Letters to the Editor

Write-ins protesting ‘ridiculous promises’

We are writing today to announce our write-in campaign for USG president and vice president. We feel we have a lot to offer to the student body. We feel many contenders this year have failed to properly address real concerns. Each year somebody complains about parking, somebody laments international teaching assistants speaking some pidgin form of quasi-English and somebody speaks out against the continual addition of new fees to our tuition that even though we may never use it (i.e. the Loop, the New York Times, the computer fee), we still have to pay for it. Well, enough is enough. We’re putting our foot down, and we’re not going to take it anymore. It’s time to stop wasting time with concepts that never get solved in any real ways that benefit students. Therefore, we move to hold all our campaigning to other issues that also affect our fellow students and basically cover pet peeves across campus.

So if you wish to go to a school where squirrels are summarily exterminated, where there are huge penalties for killing the grass by cutting corners on sidewalks, where there will be two-ply toilet paper and paper towels in the bathrooms, where the drinking fountains actually have water pressure, then write in Butcher and Ross for USG president and vice president. And if you see either of us on the mall, feel free to give us a thumbs up and give us some more pet peeves to campaign against. We won’t give up or back down.

Brandon Butcher
senior-meteorology
Stephen Ross
junior-women’s studies

If there were such a thing as an anti-ethnocentric, I would have to award that title to Martin Austermuhle. According to him, everything in the United States is bad. His column about how the MTV Spring Break is ignorant to culture and horribly immoral is a perfect example.

What he fails to recognize is that everyone doesn’t always do things just to get culture. Spring break is the perfect example. I am figuring the people down at MTV’s Spring Break are mainly college students who go to school for 30 weeks and work the rest. So maybe, just maybe, these students aren’t going down to Cancun to study the culture. It might be that they are going down there because there will be carloads full of gorgeous women, beautiful weather and a week packed with fun things to do. That doesn’t sound quite so bad to me.

As for people’s immorality in giving money to Mexico’s oppressive government, I would like to know what suggestion he poses. In a previous column, he states that the United States runs on a system that is inherently discriminatory to minorities. So if they don’t spend money in Mexico is he hoping they give their money to our government, which is also horribly oppressive? Either way, we are being immoral. Maybe in his next column he can give us a list of ethically acceptable countries we could go to.

I don’t doubt that it is a great experience to visit another culture and learn about it. However, not everyone has that in mind for spring break, and I don’t think they should be made to look so bad.

Tim McKenna
sophomore-telecommunications

It seems to me that that people who seek to discriminate against people always recycle the same arguments. In Steven Markle’s letter to the editor, he said, "we are throwing out sexual morality to please a few people." Funny people said that statement when women were allowed to wear pants and show their knees in public. We tossed morality out of the window when we allowed interracial couples to marry. Goodness, a new argument, please.

One’s ability to make decisions about whom they choose to sleep with or marry should be an unfettered right, and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people should be able to attend public schools without fear of discrimination. The idea that sexual orientation should not be included in a nondiscrimination policy because we don’t include non-swimmers and smokers is silly. When was the last time you heard of a student being barred from a club because of swimming ability? By not including sexual orientation in the anti-discrimination clause, we are telling school children it is OK to discriminate against someone on the basis of sexual orientation. I hope that the school district and the people of this community will stand-up and say, "I want no child to ever have to feel the sting of bigotry or ignorance."

Kizzy Frey
junior-special education