Last Tuesday, President Barack Obama delivered his State of the Union Address to the United States. How many of you can say that you watched it? To be honest, it was my first time watching it … ever. The only reason that I did watch his Address was because one of my roommates is an aspiring politician, so we grabbed some beers and had a good conversation about what is happening in our world.

 or those of you who didn’t hear his speech, here’s the rundown. President Obama touched on many issues facing the U.S. as our nation moves forward, and he talked a little bit about the progress he has made in his past six years as president.

 any of you may think that since we are only in college we don’t have anything connecting us with the state of our Union. We don’t pay taxes; we don’t have any investment in the real world yet, right? So wrong.

  resident Obama talked about the benefits of community colleges. He believes that they are so beneficial that he is supporting a plan that will lower the tuition for two years of community college to $0. How many students would go to a tech school for free instead of paying thousands of dollars in student loans for a four-year? I know that would have been a tough choice for me. I love SDSU and the education that I am receiving, but I also love free.

 Another topic that Obama spoke on was the freedom from foreign oil. In his words Obama said, “We are as free from the grip of foreign oil as we’ve been in almost 30 years.” He also estimated that with the drop in gas prices, the average American could save up to $750 at the pump this year. Assuming that most of us don’t live at home while we are attending school here, the drop in gas price is something for us all to celebrate.

  believe that these are good changes for the United States of America. President Obama claims to be working on some big things for the future, and he made the future look bright with the points he made during his speech. But does anyone remember when he ran for office the first time? The platform he ran on was “Hope.” President Obama said that he would have the American troops home from Iraq within two years of him taking office. That was six years ago.

 here is no doubt that the President of our United States is a great public speaker, and he gave an excellent State of the Union Address. However, there were many issues that he did not speak on.

 irstly, he did not talk about how he was going to bring back the 15,000 troops still left in Iraq and Afghanistan. And I certainly did not hear him say when he was going to stop sending troops, considering we are still deploying soldiers today. Obama also failed to talk about the Keystone XL Pipeline, which hits home for us. A pipeline that will cost thousands to make, run through sacred tribal land, and only create a small amount of benefits.

 hy were these things left out of his speech, as they seem to be important topics? If you did catch the State of the Union Address, what are you thoughts?

Brenna Ramsden can be reached at [email protected].