Art museum taking cowardly way out of Falun Gong demonstration
Imagine if in the 1930s, the University of Arizona art museum sponsored an exhibition of German art. The pieces on display included paintings by Adolf Hitler and the Cultural Consul of the German Consulate General in Los Angeles was the guest of honor. Due to the sensitivity of the Director of the Museum to the feelings of the German Consul, he called off a performance by a local string quartet composed of German Jews.
One would imagine no art museum director would have that kind of sensibility. Well, maybe not then, but now we have it!
The nightmare is realized today on this campus with a different ethnic group and different political party, just see last week's UA Museum of Art's 'Power of the Word' exhibit story in the Wildcat.
Maybe the sponsors of the exhibit and the community at large should be reminded of the following facts:
The present government in Beijing is not established by election, but by suppression, as witnessed in the June 4th massacre and continuing imprisonment of "undesirables." We may say that our present government in Washington D.C. is also not by election; but there is a difference by any stretch of the imagination. Political oppression is very much alive today in mainland China.
There are still thousands in labor camps. There are plenty of qualified Chinese calligraphers and artists whose work cannot be displayed in China. For example, the works of Gao Xinjiang, Nobel laureate for literature in 2000, are forbidden in China because of the policy of Mao, who said, "Art must serve the purpose of class struggle!"
To our surprise, Mao's "Struggle" is the centerpiece of the exhibition in our art museum, suggesting that our art-loving sponsors at UA take Mao's command seriously.
Ke Chiang Hsieh and Li-Zhi Fang
Department of Physics
SUGHED: Letter-writer lowered himself to personal attacks
I am writing this letter in response to the letter to the editor published in last week's Wildcat by Paul Laska. Never before have I read such a blatant attack on the character of an author as opposed to the content of the article that was written.
I was under the assumption that the Wildcat was a respectable paper and letters of such a nature would be left to tabloids and other such publications, but I guess I gave it too much credit.
Moreover, Mr. Laska, just because your parents were unwilling or unable to provide you with a car and a cell phone does not give you the right to criticize people who have them. You should have spent more time discussing the context of the letter and less time attacking the character of Mr. Dale, the author.
In addition, your impeccable usage of four-letter words was just more proof that you did not want to be taken seriously but rather was the equivalent of a four-year-old throwing a temper tantrum. If you are happy just owning a guitar, that is fine, but other people like more material things.
Maybe, in your opinion, people would be better off just owning a guitar, but other people don't think that. Next time, before you go spouting off your opinions, realize that they are quite fallible and maybe you should not be trying to push them on everyone else.
James Theoret
Veterinary sciences junior
SUGHED: TPD should have used alternative methods during riots
After reading the Fourth Avenue Riot Panel Report, I was struck with its lack of preventative recommendations. My initial recommendation would have been to send the senior city leadership to the Civil Disturbance Orientation Course (SEADOC). Unfortunately, this federally-funded course saw its heyday in the 1960s and the 70s. It was apparently terminated because of the assumption that the management of the nation's control forces had learned the lessons of confrontation management.
A confrontation-management technique that would have been appropriate on Fourth Avenue is the use of two-man saturation patrols throughout the crowds before the disturbance could occur.
The patrols establish friendly contact and co-opt the marginal participants while stripping anonymity from all they come in contact with. The result is that individuals in the crowd are less likely to get involved in unlawful activity after they had been identified.
An example of the use this technique occurred at a yearly two-week German-American BeerFest around the Fourth of July. It had historically been marred with GI's getting in fights, vandalism and mayhem. The Military Police tactic had been to keep a low profile and react after the violence broke out. After we instituted preventive saturation patrolling, we found that establishing rapport and nipping potential incidents in the bud had the result of defusing the violence of the past. Although we had cameras available for positive ID, we never had to use them because the yearly carnage had ended.
I'll take confrontation management over Riot Control any (Final Four) day
of the week!
James P. Needham
Ex-instructor, Civil Disturbance Orientation Course (SEADOC)
Don't forget about solar car's forefathers
The Wildcat's article on the "Monsoon" solar car should have acknowledged the groundwork laid by former EE/CS student Arun Ramadorai and his father,
Gopalan Ramadorai, a former metallurgy adjunct professor who organized UA's first solar car team two years ago, on which several members of this year's winning team trained, including Collin O'Connor.
Roger W. Archer
Tucson
