Coverage of activity fee by Daily Wildcat not biased

This is in response to Scott Cooper's letter, "Fee would be good for student body." Clearly all that Scott read were the headlines he claims were "blatantly against the activity fee." The Wildcat coverage, unlike the coverage on the fliers "informing" students about the fee, listed the pros and cons of such a proposal. And the articles on the opinions page were in the opinions section of the paper - the one place where "bias" is OK. There is no rule that half of the staff had to be for the fee, and half against. Instead, true to the spirit of an opinions section, the staff offered its concerns with the fee. And I do think the fact that so many intelligent columnists, whose job it is to keep up on current events and their possible repercussions on the student body, should have some sort of credibility when it comes to persuading their audience.

None of Scott's points about the fee are original - in fact, many of the articles he criticizes make the same points that he does. Many other schools already have activity fees, and many are substantially more expensive than the proposed fee here at the UA. It is not the fee itself, in many cases, that the Wildcat staff is objecting to. The columnists' criticism of the fee instead centered around the rush for implementation - something that is definitely not in the interest of the student body when well over $1 million of its money is at stake. Many of the columns in the opinions section that I've read over the past week said that they would definitely support such a fee if it were undertaken with the proper amount of planning.

The suggestion that the ASUA Senate should actually look out for the best interest of the student body and take its position seriously and responsibly, rather than undertake an 11th hour attempt to have done something, and therefore have a line to add to their resumes, is a good one.

Georgianna Miller
graduate student in English

Wildcat is a 'bedfellow' to supporters of activity fee

The Wildcat, which tries at times to feel like a legitimate newspaper, no doubt attempts to provide some level of journalistic integrity in its daily publications. However, if the paper intends to be legitimate, it should also strive to achieve some level of statistical integrity. In reading Tuesday's article regarding the voting on the controversial activity fee, I noticed a statistic: "of about 10 voters questioned ... only two said the fee supporters' presence unnerved them." The statistic surprised me, because of the small number of people questioned about the matter. If the paper is to print any sort of statistic, be it for or against the issue at hand, they ought to take a poll from a greater pool of people. Such a statistic seems to show that the paper is a political bedfellow of the supporters of the fee. While I understand the poll was only taken over a half-hour period, the least the paper could have done was to either not print the statistic, or have more people out asking voters what they thought. The staff at the Wildcat should keep an eye out for such erroneous numbers if it intends to have anyone take the paper seriously.

Christopher Robbins
electrical engineering freshman

Depression a real disease; treatment available

Sara Warzecka offers an excellent example of irresponsible journalism. Her pedestrian and unimaginative writing style leans heavily on unsupported, hyperbolic generalizations and she demonstrates shocking insensitivity.

Of greater concern, however, is the fact that she has quite obviously neglected to research her topic. It is true that Sara writes for the opinions section; nevertheless, one expects informed opinions from a newspaper of the caliber of the Wildcat.

Sara has clearly never suffered from clinical depression, nor known someone who has. Her na•ve assumption that seeking relief from the debilitating and seemingly inescapable despair that depression defines is nothing more than a generic "search for happiness" illustrates the age-old roots of most prejudice and discrimination: ignorance. Indeed, to suggest that those suffering from the disease have simply "forgotten how to be happy on their own" is so ludicrous as to not even warrant offense.

Rather than defend those whose lives have become at least bearable (though rarely "happy") through the use of medication, I would encourage Sara to seek to understand issues about which she is ignorant, and perhaps attempt some humility, gentleness and even concern for those less fortunate than herself.

To those who have found some relief through the use of anti-depressant medications, and those seeking healing though other means, I salute your courage and determination in striving to overcome this devastating disease.

If you feel that you may suffer from depression, please speak to your doctor or visit Campus Health's Counseling Service. Despite what Sara would have us believe, depression is a real problem, and there is help available.

Leslie Owen
Flandrau Planetarium and Science Center staff member

Religious beliefs have no place in U.S. government

As many have already stated and I will reiterate, Bush is trying to write hate-filled prejudice and oppression into our Constitution. You know what I'm referring to - gay marriages. So let's take a look at the arguments from the right. One that I've often heard is that such unions violate the sacred tradition of marriage. While that is quaintly poetic and romantic, it should hold no bearing on the decisions of a secular government (that's right, for those of you who forgot, that same Constitution guarantees a separation of church and state) since those traditional views center on religious beliefs, which are not universally held to be true. Besides that, interracial marriage was proscribed by societies dating back to 1200 B.C. (Aryans in India), but almost no one openly endorses such proscriptions today. Furthermore, many of those religions also give many other guidelines governing "proper" marriage. In fact, another tradition of most societies concerning marriage is a taboo on divorce. Surprisingly, I haven't seen any evangelistic zealots on the side of the road protesting the right of a heterosexual divorcee to remarry.

Another argument commonly cited is that the welfare of our children is in jeopardy. In a country with a relatively high record of domestic violence, it is surprising that the physical abuse of children by heterosexual parents hasn't elicited nearly as much of a public outcry as the loving care that is often administered by gay parents.

It is furthermore amusing that the Republicans, who traditionally oppose public welfare programs like education funding, health care initiatives and labor unions, are at the forefront of this outcry. One of the founding principles of the GOP was to minimize government intervention in the private lives of citizens, and yet they (of course there are exceptions) are hypocritically calling for nothing less than a constitutional amendment to protect their right to bigoted discrimination.

One of the best arguments is that polls show that the majority of the voting population supports the homophobes in their crusade, and thus the decisions of judges should be irrelevant. If this same logic were applied to the decision over abolition of slavery, then we would still be a slave-owning country today. The point here is that we don't live in a utilitarian society where the majority always gets its way regardless of the consequences to the opposition minority; rather, we have a system of checks and balances that assures that no group will suffer oppression at the hands of another group no matter how small a minority it happens to be.

And on a final note, those of you in opposition to gay marriage may wish to consider a possible future in which your particular views of marriage or some other traditional societal practice don't constitute the majority opinion in the area, and deliberate over whether or not the majority in that case should have the right to shove its ideas of what is "proper" down your throat.

Ravi Arora
UA alumna