Tucson police at Star Ranch push students away

Being a resident of Star Ranch has been an interesting experience, but Thursday night I finally decided I was not going to return there next year.

Walking around at two in the morning, totally sober, I was putting flyers out on cars for my band, Probable Cause, who played Guido's Friday night. I was then confronted by security, along with a Tucson police officer, who scolded me for what I was doing. As this was going on, five other cops stormed into someone's apartment, without probable cause (no pun intended), and began to tell what looked like about five or six kids hanging out having a few beers, that they had to turn their music down, along with arresting them for drinking and God knows what else.

There were also numerous other cop cars roaming around at three in the morning as well. Exactly how many cops do we need running around my apartment complex bothering people like me, trying to promote my band, and other kids hanging out drinking? I think these cops could be used for more useful things than stopping (or give people the illusion that they are stopping) a bunch of 19- and 20-year-olds from drinking. How many times do we read in the paper about some girl getting raped on campus? I hardly ever see cops walking around campus. Why are there 15 or 20 at my apartment complex every night?

I think that people's lives and women suffering from horrible crimes around town should be higher on the priority list for the police, rather than underage college drinking. But I guess the City of Tucson, along with the police department, doesn't see it that way.

Kevin Durkin
marketing junior

Applauding bold advertisement

I applaud Jeff Meyerson's bold advertisement in the Jan. 29 Wildcat, and disagree with Joel Simon's letter of response two days latter. Just who are the Jews? Genealogically, they are the descendants of Jacob, later called Israel. They were unique among the other peoples of the Earth because God chose them from the time of Abraham as his people, not for an exclusive relationship, but as his messengers of reconciliation to all the nations that through Abraham "All the families of the earth shall be blessed." (Genesis 12:3b) The Jews are a people with a common ancestry - and a common faith. Now, a Jew may be able to deny his faith, but he can never deny his ancestry.

Therefore, even if Jeff Meyerson were to become an atheist, he would still be Jewish. But Jeff hasn't done that. He not only embraces his ancestry and the faith of his ancestors, but in addition, he has accepted the plan that God had for his ancestors all along. That is, to be the messenger that God's reconciliation comes through Jesus Christ, the promised savior not only for the children of Israel, but for all mankind.

Jesus was a Jew. Matthew and Paul of the New Testament were Jews. The Jews who acknowledged Christ as Savior remained Jews. It was not until around A.D. 40 at the Syrian Antioch Church was the term Christian first used - and it may have been used sarcastically as to say, "Look at those little Christs who try to act like that Jesus person." A Jew who followed Jesus was still a Jew, and this is true even today.

The struggle within the Jewish community during the first century was between allegiance to the Law, and allegiance to the gospel of grace. Even though Jesus himself said, "Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill." (Matthew 5:17) Shortly after the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, the tension between the strict Law-abiding Hebrew Jews and the Christ-following Hellenistic Jews eventually put a divide between the two that exists to this day, and also led to the rapid spread of the Gospel among the gentile nations.

As a Christian of gentile ancestry, I can never become Jewish, but a Jew can become a "Christ Follower" and still be a Jew.

It is also nice to know that the Old Testament belongs to me as much as it does to the Jews, and that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are my spiritual forefathers, if not my physical ones.

Mark Coppola
mamagement information systems
graduate student

John Walker not schizophrenic

I would like to respond to Katie Chapman's response to Tatiana Covington's letter regarding John Walker Lindh's mental state. I have worked as a social worker for many years, and I have a brother who is schizophrenic. I am not an expert on mental illness, but I do have some applied experience that most psychology juniors do not have. There are three things that I think that Katie should look at before rushing to the conclusion that John Walker is not schizophrenic.

If one looks at Walker's alleged behavior after he left the United States, one can't help but notice his extreme disregard for the cultural standards of the people he was trying to embrace. He was never used as a spy or given any important responsibilities. Why was he such an outsider from a religious group that he was so strongly devoted to?

Most people who I have known with schizophrenia have an obsession with religion. Why did John Walker seek the most fanatical group to join? If John Walker was only anti-American, he could have joined numerous political groups without the religious fanaticism.

Thirdly, what are your own personal prejudices in this particular case? Walker's freedom is over, regardless of what penalty he receives. What punishment could possibly teach him a lesson at this point? Are you sure that it is not punishment that you want but vengeance?

None of these three points prove that John Walker is schizophrenic, but they are relevant and need to be addressed.

Manuel Peters
studio arts senior

Dale argument lucid, balanced

Thank you Shane Dale for your editorial on the Children's Health Insurance Program. Rarely does an editorial make such a balanced, lucid argument. Mr. Dale has hit the key point in the CHIP issue, better health care for pregnant women. The women that then choose to take the pregnancy to term will have healthier babies. That in itself is pretty damn convincing.

Mr. Dale rightly points out that with better prenatal care to those that could not otherwise afford it, some women may now choose to have a baby. Because she knows she can give it a good healthy start, it allows the woman, and not her economic reality, to choose.

Our civil rights (which stem from our moral judgments as a society) are constructed such that it is most important to protect the innocent. As a nation last year, we executed 66 criminals (source, U.S. Dept. of Justice). Few would argue that most, if not all, were scum of the Earth. But we as a society spend years upon years in appeals and millions of dollars to defend them on just the hint of a possibility that we may occasionally terminate an innocent life. Each year, we terminate over a million pregnancies (source, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). We give murderers and rapists the benefit of the doubt but we have chosen to not offer this to the truly, inarguably, unequivocally innocent unborn.

We each have our beliefs, but none of us can say we actually KNOW when life begins and how to define it. All of science cannot agree - certainly we as emotional human beings are potentially fallible in such a hugely difficult and complex issue.

CHIP offers benefits while curtailing no rights whatsoever. I support our president in this brilliant compromise.

Michael Badowski
microbiology and immunology
graduate student

Abortion article lacks the facts

Shane Dale's commentary on the Bush administration's new "unborn child" policy has presented us with some of the most fallacious arguments in recent Wildcat editorials. For once, Dale has done a decent job of representing the facts (probably because he didn't really include any) and as a result made clear the errors in his own thinking.

Let's begin where Dale finished. Dale claims, "this law in itself can be nothing but positive." This is exactly right, but unfortunately not the issue. The issue at hand is not the law in itself, but the law within the context of the motives and agendas behind the law as well as the direction such a law might take us. And when we look at the context in which this law is situated, it is clearly not all positive.

Dale also claims, "there's no hidden agenda here," and in this he is also right. The motives and agenda of President Bush to eventually outlaw abortion are so blatantly obvious that the last thing anybody should call them is "hidden."

Nonetheless, there is an agenda other than providing care to low-income pregnant women and Dale is obviously aware of this. He points out that "Bush wants to see fewer abortions in America" (actually he wants to see none) and then goes on to include the possibility of Bush nominating pro-life Supreme Court justices in an attempt to overturn Roe v. Wade. How can Dale be aware of such facts and not realize the presence of an ulterior motive?

Now we come to Dale's most obvious error in reasoning. He claims, "if Bush enforced a law that specifically covered pregnant women, aid would cease once their children were born."

This is simply not true, and Dale's own words evidence this fact. Dale earlier wrote, "Previously, funding from CHIP could only be received by children of low income parents." Did Dale simply forget that children born to low-income parents already do receive funding under current (and previous) law?

Or de he choose to ignore this fact to make his argument work? This new law was purportedly enacted so that (in Dale's words), "aid from CHIP can be extended prior to birth." If that was the sole purpose and there was no additional agenda, simply enacting a law that gave support to pregnant women, without any "unborn child" clause, would have been more straightforward and easier.

Whether abortion is ethical is an issue that will be discussed too many times, and it is not an issue with which I intend to deal at the moment. The issue at hand is Bush's attempt to further his own political agenda of outlawing abortion by appearing to care about women in need. It is a political trick that cannot go unnoticed except maybe by those few (like Shane Dale) who refuse to open their eyes.

Jeff Grobe
psychology and philosophy senior