If you’re in Hamilton Hall, our offices take up the space between the staff kitchen and Vend-O-Land. If you continue down the hall, you’ll see Dick Doak’s office on your right.

Doak retired from The Des Moines Register after more than 40 years — 10 of which as the editorial page editor — and he’s kind of a big deal. We’re pretty geeked out when he pats us on the head for our wonderful columns — the man’s been doing his job for twice as long as we’ve been alive. 

Doak still writes for the Register on occasion. We’re not sure if his Jan. 23 opinion centerpiece story was an Onion-style piece or a serious proposition, but he had some awesome things to say in his story “A Radical Agenda?“; he addressed our new, old governor and the public at large. Regardless of Doak’s intentions, we think some of his ideas are worth exploring.

Among his propositions were: legalize all drugs recreationally — a la Portugal and Spain — or at least get the ball rolling with medicinal marijuana laws.

We figure the latter is a pretty sweet way to retain some of the younger population, and the former ends up working well provided the addicts are treated as patients, not criminals.

Most of our argument for these “radical” notions stem from the idea of reducing the prison population. We owe it to ourselves to find a way to mend a system that damages itself.

Certain states have or are in the process of privatizing their incarceration facilities.

Read that sentence again.

Doesn’t that sound like the plot of a sci-fi movie you might find in a bin at an interstate gas station? Is that seriously where we’re headed?

The idea of an accelerated education is something we think would tremendously benefit students looking for vocational and collegiate training alike.

Schools in Iowa without advanced placement courses or exams will foot the bill for post-secondary enrollment, and many students come to Iowa State with a few semester’s worth of college credit under their belts. This is an absolutely fantastic opportunity for many high school-aged students to bridge the gap to college curriculum. We’re willing to bet an accelerated education proposal would be a boon for community colleges, and a shorter timeline would almost surely alleviate dropout rates due to youthful extracurricular pursuits.

We’re even on board with eliminating taxpayer perks for the private sector. As we’ve said, we’d rather have a government able to support something besides its own ambition.

Public money belongs in public services: utilities, roadways, education and a genuinely stable infrastructure. We ponder the merits of taxation every time we take Highway 30 eastbound from the South Dakota Avenue exit.

We’ll also take another potshot at the LANE4/City Council hostile takeover of Campustown: Capitalism should dictate what does and doesn’t thrive in Campustown. This is where we take the time to point out just how swimmingly other development ventures have gone for the city of Ames.

Village of Somerset is just thriving up there north of campus. All of that wonderful parking and fancy brick can barely handle the excitement in that area.

The city did such a wonderful job reigning in overdevelopment in west Ames. If there’s one thing a small community needs, it’s an abundance of Section 8 housing.

Let’s not forget the proposed mall out at the intersection of Interstate 35 and 13th Street. You’d forgotten about that? Yeah, we’re inclined to think the city was hoping you would.

But we’ll save that for another day. For now, we take comfort in knowing there are people on campus like Doak with views of somewhere besides the inside of their colon.

We’ve learned a lot from the man, maybe LANE4 and the city officials should follow suit?