Faculty vote bewildering
It’s astonishing that the faculty would choose to vote
against the war after its remarkable success.
It’s amazing that they felt the war to be an appropriate
matter upon which to collectively express their views. Why should
anyone care what their opinion is, anyway?
The single most important point is that in a country where 77
percent of the public supported the president, the faculty voted
180-7 the other way.
How can a group so devoted to diversity be so non-representative
of the country’s vast majority? This vote says more about
academic hiring practices than anything else.
Mel Aranoff Class of 1972
Rabenn makes unfair comparison
It’s too often that I’ve read or heard analogies
made to horrific crimes of the past by people hoping to vilify
their opponents, rather than attack their arguments.
In particular, I am referring to Grant Rabenn’s
submission, “Affirmative action unfair to applicants”
(Viewpoint, April 21), which compared the use of affirmative action
to the methods used by the Nazis. While I am fully aware that we
must remember the past in order to avoid atrocities in the future,
it is unnecessary and insulting to compare university admissions
and hiring practices to systematic oppression.
Although Rabenn qualifies his statements by saying the goals of
affirmative action are different in “degree and stated
goals,” the point of the comparison is clear: to compare
affirmative action to Nazi philosophy in order to create a negative
image in the reader’s mind. I personally do not support
affirmative action, but I do not see any justification for this
particular comparison.
It is insulting to anyone who has suffered under the Nazis to
have their experience marginalized through comparison to a
relatively minor thing. At best, it is misguided. At worst, it is
propaganda.
Matt Brown Graduate student
USAC should not support troops
A USAC declaration supporting our troops in Iraq is a
declaration supporting war. By definition, a soldier is a person
serving in an army (in this case in Iraq). A declaration supporting
the troops is a declaration supporting their presence in Iraq for
the purpose of war. As a representative of the student body (much
of which does not support the war), USAC should be aware that a
declaration supporting U.S. soldiers goes directly against the
beliefs of many students it supposedly represents.
It is simple logic to conclude that if you support the troops
fighting in the war, then you must support the war. I do not
support war, therefore I do not support our troops.
As far as the kissing, giving of flowers and singing of the
“liberated” Iraqi people, for all they know, American
rule will be no different from that of Saddam Hussein’s.
Armed resistance against the U.S. military means certain death or
imprisonment; the Iraqi people are aware of this and whether they
appreciate U.S. interference or not, few would risk death in a
rebellion against U.S. troops. People with guns are people with
guns, whether they are Iraqi or American troops.
Ashley Schwellenbach First-year, English