Students need not worry about cops if you're 21

Yesterday I read an article titled "Underage drinkers not deterred" in the Wildcat. The article was essentially the product of several interviews with underage drinkers off campus, particularly at Star Ranch. The impression I got from the article is that there is still some confusion about whether it is acceptable for police officers to seek out and arrest such drinkers, or whether this is a waste of time and "taxpayer dollars." I fail to see where this confusion comes from. If you are under 21 and you drink in the United States, you have committed a crime. Therefore, law enforcement agents can and should take whatever legal power they have and use it to curb or stop your activity. The same could be said of speeding. It does not matter how good a driver you are, if there are no other cars on the road or any other variable there might be. If you go one mile per hour over the limit, you have committed a crime and the officer has every right to use his authority on you. More serious crimes such as auto theft and rape are often related to alcohol. It is highly probable that such crimes can be curbed by curbing underage ÷ illegal ÷ alcohol use. I believe that the police are taking a great step forward in crime prevention by taking such actions. It seems that these underage drinkers wish to create some "gray area" by questioning whether their crime is worth prosecution. It is from such gray areas that crime originates. If you don't want to be prosecuted, wait 'till you're 21 to drink. Drinking is not a necessity of life.

Aaron Tunell
electrical engineering junior

Suarez has it right: Jews are interesting and fun

I really enjoyed Jessica Suarez's article, "So I'm a pro-Semite." It's great to see others see how great the Jewish culture is. From the fabulous foods to the funny comedians to the great filmmakers like Woody Allen, us Jews are an interesting bunch. Woody Allen may be too old, but I'm a Jew who's available. So, look me up and we'll eat some kuegal over some Manischewitz wine.

Zach Colick
journalism sophomore

Barakat column exposes Palestinian frustrations

I think Fadyeh Barakat's article was a very good piece of information on what is really going on in Palestine. Fadyeh informs us in her article that it takes a Palestinian trying to get to a school that is just 10 minutes away about three hours due to all the check points that exist. To me it's just such a pathetic situation that surely causes a lot of frustration.

Not only can you travel such a short distance in such a long time, but you also have to worry about whether you'll get harassed or even shot by an Israeli soldier. We have to be grateful that here in the United States there is nothing as such, and if there was, I'd assure you that the U.S. population would be in such a state of frustration and anger that it would eventually stir up some sort of violence within the society. Fadyeh's article certainly made it easy for me to try to be in the shoes of a Palestinian, and that is actually what people should try to do ÷ to have a better understanding of why people behave the way they behave. Fadyeh interviewed children who told her stories such as those of witnessing their parents being harassed or beaten up in front of them by Israeli soldiers, seeing loved ones being humiliated and seeing their own homes being destroyed right in front of them.

No child deserves to witness such acts of violence and oppression. I certainly am against any act of violence and terrorism, but it is something that exists and we should try to at least understand the reason why it happens. The sad stories of violence, grief, humiliation and oppression that the children expressed when interviewed by Fadyeh are baffling, and I think that these experiences of maltreatment could be one of the driving forces of young suicide bombers.

Living in such an environment filled with violence, poverty and hate could really push someone to the extreme, thus motivating them to become a suicide bomber. A suicide bomber's actions will never be justifiable, but they are truly a product of the extreme poverty, inequality and oppression that exist in the society of that region. All in all, I just hope to see an end to all this violence and bloodshed in Israel/Palestine, and more importantly, I hope to see justice and equality rule in every corner of the world.

Majid Al-Sheikh
psychology senior

Mideast suicide bombers attack due to conditions

On Friday, the national media reported the horrific suicide bomb attack in Haifa that killed 20 and injured 50 civilians. You had to read Fadyeh Barakat's piece to find out the circumstances in which these bombers are produced. That suicide bomber did not arrive on the scene of the Middle Eastern conflict out of nowhere. If you search for her name on the Web, you'll find the Israeli army murdered her brother and blew up her family home two months ago. Does this justify what she did? Of course not. What she did was criminal. And of the millions of Palestinians who live in the conditions Fadyeh described, only a handful respond by killing innocent Israelis. However, repression of Palestinians ÷ like the checkpoints which Fadyeh's editorial described so vividly ÷ does absolutely nothing to deter suicide bombers, but does a lot to create more of them. You do not have to take my word for it; the latest Amnesty International report on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGMDE150012003?open&of=ENG-2MD ) proves that the checkpoints are irrelevant to Israeli security. The checkpoints Fadyeh described are on roads linking neighboring Palestinian villages. How is blocking these roads relevant to stopping attacks in Haifa and Tel Aviv? As the report says, closures and curfews often appear to be intended as collective punishment, as well as to show the Israeli public that the army is "taking action." This is a war crime, just as suicide bombings are. It's as deadly ÷ three times as many Palestinian civilians are killed by Israel as Israeli civilians by Palestinians. It's fundamentally racist ÷ when Israelis commit terrorism against Palestinians, do their villages endure months of curfew? And at the end, it will help produce the next suicide bomber, who will continue this never-ending cycle of bloodshed.

Giorgio Torrieri
physics graduate student
APJME president

Poreda's bicycle theft claim misses point

Jason Poreda's claim that eliminating bicycles on campus will somehow eliminate bicycle theft is absurd. Of course it would be effective; if there are no bikes to steal, nobody will steal them. However, this would do nothing to truly solve the problem ÷ it does nothing to deter bicycle thieves, but rather it only makes their job require a little more creativity. Ever since initially reading the article about the increased theft rate, it's become clear to me that it would be more effective in the long run to put more effort into apprehending bicycle thieves. From reading the Police Beat, it doesn't really sound like UAPD puts a whole lot of effort into investigating claims of bike theft, even when there are witnesses. I have gotten the impression that this issue is of little importance to them, especially in comparison to the great crusade against underage drinking. If this is the case, then the bike theft problem will not be ameliorated until UAPD makes a conscious effort to do so. The problem lies not in the mere presence of bikes on campus; the problem is that nobody has been taking theft seriously enough to catch those who do it.

Alyson Hill
history freshman

Rec center shouldn't close early for games

I simply request that the Rec Center not close early on home football game days. It serves no purpose other than to annoy all the people who have serious exercise schedules and further deters me from liking our "football" team. I promise you that the employees at the Rec don't go to the games after work on Saturdays and if anyone else wants to go watch our team embarrass itself, feel free, but stop this stupid policy.

Gabriel Leake
mathematics junior

History proves Israel rightful land of Jews

Coins thousands of years old have been found in Israel stamped with portraits of King David. Mark Twain visited the Holy Land and noted the barren wastes, the fact that he saw hardly anyone inhabiting the land. Ancient synagogues dot the landscape, lie in cities throughout Israel, and yet Kris Brown says that Israel is built on stolen land? Jews have inhabited the land for thousands of years continuously. The land of Israel is the land that the Jews prayed in thousands of years before the advent of Islam and Christianity. The British, even after the Holocaust, allowed free immigration of Arabs to Palestine but put limits on Jewish immigration. The land of Israel, the city of Jerusalem ÷ these are the places where Judaism and Jewish culture were born and where Jews have lived and worshiped for millennia, where the Hebrew language flourished thousands of years ago, as it does once again today.

No country has stood so unwaveringly shoulder-to-shoulder with the United States in its time of need so often and so resolutely as Israel. Only one country in the Middle East is a democracy: Israel, and no army has demonstrated in over 55 years of warfare more respect for human rights and dignity than the Israel Defense Forces.

The real friendship Americans should question is with Saudi Arabia, the land that gave birth to the majority of the Sept. 11 hijackers. Question the billions of dollars given to Egypt, Israel's neighbor, where human rights violations are piled higher than the pyramids. In other words, think about the countries which oppress their own people and export hate and teach intolerance, rather than ostracizing the country with the freest Arab press and with freedom of religion, located right exactly where it should be: the Jewish state of Israel.

Jeremy Slavin
political science senior

Mimes deserve more respect than they get

An issue that has concerned me as of late is the public's attitude toward mimes. Once highly respected in the world, mimes now find people running away from them! It deeply saddens me that the world should have such a negative attitude towards such a noble profession.

Why, back when my father was in college, his graduating class actually requested a mime to be their guest speaker at graduation. This simple act showed me what great respect the men and women of his day had for mimes. Yet now we see the highest role model in our society, television, insulting mimes in its shows in order to entertain! Even movies, such as "Saving Silverman," find it comical to tear down this honorable profession.

How far as a culture have we regressed, finding amusement not from mimes but from mocking them? I mean, come on! It's not like they're clowns.

Emily McClory
undeclared freshman

Bad time to increase adminstrators' pay

In response to the general lack of shared sacrifice in our institution ÷ administrative pay raises and tuition raises and the rationalizations supplied by our campus leaders ÷ I was struck by the moral clarity of this statement:

"I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test: Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen, and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to freedom for the hungry and spiritually starving millions? Then you will find your doubts and your self melt away" ÷ one of the last notes left behind by Gandhi in 1948, expressing his deepest social thought.

This statement not only makes me ponder decisions made within our small university community where in the past year many have lost their livelihoods, but also those made within the larger communities which I inhabit: Tucson, Arizona, the U.S. and the world. Where, I ask you, is our sense of obligation and commitment to our fellow men and women? And is now really an appropriate time to be raising the salaries of so few ÷ who already have quite enough ÷ when the needs of so many go unmet?

Tommy Turbyville
cancer biology doctoral student

Bike lanes for bikes, sidewalks for people

There is a problem with you pedestrians. I am a bicyclist ÷ that is, I use a bicycle to get from class to class. Don't get me wrong; I know that the majority of you pedestrians respect that our campus is crisscrossed by dedicated bicycle lanes. The problem arises with the ignorant percentage of ground-pounders who, for some reason, decide that the sidewalks provided for their mobility and safety are simply not enough. I can only suppose that their mentality makes it impossible for them to consider the physical and mental welfare of those outside their personal sphere.

To you, I offer an education and an ultimatum. The bike lanes are designed to allow those of us on wheels to safely and swiftly cross campus in the less than 10 minutes allotted between classes. With class crowding and scheduling that makes blocks of students travel from the ILC to ARC to PAS to ECE and back, that 10 minutes is not a leisurely, reflective meandering, but a desperate battle against time and space in which the defeated are doomed to the back row of class, where all efforts at comprehension are in vain. Thus, all of you pedestrians meandering aimlessly down the middle of bike lanes are the enemy. You are not only a slow-moving inconvenience, but also a reckless endangerment, as you force bicyclists to weave and dart through human obstructions. Remember that a bicyclist is faster, heavier and pointier than you. There is a simple solution to all this, though: Be aware of where you are walking and whom you are stepping out in front of. Listen to your mother's voice telling you to look both ways before crossing the street. Cross bike lanes in a swift and intelligent manner. I know you can if you only try.

In closing, please leave the bike lanes to the bikers, as we will endeavor to leave the sidewalks to the walkers. Though I do not wish it to come to the point where I must install a cowcatcher on the front of my bike, I will do what I must.

Tyler Coles
computer engineering sophomore