haught Editor Emeritus of The Charleston Gazette I’ll be 90 on my next birthday. My long life is sinking, shrinking, slip-sliding away. My wife is worse: bedfast, under Hospice care. Soon, our world will end, not with a bang but a whimper. Looking back over nine decades, I’m proud and pleased because secular humanism – the progressive struggle to make life better for everyone – won hundreds of victories during my time. When I came of age in the 1950s, fundamentalist taboos ruled America. Gay sex was a felony, and homosexuals hid in the closet. It was a crime for stores to open on the Sabbath. It was illegal to look at something like a Playboy magazine or sexy R-rated movie – or even read about sex. Blacks were confined to ghettos, not allowed into white-only restaurants, hotels, clubs, pools, schools, careers or neighborhoods. Interracial marriage was illegal. Schools had governmentmandated prayers, and biology classes didn’t mention evolution. Buying a cocktail or lottery ticket was a crime. Birth control was illegal in some states. Desperate girls couldn’t end pregnancies, except via back-alley butchers. Unwed couples couldn’t share a bedroom. Other Puritanism was locked into law. Now, all those born-again strictures have been wiped out, one after another. Human
rights and personal freedoms snowballed. Society changed so radically that it’s hard to remember the old “thou shalt nots.” The secular humanist crusade, a never-ending effort to help humanity, began its modern upsurge three centuries ago in The Enlightenment. Rebel thinkers began challenging the divine right of kings, the supremacy of the church, privileges of aristocrats, and other despotism. They envisioned democracy, personal equality, human rights, free speech and a social safety net. At the start of the 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt’s Progressive Party sought many reforms. And women fought bravely for the right to vote. Then, during my lifetime, wave after wave of betterment occurred. Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal passed Social Security pensions for retirees, gave unions a right to organize, provided unemployment compensation for the jobless and workers compensation for those injured at work, banned child labor, set a 40-hour work week and a minimum wage, created food stamps and welfare for the poor, launched massive public works to make jobs, created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to protect bank depositors, and much more. The U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren transformed America: outlawing racially segregated schools, outlawing government-en-
forced school prayer, striking down state laws against birth control and mixed marriage, protecting poor defendants against police abuses, mandating “one person, one vote” equality in districts to stop sparse rural conservatives from dominating legislatures. The Warren Court gave couples privacy in the bedroom – which set the stage for a later ruling that let women and girls end pregnancies. Other subsequent decisions decriminalized gay sex, gave homosexuals a right to marry, and made gays safer from cruel discrimination. Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society leaped forward with Medicare, Medicaid, the Job Corps, Head Start, public radio and television, consumer protection, pollution curbs, senior citizen meals, the National Trails System, and 200 other improvements. Four major laws guaranteed racial equality. Meanwhile, the historic civil rights movement made America honor its pledge that “all men are created equal.” Birth control pills freed women from endless pregnancy and triggered the sexual revolution against bluenose church taboos. Women’s liberation weakened male domination. Gays gained legal equality through historic breakthroughs. The youth rebellion of the 1960s still has repercussions. A 1987 high court ruling forbade public schools to teach “creationism.” Other progressive advances included marijuana legalization in many
states, and the beginning of “right to die with dignity” laws. Finally, the collapse of the idiotic Trump era and the disintegration of supernatural religion in western democracies are more victories for secular humanism. Decade after decade, progressive reformers defeated bigoted religion and right-wing political resistance to wipe out hidebound strictures. Barely noticed, humanist advances helped billions. War between nations has virtually ceased in the past half-century. In the 1800s, life expectancy averaged 35 years because of high childhood deaths, but now it’s near 80. Literacy and education have soared. Each day, 200,000 more people rise above rock-bottom $2-per-day poverty. Each day, 300,000 more gain access to electricity and clean water for the first time. Famines have almost vanished. Progressive values keep climbing. We existentialists see the chaotic carnival of life – all the absurdities and blatant charlatans (Trump, for example). Sometimes we want to embrace Macbeth’s bitter lament that life is a pointless farce, a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. But I know that’s only part of the truth. The marvelous rise of secular humanism in a single lifetime – greatly improving life for all – paints a much-brighter hope for humanity. Let’s keep striving for more advances.
Photo courtesy of OBU.
Dr. Sharon Hamilton, pictured, was awarded $20,000 in funding by the IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence for a lyophilizer freeze-dryer.
Madison Cresswell Ouachita Baptist Ouachita Baptist University’s Dr. Sharon Hamilton, assistant professor of chemistry, has been awarded $20,000 in funding by Arkansas IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE) to purchase a lyophilizer freeze-dryer, an instrument used to remove aqueous solvents in industry and research. The instrument will be used to enhance both course-based undergraduate research and independent research projects in Ouachita’s Patterson School of Natural Sciences as well as Henderson State University’s Ellis College of Arts and Sciences. “Having freeze drying equipment provides students with expanded laboratory experiences not typically available to undergraduates at private liberal arts schools,” Hamilton said. “The lyophilizer will be used to expand laboratory procedures for chemistry and biology classes offered at Ouachita and Henderson State University. “It should be noted that since lyophilizing is a common technique used to remove aqueous solvents in industry and research, exposure to this instrument would better prepare our students for equipment they will encounter in their future careers,” she added. “Dr. Hamilton’s grant, like many of the other grants faculty have been awarded in the past, is an indicator of our faculty’s desire to provide an education beyond the classroom,” said Dr. Tim Knight, dean of the
Patterson School. “The INBRE grant that Dr. Hamilton has secured also provides funding to aid our Patterson Summer Research Program, increasing the opportunities for Ouachita students to participate in significant research,” he added. Hamilton applied for the grant proposal in collaboration with Ouachita’s Dr. Sara Hubbard, associate professor of chemistry and holder of the Nell I. Mondy Chair of Chemistry; Dr. Ruth Plymale, associate professor of biology and holder of the J.D. Patterson Chair of Biology; Dr. Christin Pruett, associate professor of biology; and Dr. Nathan Reyna, associate professor of biology, all of whom contributed ideas for research and classroom projects using the instrument. Henderson State University’s Dr. Matt Breece, assistant professor of biochemistry, and Dr. Martin Campbell, professor and chair of the Department of Chemistry, also contributed to the proposal. “A lot of the faculty have a use for this instrument, and I anticipate that it will allow us to enhance biomedical research at Ouachita and Henderson as well as projects within both universities’ teaching laboratories,” Hamilton said. Hamilton, specifically, is planning to develop new organic chemistry labs that utilize the instrument, including experiments extracting compounds from native Arkansas plants. “We would use the lyophilizer to isolate these compounds, which we could then give to students in cell and molecular biology to test on various cell types, including cancerous cell lines,” she said. Hamilton, who joined the Ouachita faculty in 2018, also recently was awarded $297,000 in funding over the next two and a half years by INBRE to support her research of incorporating proteins into novel modern wound dressings. In 2019, she received an Arkansas INBRE Summer Research Grant and an Arkansas Space Consortium Research Infrastructure Grant to support her development of a variety of synthetic polymers that mimic biopolymers found in the human body. Hamilton earned her Bachelor of Science degree from Auburn University in 2004 and her Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University in 2009.
Mitchell Ford GAC Golfer of the Week
Photo courtesy of HSUSports.com
Henderson State University’s Mitchell Ford was named the GAC Golfer of the Week. RUSSELLVILLE, Ark. — Henderson State senior Mitchell Ford was named Great American Conference Golfer of the Week on Wednesday following his first career win at the Rattler Invitational. Ford, from Little Rock, Arkansas and Catholic High School, shot rounds of 70, 69 and 68 to finish 9-under par for the 54-hole tournament
and win the individual medalist honors by three strokes. He had an event-high 16 birdies in two days — six of which came during the final round of play. Ford led all players by shooting 6-under par on Par 4 holes. The GAC weekly award is the first of Ford’s career at Henderson State and the first by a Reddie men’s golfer since Oct. 23, 2019.