Letters to the Editor

Sen. Smith's proposal does have funding

To the Daily:

In the Apr. 5th viewpoint "Smith proposal could hurt out-of-state students," Engineering first-year student Matt Schaar states that Sen. Alma Wheeler Smith's Higher Education Learning Proposal has no funding source. But, Sen. Smith has a very clearly outlined source of funding. In 1999, Gov. Engler signed a personal income tax cut for Michigan residents.

If HELP is passed, the tax cut will have to wait five years before it is implemented. The money saved from delaying the cut will go into a trust fund and would raise $500 million in five years. The $500 million plus the interest generated would build a fund of $2.8 billion, covering tuition for an estimated 130,000 full and part-time community college students and 100,000 university students for the next 12 years.

Schaars states that HELP would increase out-of-state tuition, increase university dependence on alumni and private donors, and increase in-state tuition for families reporting an individual income of more than $50,000 and families reporting a joint income of more than $100,000. But, HELP never intends to depend on any of these sources. It only delays a tax cut to set up an extremely valuable and important trust fund to offer more Michigan residents a higher education. HELP will allow Michigan students and families to save thousands of dollars in tuition, and by making college more affordable, will increase the number of skilled educated workers in the state.

As an out-of-state student myself, I can understand his concerns. But, us "out-of-staters" will still continue paying the same amount. We will continue receiving the same high quality education we have been getting at the University. HELP will only allow the bright, motivated Michigan students, who would otherwise be shut out because of money, to join us.

Alex Gomez

LSA sophomore

'How to be gay' class deserves support

To the Daily:

We are writing to support in the strongest terms David Halperin's course, English 317: How to be gay. We want to be clear at the outset that we think that support for the course is not just a matter of academic freedom but concerns an equally important principle - standing up to bigotry in all its forms.

It strikes us that the criticisms of the course were not well informed about the content and aim of the course, in that they seem to confuse examining questions of social construction with brainwashing and recruiting. As Prof. Whittier-Ferguson points out in his letter, this is profoundly disrespectful of University students, whose sexual identities are viewed as blowing in the wind.

Even if the critics were more precise in their attacks on the course, we would still support Prof. Halperin's course in the name of academic freedom. The assumption that being straight is normative is just as prevalent in the University's curriculum as is the assumption that to be white is to be without race and to be male is to be without gender. This course attempts to carve out a space to talk about subcultural practices and queer studies, and to examine the cultural trappings of gay identity.

The University has a responsibility to its community to provide space for that discussion, as it has for the discussion of issues of race, ethnicity and gender in its sincere effort to enrich the diversity of our community and its intellectual life. We take for granted now that Women's Studies, Ethnic Studies, African and African-American Studies are an important part of the curriculum, but not so long ago they were as contested as "How to be gay" is today.

In supporting "How to be gay," we support multi-culturalism and academic freedom and denounce homophobia.

Irfan Nooruddin

Rackham student -This letter was co-signed by 42 political science graduate students.