Thursday, October 30, 1997
Letters
Reaching out to students
The Daily Bruin editorial on Oct. 29 is headlined "Are
Carnesale’s office hours a PR stunt?" My answer to that question is
a resounding "no."
The response to my announcement of office hours for students was
overwhelmingly positive. In order to accommodate as many students
as possible, we arranged for a combination of eight 10-minute
private sessions, followed by a one-hour group meeting for those
who could not be included in the private sessions.
I plan to continue to hold office hours for students and, in
addition, to be available at a town hall meeting later this
fall.
As for the timing of my meetings with the heads of student
government, my office contacted the undergraduate and graduate
student body presidents over the summer and invited them to meet
with me at their earliest convenience.
Classes started on Sept. 25, and I met with GSA President Andrew
Westhall on Sept. 26. USAC President Kandea Mosley scheduled her
meeting for Oct. 13 (well before my Oct. 17 office hours), but had
to cancel at the last minute for personal reasons. I look forward
to meeting with her soon.
I value every opportunity to meet students and to find out what
is on their minds.
I am grateful to those students who shared their thoughts with
me, even if only briefly, and I look forward to many fruitful
interchanges in the future.
Albert Carnesale
Chancellor
Where’s the love?
I am saddened by the superficial and even jaded view of love
that Stephanie Pfeffer had in her column "Until divorce do we
part?" Her attitude of "free love" without commitment is a
perversion of the very concept of romantic love. She suggests that
we move on from person to person with our love, and that being with
a single person only ties one down when they want to move on. She
does not understand love at all.
I do believe that there is going to be a special person for me
in my life. Though I have not found her yet (and there is a chance
that I may never do so), I will search for that rare and delicate
essence of the person that completes my being. Love? Love is not
sex. Love is when you are willing to dedicate yourself to a person
even if there was no sex. It is not the sex, but the presence of
that very special person that fills one with the sense of
quiescence and fulfillment – an ecstasy of the spirit. I may be a
romantic, perhaps a hopeless one, but I can still search in hopes
of one day finding that perfection of being that I will be proud to
forever call my wife.
Daniel B. Rego
Second-year
Political science
Lack of
understanding
I have read, with a combination of amusement and annoyance, the
ongoing Nike shoes/anti-sweatshop policy controversy in the Daily
Bruin. I think many of the people involved have, at best, a very
tenuous understanding of what they are talking about.
While I applaud the intent of the USAC resolution I think it is
naive and a gross oversimplification of the problem. I’ll use
electronics as an example. (I ran my own electronics company before
coming here to work at UCLA.) Do any of the members of the council,
or the Daily Bruin editorial staff for that matter, own anything
electronic? Surprise, you are helping to support some of the same
companies you are so quick to condemn. While the name on the front
of that slick little gizmo on your wrist, in your backpack, or on
your desk may be that of some fine upstanding company, most of its
parts come from hundreds of independent companies. Some of them use
child, slave or otherwise criminally mistreated workers. It is,
regrettably, nearly impossible to avoid working with these
companies. There are just so many of them. You will hear about them
occasionally, but no one pays attention to companies that aren’t
household names.
And far be it from me to defend ASUCLA. They clearly spend too
much time believing their own PR. They do sell a lot of neat stuff
and if I worked somewhere else I might be able to afford some of
it. It’s easy to condemn them for selling Nike shoes, for trying to
make money, but that’s their job – making money. It’s also clearly
their top priority. With their dismal financial track record I’m
sure many ASUCLA staff are more focused on keeping their jobs than
keeping USAC and The Bruin happy. The only way many companies
survive is by putting the bottom line above everything else. Often,
it seems you can work at that sort of company or not work at
all.
I think if USAC and The Bruin would like to make a real
difference, they should focus on the real issue; we are all
patronizing these sorts of companies and most people don’t
understand the scope of the problem. Adopting this focus gives a
better chance of making a difference than taking a sound-bite
stance against a single company. With an understanding of the real
problem, some of you may be better equipped to make a difference
out there in the real world.
Greg Brown
Media Systems Design
Give Horey a break
I think that Steve Liao should leave Mr. Horey alone ("Horey’s
‘humor’ libelous, childish," Oct. 29). I know it’s really none of
my business to complain about such minutiae (in fact, I have wanted
to respond to quite a few editorials over the last few weeks), but
I was a little disturbed by Steve’s comments and I figured I would
let my opinion be known.
Steve, do you know Justin personally? I do. He’s on the air
after me on Tuesdays on KLA, 99.9 FM, (the station that 99 percent
of UCLA students don’t even know exists, 70 percent can’t even get,
and 98 percent of the people that can don’t know how to hook cable
into their radio). Justin is a "weird, obnoxious, funny guy." Is
there a problem with that? I think calling his comments "libelous"
is a bit extreme and attaches a very bad connotation to his name.
The Daily Bruin doesn’t have a comics section, does it? Maybe
Justin is our comics section every other week (or for me, every
week).
Sure, I agree that the article had no point, but I think we need
that every once in a while. I sympathize with Horey because I have
just as stupid a sense of humor as he does, but I’ll spare you for
now since he’s been here for four years and I’ve been here for four
weeks.
If there was any point to the article (which there actually
might have been), I think it was that if we don’t have "concerns,
questions or criticisms," then we feel inferior to those people who
do (or who are just making some questions up so that they can say,
"I had a worthwhile chat with the chancellor").
We can’t keep jumping on people for being themselves and being a
little silly. This may sound bad coming from a 17-year-old
freshman, but I consider myself to be a young adult – and we adults
are really just big kids at heart.
Randy A. Keith
First-year
Undeclared