Greek system should be ashamed

Today, for the first time, we truly felt ashamed to be UA students. The Office of Early Academic Outreach's Academic Preparation for Excellence (APEX) program brought more than 200 middle school and high school students to the UA to march in the homecoming parade. APEX works with these at-risk students with the goal of getting them to attend college. These students love the UA and they admire the college students. They had been looking forward to marching in this parade for months. And how did UA's greek life welcome these students? With disgusting behavior and remarks.

Their first glimpse of college life was a fraternity/sorority float of students that were intoxicated and yelling obscenities at the students such as "which of you is over 15? Come over here." Many times during the day they were offered beer and other alcoholic beverages. At one point, they even had beer cans thrown at them. Instead of enjoying the day, we spent the whole day protecting our students from their discourteous, unwelcoming behavior.

Some students were even subjected to sexual harassment when a group of fraternity boys yelled out "look at the high school girl with the nice cans." We know that there are some respectable greek organizations on campus, but at homecoming, a few gave them all a bad name. The greek community should take offense at how they were portrayed to these young UA hopefuls.

We realize that this event is for UA alumni and students; however, this is also an opportunity for our program participants to gain exposure to UA activities. Overall, our experience has been positive. However, this year the behavior of some of the UA students was inappropriate. We're proud to be Wildcats, but on the one day when we should be the most spirited we were ashamed.

UA student coordinators

Academic Preparation for Excellence

Dale, supporters need to 'get over yourselves'

When I read Shane Dale's article last Friday, I expected a loud, liberal bang to go off about his biased, uninformed perspective. I mean, if he managed to make me want to wretch, then he had to have offended those that were way more leftist than I could ever be.

So, when I read Ian Gillaspie's letter commending him, I was surprised. What part did he love about the article? Did he enjoy how Dale dismissed Gandhi out of hand in such a degrading manner (since neither boy will ever be as great when they actually become men)? Maybe he liked it best when Dale gave him a reason to feel justified for bombing civilians as "collateral damage."

Since it is "justice," after all. Perhaps it's just that these poor little conservatives are all alone in such a vast, liberal wasteland and need a voice.

I read the Wildcat every day, and I don't see that the conservatives are in such a small minority; they're pretty vocal if you ask me. So please grow up and get over yourselves. And Shane, perhaps when you see the other side as just another opinion to be studied, you can say you're a political science major with some accuracy.

Sara Paige

political science & religion senior

Dale column uninformed

In his Perspectives column on Friday, "Let me have it. I'm all ears," Shane Dale claims that the anti-war movement doesn't offer any viable alternatives to war. His reasoning suffers from three problems.

First, he didn't do his research. I'm almost absolutely sure he did not come by and pose his questions to any of us fasting on the mall. If he had, he would have gotten an earful, especially from me. Problem solved.

Second, he could have read the letters to the editor in the newspaper he writes for. On Oct. 16, a letter of mine was published answering these questions exactly! Problem solved.

Third, he could have thought about the issue for two minutes. If the U.S. government's only strategy against terrorism were the bombing of Afghanistan, then his assertion that we offer no other viable alternatives to the war might be viable. But as it stands, the U.S. government is taking many other steps against terrorism (some of which we agree with; some of which we don't). Problem solved.

Mr. Dale, if you had done any of the above, you wouldn't have embarrassed yourself publicly. You are clearly not "all ears," but rather, "all your own imagination." Please try to be a responsible journalist and do some research, reading, thinking or any combination thereof.

Patrick A. Bolger

second language acquisition grad student

Sight of Ground Zero is reason enough for war

This past weekend I had the opportunity to visit Ground Zero in New York. I have been to New York many times, but this time was much, much different. There is just something different about the people and the spirit of the city. From the area that they let the public see, the site there is a view of rubble, cranes and a smell of burnt steel and death.

As I looked down I saw gray dust, undoubtedly the dust from crumbled buildings and even human bodies. The skyline that had become so familiar to me on all of my previous New York trips was now gone, and in its place was a red crane and a skeleton of one side of a World Trade Center building.

I next walked down to the area where you board a boat to the Statue of Liberty. There I heard a man playing a saxophone with the case open for money to be dropped. This is a normal site that I had seen on previous trips, except this time the person was playing our national anthem. One of the most liberal cities in America had turned and lined up with the President of the United States and backed his actions; this was the part that struck me the most.

I invite all of the peace protesters and Afghanistan sympathizers to go and take a trip down to Ground Zero and look at the ashes of 3,000 dead human beings; then come back, look me in the eyes and tell me we are not fighting for a just cause.

Manuel R. Espinoza

political science senior/former president, UA College Republicans

War in Afghanistan will only help special interests

The Western world is busy congratulating itself while its proxy soldiers - the northern alliance - carry out war crimes enacting the age-old ritual of ethnic reprisal. While the West sorts out the morality of bombing starving people while saving them from the Taliban, his terrorist network is almost certainly not in Afghanistan. It does not take a genius to figure out the Taliban-sympathetic tribes of Northern Pakistan will welcome their own cousins.

What to do then? Bomb Pakistan? Bomb Saudi Arabia or Egypt perhaps, the ideological, and economic, centers of the Taliban's brand of totalitarianism? No, the groundwork for another round with our old buddy, Saddam Hussein is being laid out. What will that accomplish except Bush's continued basking in the artificial approval of a nation scared out of its mind?

This war was a gift to the defense contractors, the oil pundits, ready to descend on Central Asia and of course the "civil libertarians" in our illustrious Justice Department. Not to mention bin Laden earning himself martyr status as the Muslim world is given no evidence of his guilt except oil man Donald Rumsfeld's earnest promises. The bombs flew over Afghanistan as millions fled; they will return to find old tormentors and a bitter winter and they will have the West to thank.

Carlos Chiquete

physics & astronomy sophomore

Frantzman letter hypocritical

A reader-reply by Seth Frantzman in last Thursday's paper argued against the practice of arranged marriage, concluding quite bluntly "marriage should be about love, not logic." I agree with the main tenet of the article, but I feel its good intentions are slightly misguided and would like to offer some suggestions.

First, the above conclusion misconstrues the glaring fact that marriage requires many logical considerations regarding two people that will (hopefully) spend a great deal of time together. To date, a marriage affords 1,049 federally mandated rights and responsibilities to the two people being married, not to mention an average of an additional 1,000 rights and responsibilities at the state level. Considering the legal, financial and lifestyle changes that a marriage holds for a person, it would be silly to attempt to remove all logic from the decision to get married.

Perhaps then, a better way to pose Seth's argument would be, "marriage should be based on love, and love is not logical." Furthermore, Seth contradicted himself when he said, "Marriage is a special union of two people to create children ·" If marriage is about love and not logic, then there should be no requirement that a marriage must produce children. "Child-rearing" logic has been used to continually deny homosexual, bisexual and transgender individuals in this country from marrying someone of the same sex should they desire. Does anyone else find this equally contradictory?

If marriage should be based on love and not logic, and if love is not logical, then why do we as a society continue to insist that only love between a heterosexual male and female is valid? The thousands of rights and responsibilities afforded married couples are still mostly unavailable to couples of the same sex, regardless of how much they love each other or how long they've been together. It is hypocritical for us to criticize arranged marriages based on a lack of love while we still deny marriage to a large group of people that love each other.

Joey McMurdie

chemical engineering sophomore