Letters to the Editor

Harsh words shouldn’t be directed at Thon

As a past Dance Marathon participant, I would like to express my disagreement with Jason Fagone’s column. His remarks, which were held together only by his disjointed anger toward the greek system and MBNA America, attempted to paint Thon as an undertaking too big for its britches. To do this he cited Thon’s tremendous growth in both participation and fundraising. He cited Thon’s generation of millions of dollars in the past few years alone. While both of these show that Thon is bigger than ever, they also show it to be an admirable undertaking, not something to be disparaged. There is nothing shameful or contemptible about reaching for the sky.

So why the harsh words against MBNA and other large contributors? As Fagone put it, “MBNA sucks. ... It’s a sickening attempt to justify selling students into a life of credit card debt.” This is where I take exception.

There are many factors contributing to student debt, among them lack of discipline and students’ greed for compact discs and clothing. MBNA should not be condemned, and even if it seeks good publicity (who doesn’t?), its donations to Thon should not be slandered as dirty money. Fagone’s contempt for consumerism seems to be misdirected at Thon.

While breathing fire at the greeks who, as he puts it, participate in Thon as “a one-weekend atonement for a year’s worth of drunken debauchery,” Fagone fails to mention the work done year-round by students to coordinate the money, supplies, personnel, food, equipment and other necessary components of Thon.

He also fails to recognize that not all of these students are greeks — nearly every other student organization, not to mention many individuals, support and participate in Thon.

Thon not only makes possible most of the research and care provided by the Hershey Medical Center for children with cancer, but it provides thousands of Penn State students each year with a memorable experience, a chance to work hard for a worthy cause, and a chance to aim high for an admirable goal. It is a learning experience for participants and an eye opener for spectators who may be unaware of the devastating ways cancer affects children. In light of all these benefits, I say the bigger the better.

Thon would only be “too big for its own good” if there were corruption or foul play happening as a result of its size. But so far, it seems to have produced nothing but success, not to mention immense hope and joy for the families who benefit.

Cheryl L. Heidel
Class of 1995

This is in response to the letter to the editor by Eric E. Stelene. In defense of felons having unfettered access to guns, Stelene quotes the Constitution’s famous lines about the right to bear arms. However, in the very next paragraph, he dismisses the Constitution as “meaningless,” apparently because he disagrees with the verdict in the impeachment trial. Rhetorically, I’m not sure it’s a good idea to discount the Constitution completely if you’re going to try to use it to prove your argument.

As a further consideration, however, we might remember the Constitution has been, during the course of years, amended to keep it vital for changed times. Very few people today would put much faith in the framers’ decision that state populations (for representation in the House) would be determined by counting those “bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other Persons.”

Nor should we forget that despite the “original intent” of the Constitution, succeeding generations have seen fit to allow women to vote. Just as the Constitution was written in a period in which women’s rights were not so important to the men who wrote it, so too was it written in a period in which semi-automatic and automatic weapons, including lethally accurate and easily available handguns, did not exist.

Rich Hancuff
Class of 1991

On Friday, Feb. 12, from a speech that I made to the Keg Party regarding my candidacy, The Daily Collegian reported one of my main campaign goals is to make “underage drinking” legal. This was not one of my statements. While I believe adults should be allowed to make their own choices about what they do with their bodies, I do not support underage drinking. I simply believe government should not be involved in the choices adults make regarding how they live their private lives.

Carla Moquin
Centre County Commissioner candidate

Usually, I find intelligent and well-reasoned arguments in Martin Austermuhle’s frequent letters and columns. Sadly, his recent column on multiculturalism was an exception to that norm. The reaction against multiculturalism isn’t some sort of plot by the Caucasian majority to keep minorities separate from one another and conquer them or to maintain some sort of mythical “white domination” of society. Indeed, if I didn’t know better, I might think he lapsed into paranoid raving when he implied this. If anything encourages individuals to be separated on the basis of race, it is multiculturalism itself, and the wrong-headed attitude that people need “safe havens” just because they have a different skin color.

You can live in a world where people cower in ghettos like “safe havens” and call it “diversity,” or you can live in a world of real diversity, where people interact without regard to skin color.

You can live in a world of bizarre racial conspiracy theories concocted by fringe psychologists, or you can live in a world where we all, as members of the human species, are fighting the same fight and trying to make a better society for the next generation.

You can live in a world where every time you look at people, you see only their subconscious “racist tendencies,” or you can live in a world where you judge people according to their actions, rather than some weird sociological theory about how society has made us all into racists. You can live in a world where we are all separated by our skin color, or you can live in a world where we are all united by our essential humanity.

I know what world I want to live in. To me, the choice has always seemed evident.

Jason Covener
senior-international politics