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[{"type":"text","text":"When you can't decide on just one costume..."}]

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<title>Daily Smile: Saturday, Oct. 17, 2026</title>

When you can't decide on just one costume...

Daily Smile: Saturday, Oct. 17, 2026

 When you can&#039;t decide on just one costume...

Christian Shimabuku Headshot

Christian Shimabuku

Sports

In college football, homecoming games are regularly reserved for games deemed winnable by the home school, the cherry on top of a homecoming week filled with festivities on campus. 

Hawai‘i head coach Timmy Chang was 4-0 in homecoming games as a UH player, and 3-1 as the program's head coach. The Rainbow Warriors have scheduled a pair of homecoming games against FCS schools during his time as coach, including Duquesne in 2022 and 

Conversely, the Rainbow Warriors have been a common road homecoming opponent for other teams, including in 2026. They were most recently Wyoming's homecoming opponent in a 

. During the 2025 season, Hawai‘i was Colorado State's homecoming opponent and triumphed with a 31-19 win in Fort Collins. CSU head coach Jay Norvell was fired the next day. 

On Saturday, Hawai‘i will host New Mexico at the Clarence T.C. Ching Athletics Complex for its annual homecoming game. Kickoff is set for 4:30 p.m HST, and the game will be televised nationally on FS1. The Lobos are far from a pushover and enter the matchup 4-1 overall, its only blemish of the season a 14-6 loss at Oklahoma, which defeated then-No. 1 Texas on Oct 10. That's quite the contrast from the 1-5 Rainbow Warriors, who are averaging a bleak 16.67 points per game. 

 29-19 in a nonconference game on Sept. 12 for its only win of the season thus far. New Mexico, which played New Mexico State on the road two weeks later, routed the Aggies 42-18 in Las Cruces. 

As the 'Bows and Lobos converge on Saturday for a contest featuring teams trending in opposite directions, Chang hopes whoever decides to come watch will give his team a boost. 

I would love a very hostile, rowdy atmosphere," Chang said. "I know our sidelines will be that way, having a lot of energy, having a lot of juice. But we got to get the people excited about it offensively, making sure that we stay on par and be consistent."

, Hawai‘i went 1-for-2 in red zone scoring opportunities against Arizona State — the drive in which it came up empty was when the 'Bows had a fresh set of downs at the Arizona State 2, but a pair of penalties and sacks forced UH to resort to a 51-yard Sean Olvera-Harle field goal attempt that went wide right. The 'Bows have scored on 65% of red zone trips, which ranks 130th out of 138 FBS teams.  

"It really is on us and nobody else to flip the script and to put our foot down and want to re-correct, coach better, play better. All these different things that gotta happen for us to learn," Chang said. 

Though dropped passes have been a source of frustration for the team, specifically quarterback Micah Alejado, redshirt freshman slotback 

 has emerged as a reliable target. Against Arizona State, he hauled in all seven passes thrown his way for a total of 43 yards. The team's 2025 offensive scout team player of the year has steadily earned the trust of coaches and teammates alike and is set to make his first collegiate start on Saturday. 

"Just take each play as as its own individual play," Lacaden said. "That's a big saying that Coach Timmy always says to us, especially as receivers — can't get mentally hijacked. Even if I do make a play, it's about the next play. That's the most important thing. Whenever I can, be poised. Make the play when opportunity comes my way, and just stay level-headed.

"New Mexico is a great team. You can tell by their record, but just by watching film on them, you can tell they're very active on defense. The front six is probably the best we've seen, other than Arizona State, and so we're just ready to get after it. The biggest thing for us is just being disciplined and fixing the little things. It's always been the little thing for us from the beginning of the year. Just gotta finish. That's all it is."

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<title>Hawai‘i football preps for homecoming test against New Mexico</title>

The Lobos will come to town to face a reeling Rainbow Warrior squad for UH's homecoming game.

Hawai‘i football preps for homecoming test against New Mexico

De Soto 2025

DeSoto Brown

Hawai‘i History

Columnists

As the Victoria Ward corporation continued to develop its 60 acres of property in Kaka‘ako — a process it had started in the 1950s — a prime site in a prominent location at Ward Avenue and Ala Moana Boulevard was selected. This was what would become Ward Plaza.

Construction on Ward Plaza began in March 1969. It was designed by Au, Cutting, Smith & Associates in the Brutalist architectural style, which was extremely popular internationally at that time. Brutalism featured the use of unadorned concrete surfaces, usually dark grey, with exposed rough aggregate. It was considered to be the cutting edge of modern construction then. There are a number of similar Brutalist structures in Honolulu that you might recognize, like the Financial Plaza of the Pacific in downtown Honolulu along with a number of state and federal government buildings along Punchbowl Street. Even much of Honolulu’s Daniel K. Inouye Airport is Brutalist, having been built during this same period.

Ward Plaza opened on December 16, 1969. It contained 45,000 square feet of rentable space in one 3-story building and two 2-story ones. Tenants had the use of 165 parking spaces in the below-grade basement level. At the time of opening, renters included a Bank of Hawai‘i branch, a Reyn’s menswear store (the only retail occupant) and 16 other businesses including real estate, insurance, and a business machines representative.

Although Ward Plaza remained a popular professional building complex it was removed in 2018, probably to avoid continuing maintenance costs for something which was slated to be replaced eventually in the overall Howard Hughes plans. The site remained vacant for years afterwards although at the time of this article’s publication in 2026 it contains the lower floors of the under-construction Launiu condo.

You might question why one small commercial building deserves this much attention. There are many reasons — first, the documentation of what’s been destroyed in the growth of Honolulu is important. A great many lost buildings were never photographed at all, since nobody at the time thought they were worthy of attention, and we can never go back retroactively to right that omission. But additionally, Ward Plaza was notable historically because it was a significant step up for this particular neighborhood’s stature when it opened in 1969 as a unique architect-designed complex. And as Brutalist buildings in general age out of a useful life and are demolished, we need also to keep records to show they once existed. This is particularly true since the style is actively disliked by many critics today, leading to calls for it to be wiped out. We’ve seen this short-sighted attitude in the past lead to massive losses of buildings which today could never be replaced, and that mistake shouldn’t be made again.

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<title>Changing Kaka‘ako: Ward Plaza</title>

When it debuted in 1969, Ward Plaza elevated the neighborhood with a then-cutting edge architect-designed modernism. The complex was torn down in 2018 and construction has recently begun on its replacement, high-rise condo The Launiu Ward Village. Here's what made Ward Plaza special and why it should still be remembered.

Changing Kaka‘ako: Ward Plaza

Square Mike Brestovansky Headshot RGZ3736 Large

Michael Brestovansky

Government & Politics

Crime & Courts

Justices on the Hawai‘i Supreme Court seemed incredulous Friday over a dispute between the Hawai‘i Elections Commission and the state Office of Elections.

The Elections Commission, the board that appoints and evaluates the state Election Officer, has been unable to meet since June. The previous election chair’s term concluded that month, and without a successor in place, it has fallen to other commissioners to schedule a meeting in which a new chair can be selected.

This seemingly trivial task has been met with repeated roadblocks by the Office of Elections, leading commissioners Ralph Cushnie and Tamara McKay to file a petition for the Supreme Court to intervene and clarify what authority the Office of Elections has over the Commission.

Aaron Schulaner, the attorney representing the Office of Elections and Election Officer Scott Nago, repeatedly told the Supreme Court Friday that the Office of Elections only serves an administerial role for the Commission, advising them on what they are or are not permitted to do based on state statutes.

If, for example, a leaderless Commission wishes to schedule a meeting, Schulaner said the Office of Elections can do so — so long as a majority of the eight commissioners request the office for assistance scheduling a meeting. But without that request by the majority of the Commission, the Office of Elections cannot provide administrative support, Schulaner said.

Cushnie and McKay argued that this alone appears to not be backed up by state law. McKay said Schulaner’s reasoning seems to be based on the statutory requirement that the Commission act by majority, but the definition of “act” is based on actions taken during an agendized meeting, not administrative functions like scheduling meetings.

But justices of the court seemed shocked at the dysfunction between the Commission and the Office of Elections, two bodies that are charged with serving the public good.

Associate Justice Sabrina McKenna questioned why the Office of Elections hasn’t been more proactive in scheduling a meeting after four months of inactivity by the Commission with a general election looming.

“Why are we here?” McKenna exclaimed. “Why can’t this be done by rational people that are trying to serve the public?”

Schulaner said the Office of Elections could proactively send emails to each commissioner, asking them if they agree with holding a meeting, and if five commissioners answer in the affirmative, then the office would begin scheduling a meeting. But McKenna again was incredulous: “If you’re conceding that you could do that, why haven’t you done that?”

The Commission’s own inability to schedule meetings was also called into question. Cushnie said the commissioners do not have access to their fellows’ email addresses or contact information, which has prevented him from coordinating other commissioners.

Schulaner suggested that allowing commissioners to know each other’s emails could raise concerns about violations of the Sunshine Law, the government transparency law that, among other things, prohibits public boards from discussing business outside of agendized meetings. But he also could not confirm that the state Office of Information Practices specifically advised the Office of Elections to not share commissioners’ contact information with each other.

“You’re telling us that in all the years that this commission existed and that we’ve had email, that they haven’t created an email that would just say ‘RalphCushnie@ec.gov’?” scoffed Circuit Judge Peter Cahill.

Justices also questioned whether the Commission’s legal representation represents a conflict of interest. Cushnie and McKay represented themselves Friday; the Commission’s own attorney, Deputy Attorney General Jordan Ching, did not appear.

In fact, Schulaner said that Office of Elections staff reached out directly to the Commission’s counsel and received advice from him to not distribute correspondence among the commissioners.

“So your client is contacting the other entity’s lawyer directly and asking for advice?” Cahill said, calling this behavior “unheard of” for a lawyer. “So the lawyer is making decisions, and there’s nothing to indicate in the record that the lawyer obtained the consent of his own client to have these communications?”

The court made no decision Friday, and did not indicate when a decision would be forthcoming. But McKay told Aloha State Daily afterward that she hopes a decision will be made soon, as the election is looming.

But regardless of the court’s decision, McKay said there is “true division” among the Commission, with animosity and “bad behavior” between the Commission and the Office of Elections, as well as between commissioners themselves.

McKay added that the question of whether the Commission is receiving proper legal representation “needs to be visited” as well in the future.

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<title>Deadlocked state election organizations go to Hawai‘i Supreme Court</title>

Hawai‘i Supreme Court hears arguments in dispute between Hawai‘i Election Commission, Hawai‘i Office of Elections. At least one justice was stunned that the dynamic between the two groups had reached this point.

Deadlocked state election organizations go to Hawai‘i Supreme Court

Higa headshot white shirt square

Sterling Higa

The room had no windows. It was an ordinary prison room at the Women’s Community Correctional Center in Kailua, and Kēhau Manijo went to the church service there because, in her words, it was something to do. The pastor asked if anyone wanted to be saved. She heard herself say yes.

That scene sits near the end of a nearly 

 by Civil Beat’s John Hill, who traces the stories of four Hawaiians through decades of meth use. The vignettes include prison, children taken by the state, trucks repossessed, a tent on the North Shore, and two bodies lying still in a stairwell on School Street.

Two of the four died. Two lived. Hill’s series will shape how the state spends on meth for years to come, and this installment contains the plainest evidence of what works. But the reporter skirts around the evidence.

Hill weaves a good story, and he’s willing to show Christian faith that many reporters would minimize.

He brings the reader into Manijo’s prison conversion. He prints Kapu Shoaf’s desperate late-night prayer, “God, if you’re really there, just hear me, I don’t like die this way, but I don’t see no way out. But if you heal me one more time, I’m not gonna hit that pipe no more … Heal me one more time, like you did before when I was 15.”

He also follows their stories: Kēhau Manijo sobered up, was released from prison, and divorced her husband Tommy. She now runs a sober home in Waiʻanae. Kapu Shoaf prayed and got sober.

A hostile writer would have cut the stories of salvation, or filed them under jailhouse religion. Hill did neither. The honest man reports faithfully what he himself cannot profess.

The problem with his story is that the anecdotes pile up, and after nearly 6,000 words, Hill leaves the reader to sort out what matters. 

What explains meth addiction and recovery, in Hill’s story? He cites a University of Hawaiʻi study which found that Native Hawaiians were almost twice as likely as the state population to use meth. He points to childhood trauma. And he gestures toward publicly funded rehab programs which don’t work.

But two of his four subjects suggest that the thing that finally worked was God. A third wears a cross. The fourth repents just in time.

Hill writes in the neutral style the Associated Press prescribes for every newsroom in the country. He can write in his own voice that “Meth use is the backdrop of many child welfare cases.” But he cannot write in his own voice that conversion is the backdrop of recovery, though his four lives support the second sentence more than the first.

There is nothing wrong with citing studies. Statistics tell us things that stories can’t, and a reporter who ignored them would be worse at his job. The trouble is upstream of the numbers. It lies in the editor’s decision about which facts are allowed to carry weight.

That decision was made before Hill’s notebook opened, and his reporting is built on the wrong account of man I 

: corruption comes from outside, so the cure must come from outside too. Fix the surroundings and the man will follow.

Kēhau Manijo quit the first time, in the 1990s, when her father sat her down with tears in his eyes and said there would be no more money on her books and no home to come home to. She threw the ice away that night. But she returned to drugs. She quit the second time in a windowless prison room, as she received salvation.

Kapu Shoaf got clean praying in bed the night she saw no way out. She stays clean by keeping a small circle of sober friends.

Tommy Manijo stopped for a while after a diagnosis of congestive heart failure, then found that when the drug crowd stopped coming by, he “had to actually deal with himself.” He couldn’t. The last thing his ex-wife told him was to get right with God. He agreed, and died of meth that night.

Lily Shoaf went through nearly every rehab program on Oʻahu. Two of them worked, for years at a time. But relapse followed. Lily was accepted into another rehab on a December afternoon in 2024 and died of overdose a few hours later. A golden cross hangs from Lily’s neck in two photos, but Hill does not ask or answer any questions about Lily’s faith.

In Hill’s telling, addiction is something that happens to a person, like childhood trauma. His reporting makes a little room for faith. But not enough room for faith to have done anything.

In the photographs, an angel-shaped ornament hangs from a mirror in Kēhau Manijo’s sober home.

And a gold cross hangs at Lily Shoaf’s neck. Hill never asked about it. He should have.

Firefly Gemini Flash I need an oil painting style illustration showing Christian faith overcoming meth add 792157

<title>Civil Beat’s meth survivors have one thing in common</title>

Kēhau Manijo went to a prison church service because it was something to do. She walked out saved. ASD opinion columnist Sterling Higa on the four lives in Civil Beat’s meth series, and what the two who lived have in common.

Civil Beat’s meth survivors have one thing in common

Kam Napier Headshot

A. Kam Napier

 with frustration as I observe the deaths of three children and a teacher. The only good thing about the situation: An 

 driving by Silver Rail Elementary School heard the shots, parked, ran into the danger and shot and killed the school shooter before he could kill any more children. 

[{"type":"text","text":"He ended the threat before police could even get on the scene."}]

It’s yet another horrible example of two true things. One, there are psychopaths who want to shoot up school kids. Two, they can only be stopped by shooting them. 

My frustration is that Hawai‘i has stubbornly refused to acknowledge either reality and we are damned lucky we don’t have dead schoolchildren of our own.

If you think our keiki are being kept safe by our gun laws, you haven't thought past your feelings. In the real world, they are corralled into unprotected facilities with only police response time standing between them and death. That's exactly what happened at Silver Rail, where guns have been banned by state law since 2021.

One of the main sources of this vulnerability is our Act 52, the Statewide 

Sensitive Places Law, signed by Gov. Josh Green on June 2, 2023. He made this statement at the time:

“In observance of today’s National Gun Violence Awareness Day, I’m pleased to be signing two bills – SB1230 and HB1239 – as gun violence represents an urgent public health and public safety issue,” 

 Green. “These bills strike a very appropriate balance between public safety, and protecting people and children in Hawaiʻi, along with respecting the Second Amendment right of individuals.”

, banning guns from, among other places, all schools and universities, public or private.

HB1239 became Act 53, mandating “active shooter training” in the DOE. Well, sort of mandated, as it allows students to opt out. Here’s an example of such training at Hawai‘i Pacific University’s website,

 it’s the “run, hide, fight” method

. I assume this same method is taught throughout the Department of Education for public schools.

And it doesn't work. There's evidence it makes things worse. Read “

Unfortunate Outcomes for Popular Safety Programs,

. This is a business leadership trade organization for independent schools. Author Michael Dorn says of run, hide, fight and similar programs, “It has become evident, however, that in multiple school attacks, these training approaches have resulted in what can only be described as tragic failures that have increased rather than decreased casualties.”

That was two years before Hawai‘i made such training the law of the land for our schools and universities.

Here's what happens to "run, hide, fight" in real life when unarmed children and teachers are attacked by school shooters:

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Get shot in the back while you run. "}]

Get shot wherever the shooter finds you hiding. 

Get shot in the face while you fight ... with what, exactly? Algebra books?

These school shooters always end up being 

social misfit weirdos with chips on their shoulders

 who are going to make the world pay. They range from depressed and bullied to malicious and evil to inhumanly psychopathic. But they are generally not stupid. They select schools for a reason that ought to be jaw-droppingly obvious:

Schools are the only things weaker than the shooters themselves. The children are small and harmless. The teachers are nice people unaccustomed to violence. And, most importantly, from the shooter's perspective, they are all unarmed. No one can fight back.

Every school shooter knows this. They know it because there’s a stupid sign on the school that says, “gun-free zone.”

[{"type":"text","text":"You know what that sign says to a school shooter?"}]

Oregon's Silver Rail Elementary itself is the proof, where three students were killed before that armed father stopped the shooter. "

Oregon School Shooting District Had Banned Staff From Carrying Guns

These laws are not safety. True safety comes from stopping the shooter immediately. True safety comes from would-be school shooters knowing they will be shot on sight so fast that it isn’t worth it, they’ll never achieve what they’ve set out to do. They need to know it’s a suicide mission with no pay-off — and note, many of them do end on suicide, but only 

 they’ve killed others. They want their body count first. Take away their prize and school shootings will stop.

This is reality. Under these laws, our children are no safer than the ones at Silver Rail. As far as I'm concerned, those c

hildren are human sacrifices to the moral vanity of the gun control advocates who left them undefended.

If you've seen me make this next point before, well, I'm going to make it again because it's still true.

I’ve worked Downtown for 30 years and have seen countless armored cars making deliveries, with their armed guards openly carrying guns on their hips.

No one even looks twice. No one squawks. No one freaks out, “OMG! That guard has a 

Why? Because it’s obvious that sacks of money tempt robbers, including the armed-robbery type. We all collectively agree that people who transport money are at risk, the money is at risk, and if an armed robber gets killed during a robbery, well, too bad, you shouldn't have tried to steal the money and shoot the guards. That's if anybody gives this any thought at all, which, they probably don't because it's such obvious common sense that it's hardly worth noticing. Literally no has a problem with this. No marches on the state Capitol with a "no blood for armored cars!" sign.

School grounds, on the other hand, must be made as absolutely defenseless as possible or we simply can't live with ourselves. This is so important to us that we pass laws with fanfare and press conferences to celebrate how defenseless we've made the schools.

[{"type":"text","text":"I don't get it."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"What we're willing to protect with deadly force is what we truly value."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Looks to me like we love money more than we love children."}]

As for Green, he's surrounded by armed guards, at taxpayer expense. Kids on state property aren't, but he is. I guess we love our governors more than we love children, too.

[{"type":"text","text":"How nice for him."}]

People sometimes grumble when opinion writers rant about a problem without proposing a solution, so here's mine: Free guns for school employees and the training needed to safely shoot straight. Does this need funding? Well, the state of Hawai‘i knows exactly how much I paid in state income taxes last year. Start with that, every penny. I'd like to pay for something that works for a change.

A. Kam Napier is editor in chief of Aloha State Daily. His opinions in Pipikaula Corner are his own and not reflective of the ASD team.

Silver Rail Getty Images 2299891218

<title>Pipikaula Corner: What Oregon should teach Hawai‘i</title>

The Oregon school shooter was stopped by one thing and one thing only — a good, brave man with a gun. Hawai‘i offers its students and teachers only "gun-free zone" signs and some training that they run for their lives. But note this: Oregon's Silver Rail Elementary was a "gun-free zone" school, too.

Daily Smile: Saturday, Oct. 17, 2026

ASD Staff

Reporter

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Daily Smile: Saturday, Oct. 17, 2026

Authors

ASD Staff

Reporter

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