Letters to the Editor

Congress is a group of 'petty' voters

To the Daily:

When I picked up my copy of the Daily on Oct. 9, I saw the front page article on the House of Representatives vote to begin formal impeachment proceedings ("House approves inquiry"). When I read the statistic on the vote (258-176 for impeachment) I was interested to see how it broke down according to party lines. According to the article, all Republican members voted for the proceedings, as well as 31 Democrats. This was very disheartening.

There were two possibilities facing our legislators going into this vote. It was either blatantly obvious and clear that President Clinton's actions deemed necessary full impeachment proceedings or it was not so clear cut.

Let's look at the first case, where it is obvious he should be impeached. If that were the case, we should have seen a vote similar to the one 25 years ago when President Nixon was about to be impeached. That vote, according to the Daily article, was 410-4 in favor of proceedings. If it were blatantly obvious that Clinton should be impeached, and we had a Congress made up of men and woman who were compelled to do the right thing for the country, we would expect to see a landslide of just that sort.

But we see that the overwhelming majority of Democrats voted not to hold total impeachment proceedings. This means that the majority of Democrats are complete fools or they voted only to back their party. If indeed this is the case, we should all be very disappointed.

Looking at the other case, where it is not so cut and dry, we would expect a different outcome. We would expect to see some indecision in Congress. We would not expect a vote of 410-4 but one more like 258-176. But that said, we would again expect a Congress made up of men and woman of conscience to vote for what they believed to be the correct action. We would expect the parties to be a microcosm of the whole. We would expect both the Republican and Democratic parties to have statistics similar to the 60-40 split in votes of the Congress as a whole. But we don't see that either, we see that not one Republican voted against impeachment proceedings. This would seem to indicate that, as opposed to voting their conscience, and trying to serve the American people, our Republican congressman voted, not even to back their party, but to assault their competition, perhaps looking ahead to the 2000 election.

Either way, the statistics coming out of the vote on impeachment proceedings do not paint a flattering picture of Congress. We instead see instead a group of either completely inept legislators or a group of very petty career politicians.

David Manzi

Engineering senior

Article about Delta Zeta was wrong

To the Daily:

I was very upset after reading the Oct. 9 article about the closing of my sorority ("'U' Delta Zeta chapter to close"). Despite the efforts of our members, the Daily just couldn't get the facts straight. It's painful enough that our chapter closed. Unfortunately, it seems that the Daily basically made up the facts of the story to fit into its mold of what it thought it should be. It seems that the Daily was trying to take yet another blow at the Greek system.

Delta Zeta did not close because we could not attract new members. In fact, we did not even try to attract new members. Our special recruitment week that, according to the article, was part of the "reorganization effort" was to take place this week. The real reason we closed can be found later in the article. Last year, we experienced a severe decrease in membership due to a series of deactivations. Rush on a campus this size cannot be conducted by the small number of women that stayed to help reorganize.

Basically, the article was an insult to me and my sorority sisters. In the past, the Daily has gone out of its way to make the Greek system or any individual sorority or fraternity look bad in any way possible. The Daily should get the facts straight next time.

Meghan Broderick

LSA junior

Daily should ll space with better stories

To the Daily:

This letter is concerning the Sept. 29 article "Grocery stores differ in price, convenience." I realize that the editors of the Daily have a certain amount of space they need to fill for each issue, but this particular article was both a waste of space and a waste of the reader's time.

My initial response to the headline proclaiming that grocery stores vary in both service and price was "No kidding." Isn't that one of the perks of a free market? The article was filled with common knowledge and trivial information. Meijer has an aisle filled with only pop? Wow. I can't wait for the article on what color the sky is.

Don't get me wrong, I respect the hard work and dedication of the Daily's staff and appreciate the time they put in to create a daily paper. But why not put that time to good use and write articles that actually inform the reader with something that isn't already apparent?

James Petrosky

LSA first-year student

'Fighting words' are a part of every revolution

To the Daily:

In the spirit of the "fair and honest dialogue" that Micah Peltz is seeking in his Oct. 7 letter ("Viewpoint was damaging to efforts for peace"), I would like to make a few points clear. First, Peltz's conception of an editorial page as a place where one should not use "provocative language" is at odds with the history of American journalism. The editorial pages of America's newspapers have historically been the home of some of the most provocative language in the business. And in a more general sense, "fighting words" themselves have been intrinsic to every struggle for freedom: Where would the American Revolution have gone without the fiery pamphlets of Thomas Paine? Would slavery have ever been abolished without the speeches (deemed "violent" and "inflammatory" at the time) of a Sojourner Truth? While Gandhi was a pacifist, his words against British colonialism were not nice and friendly but fierce and outraged.

What would "a woman's place" be today if people like Gloria Steinem had never been brave enough to use "fighting words?"

As to the specific objections raised in Peltz's letter: Israeli soldiers do tote machine guns. And it is my opinion that any state that has different official policies for one ethnic/racial group than another is racist. Are the Palestinians suffering under a "holocaust?" Well, six million of them haven't been murdered - yet. The question is, do we wait until this happens or do we head off another tragedy like what happened to the Jewish people while we still have the chance? A Jewish friend of mine has said that Israel supporters who object to Nazi comparisons should be told, "OK, then the Israeli government aren't Nazis, they're Klansmen" (i.e., the difference is one of scale, not principle).

The truth is, supporters of Israel have never been willing to "sit down and examine the facts" in the manner Peltz suggests unless it is assured that they control the terms of discourse. This is because the facts are against them: We are not talking about an equal conflict where "everybody has their opinion and that's that," but a fundamentally unbalanced power relationship where Palestinians have been routinely denied an open forum for their concerns. Is it any wonder, then, that a people so constantly slighted and ignored use "fighting words" when finally given a minute to speak? I earnestly believe that a "fair and honest dialogue" is the first step to a just peace in the Middle East, but until we acknowledge the historical inequities and justifiable rage that are a part of the Palestinian experience, that dialogue will never be fair or open.

Saladin Ahmed

LSA senior

10-12-98