Graduate students neglected in reporting
It is surprising to me how frequently graduate student stories
are ignored. Graduate students make up almost one-third of the
students on this campus, and I don’t understand why the Daily
Bruin seems to think we don’t exist.
I think the readers would be interested in a portion of the
story that was left out of last week’s article on Chancellor
Carnesale’s public forum, “Chancellor hosts
forum” (News, March 2).
From the article, no one would know that graduate students even
attended, let alone co-sponsored the event.
Also absent was any mention of graduate student concerns about a
45 percent increase in fees for students in the schools of public
health and public policy. Graduate students from these schools were
not even provided with the opportunity to voice their concerns
about this increase to the regents.
On a different note, I would like to commend the people who
worked on the Weyburn Terrace housing stories “A broken
promise,” (News, Feb. 9) and “A defective
incentive,” (News, Feb. 10). I’m grateful for the Daily
Bruin’s diligence in telling this troubling story.
Jared Fox President, Graduate Student
Association
Juveniles may understand their crime
The Bruin’s editorial “Ban of death penalty for
minors a critical step,” (March 2) makes the pedantic
argument that trying minors as adults is reprehensible in all
situations because there is “evidence of cognitive
differences between adults and juveniles.” Differences in
conception, however, do not address a case-by-case basis for
one’s understanding of his own crime.
The case of Christopher Simmons, 17 years old at the time,
should not be glossed over. Simmons told his friends he did it
seemingly because he thought he could get away with it due to his
juvenile status. After robbing Shirley Crook, he and a friend
hog-tied the helpless victim in electric cable straps and duct tape
before pushing her off a railroad trestle into the river below.
Simmons’ crime had neither motive nor passion, and many
psychologists’ reports concluded he understood the nature of
his brutally calculated crime before and while he committed it.
As this case shows, to assert that a person isn’t culpable
for his crime because of age or cognitive differences is
ridiculous, especially when federal law states that in less than
six months, this young man would have suddenly, magically picked up
those differences and been tried as an adult.
Bryan Hartzheim Fourth-year, English