Thanks for the April Fools Wildcat edition

Excellent April Fool's edition! It's definitely the funniest one that I can remember. I've come to expect the annual shenanigans in the comics, but the mock articles in the Go Wild section were even funnier than what you find in The Onion. Too bad the day only comes once a year.

Justin Cranmer
UA alumnus

Requiring more courses won't help students

Requiring 12 units of gender, race, class, ethnicity and non-Western courses will not help students "understand these issues," but will make them resent them. Why require added courses in majors in which many of the breakthroughs have come from differing races, ethnicities and genders? Separating these people's discoveries into separate courses would only facilitate the continuing view that their advances where somehow less impressive than others based on their race, ethnicity or gender. By segregating these people's ideas into different classes, proponents of this idea are only fueling the prejudicial behavior they believe they are "fighting."

Dan Norwood
computer science and math junior

UA concentrates too much on diversity classes

In light of the recent recommendation by a "faculty committee" to require undergraduates to complete 12 units of "gender, race, class, ethnicity and non-Western civilization classes," we might as well just give up on the idea that the UA is actually trying to educate people in real disciplines and instead change the name of the college to Diversity U. Why pretend we want to create scholars and engineers when it is apparent that some in the faculty really feel the students would be better served by studying nine more units of "diversity" rather than studying classes in their major.

It is a total disgrace that people at the UA come up with these wacky ideas. But what's even worse is that in all likelihood, most of these recommendations will be mandated in new requirements and, instead of graduating as a professional in your chosen field, you will simply graduate knowing lots and lots of facts about race, gender and ethnicity. So basically after four years of study, you will be able to get on well with others but won't be able to actually get a real job because you won't have any applicable skills necessary in today's technological workplace.

Seth Frantzman
UA alumnus

Money goes to workforce, not individual dreams

Mr. Gubi's response to fellow alumnus Wyman Nedd's letter misses the point. Needless to say, the federal government does not have a job, so the money Mr. Gubi wants to receive so that he can achieve his dreams comes from other Americans who work and pay taxes (like me). Just in terms of basic fairness, there is no reason for me to fund Mr. Gubi's dreams. I have a dream to own a condo in San Juan, Puerto Rico, for winter retreats. Does Mr. Gubi suggest that once he becomes employed, I can expect him to be willing to fund that dream?

The purpose of taxpayer funding on post-secondary education has nothing to do with actualizing individual dreams. Rather, the goal is to have an educated workforce to enhance the United States through its economy. If the future of America's workforce is expected to be primarily unskilled (i.e., service jobs, manual labor), then there is no need for taxpayers to fund college outside of providing public universities (after all, not all future jobs will be unskilled), which even today have lower tuition than private schools. The same waste Mr. Nedd spoke of has already occurred in some European countries that I've been to (in Italy, you'll meet cab drivers with Ph.D.s).

Notably, nothing is stopping Mr. Gubi or Ms. Watters from earning their own money to pay for their own educational dreams. If Ms. Watters wants to study anthropology, even though there are no societies left to discover, or pyramids to dig up (modern anthropologists do studies in urban environments to decipher the hidden codes and meanings in rap music), she is certainly free to do so. And she is also free to pay for it (by herself).

Patrick Leverty
UA alumnus

Activity fee 'ludicrous;' students need money

In regards to the article "Senate to decide on activity fee tonight" in the March 31 edition of your paper: The idea that a mandatory fee, taken out of our pockets, should be used to pay "big-name" entertainers who already have all the money they ever need, is ludicrous. If anybody needs that extra $15 a semester, it is us students. Secondly, why shouldn't the market decide what it wants? After all, when John Mayer came to Tucson, it wasn't due to any Soviet-style planning, but rather because the concert organizers knew it would be profitable. With the $1.25 million the student board wants to steal, we could actually pay to go to real concerts instead of the student board wasting our money trying to figure out how to put one on.

David Innes-Gawn
optical engineering sophomore

Antidepressants often misused, but useful too

Sara Warzecka made a very good point in her Wednesday column - that antidepressants are probably over-prescribed and not the best treatment for situational depression. However, she went too far in implying that they are mere crutches for those who refuse to help themselves.

I take the Szaszian view, that there is no such thing as mental illness - there are cases that need "mental housekeeping," as Warzecka suggested, and there are brain diseases. Chemical depression is a brain disease, which is very different from the situational depression Warzecka treats in her article. Situational depression is mainly a psychological condition. The imbalances make the self help that Warzecka suggests impossible. It is a very real medical condition, for which the best-known treatment is antidepressant drugs. Is this chemical dependence? Certainly! But questioning the character of sick people because they "depend" on medication is as absurd as faulting a fish for needing water.

Taking antidepressants allows many otherwise ill people to lead normal and enjoyable lives, and they also have legitimate uses in treating situational depression. That they are routinely misused by unscrupulous psychiatrists doesn't negate their medical benefit.

Ben Kalafut
optical sciences graduate student