Letters to the Editor

Students' attitude is 'childish'

To the Daily:

My husband and I have been Michigan football season ticket holders for some 25 years now. We are now retired and drive to all the home games from Higgins Lake, Mich. I have been very disappointed in the attitude of the University students when the players from the away teams are introduced before the games. It shows a lack of class on their part and does not paint a very good picture of the University. It seems to me that more respect should be given to our guests on football Saturdays. I have always thought that a great university such as ours should be above such childish behavior.

Annette White

University alumna

Miller's column was 'unintelligent'

To the Daily:

I've been one of the silent majority who has looked forward to James Miller's column in the Wednesday Daily over the last few years. His "I'm going to say what everyone else is thinking but won't say" style has been good for a few laughs. But I'm beginning to wonder if Miller hasn't just run out of targets and insight.

Take Wednesday's "Poverty Paté." He goes after the peanut allergy issue, a perfect column controversy topic: The issue is absurd on the one hand, deadly serious on the other. But Miller completely drops the ball. Instead of going for black humor, he gives us another resentful anti-upper-middle-class-East-Coast rant that is just ludicrous and has nothing to do with the issue at hand. Are we supposed to believe that the only people who suffer from this allergy are east coast WASPs, as the column implies?

Miller, your "Poverty Paté" column was rambling, self-contradictory, and unintelligent. And why don't you lay off East Coasters for a week or two? You're making Midwesterners like us look as petty and confused as your recent columns.

Jacob Kart

LSA senior

An open letter to Red Berenson

To the Daily:

I am writing in response to Daily Oct. 1 article "Despite doubles prices, hockey tickets sell out," more specifically to the comments made by Coach Red Berenson. He states that "nothing has changed." However, the ticket prices have changed. They were raised a significant amount (87.5 percent, to be exact). Another thing has changed as well. For years, Yost Ice Arena has been dreaded by opposing teams as the loudest, rowdiest and most difficult arena to play in. Now, with almost 1,000 fewer of the rowdiest of the rowdy, the rafters of Yost may never again shake and shimmy the way they used to.

Red, I have been a big fan of your hockey team ever since I first came to Ann Arbor in 1987. I defended your team members when they couldn't put a puck in a net if their lives depended on in. I was at Joe Louis Arena in 1991 when your boys came back from a three-goal deficit to beat Ferris State, screaming myself hoarse as Steve Shields (then an anonymous freshman sub) put on an unbelievable show and you walked away victorious. I even defended your character when I heard that you had been charged with a crime more typical of a binging 21-year-old than an established coach at the top of his profession.

However disillusioned I may have been by this last example, nothing compared to the disillusionment I feel having read your statements in the Daily, trivializing the financial burden the Athletic Department has placed on student hockey fans. Perhaps you have lost sight of who your loudest and most spirited fans are. I am one of the fortunate 1,600 who had enough saved up from the summer to be able to afford the near doubling of ticket prices, but none of the seven friends I purchased tickets with last year were able to do so, and I spent the money I had saved to attend your games at Joe Louis Arena on the price increase (may I remind you that Michigan always has a shameful turnout at "The Joe," generally outdone by those who travelled all the way from Houghton and Sault St. Marie and don't even get me started on how embarrassing we are in comparison to State). You, sir, may choose to look at it as simply another $2.50 out of my pocket, but please keep in mind that those $70 kept a lot of very enthusiastic fans from supporting your team in person and kept the likes of me from supporting your team at some of it's most important games of the year.

Eric Dyer

RC senior

10-02-98