To the Daily:
It saddens me to learn of the brutal of Mark Shepard, a student at the University of Wyoming. Mark was pistol-whipped and then tied to a wooden fence and left to die. I am almost confident that if this story were heard about 30 years ago, we would have automatically thought we were in the days of Jim Crow and this savage murder was the result of skin color. But this is 1998 and the same ideologies - those being political and religious - that institutionalized hatred-filled and heinous crimes against blacks and other racial minorities are now the tools of choice that are institutionalizing the same crimes against sexual minorities in this country.
We are no longer dealing with lynchings on account of skin color but because of sexual and emotional preference. The same wooden artifact that Mark Shepard was tied to and left to die, is the same wood that was placed against the backs of many African Americans. It is the same wood from which many African Americans were hung just because they loved interracially and just because of who they were. I am sure that it is the same wood the lifeless body of the African American Texan passed as it was dragged behind a motorist's pick up truck.
When will we, as a community, wake up and see the continuation of these same injustices, just in different forms? It is time to put aside those things that set us apart and make us different and embrace them. Those will be the only fabrics to hold us together as a people and a country. If we let our differences tear us apart, then the same individuals that persecuted racial minorities in the name of religion and other ideologies will surely be back. When looking at the attack on affirmative action and lack of services being provided to underrepresented racial and sexual minorities, it is obvious that they are already here. Do you hear them knocking? I do.
It frightens me because I have always said that I would never wave the rainbow flag, a flag symbolic to most homosexuals. Today I realize that if I choose not to wave that flag, then possibly no one else will. It is time we all wave a flag, regardless of the color or print. It is time to say "no" to human persecution, be it physical or mental. So when you see those signs about the transforming of homosexuals to heterosexuals, just take a moment to reflect on how easy it will be to transform the mind of self.
Kenneth Jones
LSA senior
To the Daily:
This letter is written to thank the University maintenance people for responding so quickly to the power failure in Bursley Hall on Oct. 7.
Losing power at 11 p.m. is nothing major, of course. It's not like anyone was working on their EECS 280 programming assignment right then. We were all just about ready to fall asleep, naturally. It's not like it was about 100 degrees in our rooms because our fans weren't working. We didn't really want to use our computers, TVs, microwaves, stereos or cordless phones that late at night. So thank you for waiting until 11 a.m. the next morning to switch the circuit breaker to give our power back. We all slept so well last night without any fans cooling us down. I'm glad that the RAs, RDs and dorm security don't have keys to the circuit breaker panels. It's good to know that we have such efficient people assisting us when our fine buildings break down.
Michael Proszkow John McMahon
Engineering sophomores
To the Daily:
As a first-year graduate student and an avid college hockey fan, I was appalled to learn of the adjusted price increase for regular season hockey tickets effective this season.
For four years I was fortunate enough to attend St. Lawrence University, a private liberal arts school in northern New York. Although very small in student enrollment when compared to the University, SLU has a Division I hockey program in the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference. For years, the Conference has not contained the power house teams often associated with the Central Collegiate Hockey Association or the Western Collegiate Hockey Association, but has still managed to remain quite competitive in the college hockey circuit (sending three of the 12 teams in the NCAA tournament). During my first three years at SLU, the price of a regular season student ticket was a mere $2. At the commencement of my senior year, SLU's president made the decision to do away with charging any student admission to regular season hockey games. Granted, SLU did not win the national championship two out of the last three years, but they were runners up for the 1989 season. Remarkably, the cost of student tickets remained just $2 for the following seven seasons until its eventual dismissal entirely.
My point being thus: If SLU, with a student population of 2,000 and an arena seating capacity of less than half that of Michigan's, is capable of supporting a competitive hockey program, why does the University feel the need to excessively inflate ticket prices for an already ample-funded program with a much larger fanfare?
This perplexing question has unfortunately lead to my inability to attend any Michigan hockey games this year (quite disappointing, considering I was greatly looking forward to doing so). I hope in future situations, the Athletic Department takes the students into greater consideration before attempting to make a fast buck.
Kevin Schneider
Rackham
To the Daily:
The University has both a College of Architecture and Urban Planning and a School of Art and Design. For seven, count 'em, seven years now, I have watched the Daily screw up that simple fact. In the Oct. 7 paper, the Daily cited a quote to "Nathan Tracer, Art and Architecture Michigan Student Assembly Representative."
We are two separate educational entities!
Just because the two schools share a building doesn't mean they're the same body. That would be like me writing this letter to the "Michiganensian Daily Gargoyle" just because they're all in the publications building. The Daily needs to get some poster boards and write on them in big black marker that Art and Architecture are two separate entities.
You'd think that 108 years of editorial freedom would have been enough time to send somebody to North Campus to figure it out.
Josh Keough
Nathan Tracer School of Architecture and Urban Planning
10-14-98
| Previous Article |
should be sent to: daily.letters@umich.edu | should be sent to: online.daily@umich.edu |