To the Daily:
Liberals everywhere champion the "Free Tibet" cause. A large number of film and music celebrities have jumped on the bandwagon, even staging a few concerts in Washington, D.C.
These same liberals vehemently support the Clinton Administration. The Clinton Administration clearly supports the Communist Chinese Regime, having granted it Most Favored Nation status for at least the last five years. And Slick Willie (that term is even more humorous since Monica Lewinsky was an intern) did very little to support the attempts of China's own people to attain democracy on his recent visit there.
China has been oppressing Tibet for centuries, if not millennia. So why is it that liberals who support "Free Tibet" also support the Clinton Administration, which supports China, which oppresses Tibet?
Oh well. No one ever accused a liberal of being consistent.
Joshua Bostwick
LSA senior
To the Daily:
I just read Matthew Heck's response to the letter that I sent last week about abortion articles in the Daily ("Only women control their bodies," 11/2/99). I guess Heck doesn't think I know what the whole "debate" over abortion is. Please, give me more credit. I am very aware of this, and that is why I wrote in the first place.
When I stated that "not everyone on this campus is a liberal," I simply meant that the Daily has a tendency to take the liberal "side" of such issues. I did not mean that anyone's voice should "count less" for being a liberal, I was merely suggesting that there are other sides to the issues than what the paper presents. Also, I don't believe abortion should be a political issue; rather, it is a moral issue. If people don't see anything wrong with killing a baby, well, there's not much I can say about that. Yes, if the mother's life is in danger, then she should certainly be saved. But when a baby is murdered every 22 seconds, to me, it means something is wrong. Just think - there are only two different letters that separate the words "abortion" and "adoption."
I hope that we can just agree to disagree on this subject; you are not going to change my mind, and I know that I am not going to change yours.
Amy Olszewski
LSA junior
To the Daily:
The attack on affirmative action at the University is one component of a nationwide attempt now underway to reverse Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation in public schools, and all the progress toward equality achieved through the civil rights struggles of the '50's and '60's.
Integration in education at all levels is under siege, both as a very partially realized aspiration of American democracy and as a basic legal standard arising out of the nullification of the American version of apartheid.
In cities from coast to coast, public school desegregation plans are being fought and dismantled with no organized resistance. The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals recently eliminated a weighted lottery system in Arlington County Virginia aimed at integrating a kindergarten. At Lowell High School in San Francisco (the oldest public school west of the Mississippi River), the desegregation consent decree was abandoned without a fight by the school board and the NAACP in the face of a challenge by racists. This year, Lowell admitted only eight black freshmen - fewer than the nine black students that graduated from Lowell in 1954. Over the last two years, desegregation plans in Boston, Buffalo, Cleveland, St. Louis, Kansas City, Charlotte, Arlington and Prince Edward counties in Virginia, San Francisco and other cities are under attack or have been dismantled.
Our generation faces a historic challenge. It has fallen to us to launch a defense of the gains of the Civil Rights Movement of the '50s and '60s. We can and we must prevail. A successful defense requires that we organize a new civil rights movement.
Jodi-Marie Masley
Law student
11-05-99
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