Letters to the Editor

Daily's does 'fine job' providing reports on local issues

To the Daily:

I would like to take a moment to respond to Geoffery Stanton's Jan. 26 letter entitled "Daily's sports coverage is excessive." My biggest problem with Stanton's notion is the fact that he seems to fail to realize that the Daily is a campus newspaper, therefore it should cover campus events.

The Daily does it pretty well, its fine editorials are generally focused on campus issues, as is its news coverage. Occasionally it falters, but every newspaper does.

And since one of the larger events on campus is the University's athletic program, the Daily should cover it extensively because other newspapers do not, and let things like world events and the like be covered by the media outlets that have the resources and the wider paying audience to do so.

If you have issues with the lack of world events, turn on Headline News, read a Reuters news summary online, or drop 35 cents and pick up a Detroit Free Press or The Detroit News. For a free campus paper, the Daily does a fine job, and its sports coverage is excellent.

Craig Barker

LSA senior

Opponents of MSA resolution should not be re-elected

To the Daily:

To all the people who voted against and abstained from the MSA resolution on the U.N.-leavened sanctions against Iraq, I do say that I am not proud to say that I have attended the same school as you all. As many of you know, the MSA approved, by one vote, a resolution opposing the sanctions in Iraq that are killing children at the rate of one dead every 20 minutes.

As many of you may also know, it is the United States that is the rallying force behind these deadly measures.

Many representatives say they did not vote for the resolution because they believed that the assembly had no place in such issues.

I would tell them that when more than 20 students take time from their busy lives to attend a three-hour long MSA meeting so that they may see the passage of a resolution that is important to them, it is a student issue.

I urge the students of the University not to re-elect the following students as they had neither the courage nor the fortitude to stand up for a just and justified resolution.

Their names are, in no specific order: Sandeep Parikh, Bram Elias, Rory Diamond, Elise Erickson, Joe Bernstein, Mark Sherer, Mehul Madia, Peter Handler, Erin Dotson, Andrew Serowik, Alok Agrawal, Neil Verma, Kym Stewart, Ellen Friedman, Josh Trapani, David Burden, Jennifer VanRoeyen and Glen Roe.

Please do not re-elect these people as they either voted against or abstained from voting on a humane and moral resolution.

I ask you to travel to the MSA office, read the resolution and see for yourself that by voting against it or abstaining, these representatives displayed a lack of courage and an acceptance of the mass killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent people in Iraq.

One last note.

David Burden, as for you, words fail me in describing my pure distaste for your politics and ultra-conservative views. But I will give it a shot. Your anti-progressive tactics have, for a long time, affected student interests in a purely hurtful way. You have finally committed your first act of public service in resigning your position on MSA.

I sincerely believe that if it were up to you, everyone on this campus would be named David, Michael or Johnathan, and would hold all of their meetings at the top of the Union. You have served nothing but your own interests and I believe that the assembly will be more functional and sensitive to student concerns without you.

I thank you for reading.

Amer Zahr

University alumnus

02-04-99