Students deserve tickets
To the editor,
I would just like to voice my displeasure concerning the way the university handles the student tickets and seating arrangements. For some reason, the university feels the need to give the best tickets in McKale Center to the senior citizens and alumni because they "dish out the most money."
I am not saying that students should be the only ones allowed to games, but I feel the students should have the better seating. If the university is really in that much need of money, then raise ticket prices and make the stadium general admission. What is not fair about that? Has Jim Livengood never seen a Duke basketball game? With the exception of Dick Vitale's sexual attraction to Mike Krzyzewski, one of the main reasons Duke basketball has the respect it does is because of the environment of its home court. When you think of a basketball game at Duke, you think of hundreds of students jumping up and down supporting their team. When you think of a basketball game at Arizona, you think of men in business suits and senior citizens on their death beds sleeping in the front row because it is five hours past their bedtime. Give me a break. The students pay tuition, give us the good seats, let us show college basketball what a real crowd is, give us the opportunity to watch our basketball team from our college in person.
Josh Gershon
Pre-business freshman
Nader represents America
To the editor,
In response to Anthony Williams' letter "Nader is a Socialist," I would like to point out that Ralph Nader wants the people to take their power in government back. In order for that to happen, we have to hold corporations responsible for their actions. The goals of a corporation are profit and increased shareholder value. The role that innovation plays is minimal at best, except when it increases cash flow.
Even lower than these priorities is responsibility to the consumer and society. The best corporate strategist will take advantage of every person and every opportunity allowed him by the government in order to increase his bottom line of profitability. What does that mean? Well, it means that corporations like Nike hire cheap labor overseas to assemble shoes at very low wages while ignoring domestic communities where people are working two fast-food jobs in order to feed their children. Microsoft forces computer manufacturers to exclude any other company's Internet browser software from their new computers. Consumers only have access to innovation that Microsoft has developed. Companies like GM can mismanage their corporate empires to the point of insolvency and bankruptcy and get a bailout from the government in the form of corporate welfare. The FCC will not give out low-powered FM frequencies because huge radio conglomerates might lose their market share. The conglomerates are afraid that people want to hear innovative, original music that they do not supply.
Ralph Nader does not want to punish corporations for their innovation. He wants innovation to develop everywhere uninhibited by large corporations. He wants to make sure that the hard working citizens of this country aren't taken advantage of for profit's sake. He wants to hold corporations responsible for the deaths caused by their cost-cutting. He wants to enforce fiscal, governmental and social responsibility. Most of all, he wants to empower the powerless. As for socialism, it pays for the streets we drive on, the social security checks our grandparents receive, and the schools we attend. It is wrong to equate socialism with totalitarian regimes. In the latter, only the ruling party has the power in the government. In the former, the people decide their own destiny. It is large corporations, not socialism, that takes away people's right to do what they want with the money they earn. Ralph Nader stands for a "government of the people, by the people, for the people." If that necessitates taking a socialist, anti-corporation stance, more power to him.
Carl Case
Political science junior
Socialism can work
To the editor,
I'm writing in regard to yesterday's letter from Anthony Nelson to set several statements right. The attack on Nader and socialism seems rather inane, if "socialism" is taken to include the government's taking an active interest in its citizens education, health care, and many other things for which America is-rightly, I'd say - so ridiculed by the civilized world.
Yes, American damn-it-all capitalism is remarkably efficient in the accumulation of capital, but at the expense of a huge underclass, the educational level and access to health care of which are more befitting a third-world country than the richest in the world. Twenty something percent child poverty (compare this with other similarly advanced-and socialist-countries for a depressing surprise) and seniors who must choose between medication and food only emphasize this point.
The use of China, the USSR and Cuba as examples of what socialism does to countries is perhaps indicative of the above-mentioned education problem we have in this country. They represent(ed) a most twisted, bastardized form of socialism that is properly referred to as Communism-note the capital C, it's important. However, despite severe governmental structural problems, the educational and health care systems of these 3 countries in many ways put "pure" capitalist countries-the US included to shame.
Socialism, as does every other form of government, has its problems but it can and does work when properly implemented. Just look at Western Europe.
Morgan Feather
Russian and German senior
