Salaciously stripped of standards

After reading about the strip show for charity in Friday's Wildcat, I am reminded how standards and decency are disappearing in modern America. We are becoming a nation without convictions.

Would you respect your children for doing this? Should we encourage and reinforce a sex obsessed/addicted nation? Is this what we want for future generations? If no, then don't applaud such behavior.

I hope we can at least agree on one thing. This "whatever it takes" attitude is certainly a dangerous one. A slippery slope it is.

What's next: prostitution for charity?

Thomas McFarren
physiology junior

Abortion necessary choice for some

Justin Pierce's certainty in his opinion on abortion seems to stem from a distinct lack of real-life experience. As a father-to-be I have cared for my wife as she has lost 5 pounds of muscle per week due to the rigor of pregnancy. What Justin may call inconvenience I can recognize, from personal experience, as a potentially life-threatening condition.

As my wife and I join the "leftist brigade" of responsible parents, we have and will continue to make great personal and financial sacrifices for our child. We have chosen to do so, and they will know we have chosen them. However, we know full well that not everyone has the "luxury" of staying home to be sick with pregnancy. Not everyone can afford the medical resources to bring a healthy child into the world. Not everyone is healthy enough to safely carry pregnancy to term.

If you want to save the world, talk about uninsured children, about world poverty or about ending genocide in Darfur. Raise $3,000 to pay for the delivery of an impoverished fetus. Do something to stop the 115 traffic fatalities per day in the United States.

Whatever happened to the "right-minded" belief that people should mind their own business? Forget the abortion rate that continues to decline on its own. Find a life partner that will choose life. Put your money where your mouth is or hit the road Jack.

Andrew Schnepp
classified staff

Letter misrepresents abortion views

This is in response to Justin Pierce's letter, "Abortion akin to murder."

While I am just as passionate about pro-life issues as Justin Pierce, I am disappointed and disturbed by the way he presented his views and arguments. I also agree that abortion is

murder and that a fetus is an actual living, breathing human being, but in no way do I agree with the brashness or insensitivity he used when presenting his views.

I will admit that some women abuse abortion and use it as a form of birth control, but this is a very far-fetched assumption that the majority of women use abortion this way. We all make mistakes, and while I believe abortion is murder, the women who choose to have them are faced with a very unfortunate decision that is not easily decided and most will live the rest of their lives with regret and remorse for the child that they terminated.

If pro-life conservatives want to win more votes and bring more people to their side, they should certainly not take Justin Pierce's route. The only way to have people understand your views is to present them in a compassionate and logical manner, not by using assumptions and sarcasm. It hinders both liberals and conservatives when people of their party present their beliefs in a threatening and offensive manner that insults people of the opposite opinion. Mr. Pierce's letter did nothing to help the pro-life movement and I hope that next time he takes a different approach when trying to persuade people of his conservative beliefs.

Meagan Durako
undeclared freshman

Preserve grassy spaces

Turning the west end of the Mall into a car lot is a disgrace to the university. On a campus with such limited green space, seeing the few remaining grassy areas turned into car sales is truly sad. Students may not realize how valuable their open spaces are until they are gone. These fleeting days of cool weather before the blazing summer heat offer students a time to go out and experience campus outside. Now when students try to enjoy these last days of spring with a pickup game of soccer or ultimate, they will be met by flags, balloons, giant SUVs and pickup trucks.

Any analogy made between a club selling cookies from a table in front of the student union to a million-dollar enterprise being set up on two acres of campus land is a stretch indeed. Helping school athletics is fine and good, but how much of that money goes to club sports - hockey, rugby, volleyball? How much of that money goes to school athletics period? The bake sale on the Mall contributes more of its profits to school activities than does any car salesman.

Perhaps one day soon I will be able to sign a home loan from out of Old Main, or even purchase a dishwasher or refrigerator from the dealership going up in the

softball stadium. Focused Excellence? I don't know how I feel graduating from a "Car Dealership of Higher Learning." I do feel that a university truly focused on scholarship would never loan its hallowed grounds of thought and inspiration to a corporate money-making scheme.

Tyson Swetnam
renewable natural resources graduate student

UA should host more Israeli soldiers

In regard to Friday's article about the visiting Israeli soldiers, I hope the UA can host more Israeli soldiers, provided they are among the hundreds of Israeli refusniks who face prison sentences for refusing to carry out an illegal and brutal occupation. Furthermore, if our interest is to have better relations with the people of Israel, as the article states, I hope that Wildcat readers will take to heart this statement in the Israeli refusnik pledge: "We understand that the price of Occupation is the loss of IDF's human character and the corruption of the entire Israeli society ... we shall take no part in missions of occupation and oppression." America's "support" for Israel pumps billions of dollars into a war economy forcing Israel and its neighbors to live in a constant state of aggression to suit America's interests in the region.

If anyone else is interested in meeting Israeli soldiers I

encourage them to visit Nablus, where I see them regularly. I speak to them at checkpoints, where hundreds of Palestinian men, women and children are humiliated. I see and hear the work of Israeli soldiers. In Balata Refugee camp yesterday, where I teach drama to children suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, a man was extra-judicially executed by the IDF. My classes in the nearby village of Beytiba were cancelled this week because tanks were preventing the children access to their school. On the way to my English class earlier this week, I helped my friend clean up the wreckage of an Israeli incursion, which left nine severely injured and one dead. As I type this, I can hear Israeli grenades exploding, suggesting another nightly incursion. This is "relative calm" in Palestine, brought to you by the IDF: Israeli hands using American arms.

David Marshall
non-degree-seeking graduate student

Men discriminated in academia

The gender discrepancies in academia cited by Mr. LeeNatali in Friday's piece should come as no surprise to anyone following this trend. Clearly, the emphasis placed on ensuring girls' success has paid off - big time. To give just one example, it seems like hardly a week passes without a scholarship opportunity specifically for a female engineer, scientist, etc. hitting my inbox via Listserv. I can't say I've ever seen the same for us XYs.

Moreover, left out of the article was the fact that most campuses, on the whole, aren't exactly welcoming places for men (campuses - not the party scene). None of us get through school without a healthy dose of feminist indoctrination. Instead of constantly hearing how they're part of an oppressive patriarchy responsible for all the world's ills, many young men simply opt out - joining the workforce or the military, eschewing higher education.

Of course, no serious scholar could ever put forth such an argument and expect to be taken seriously, certainly not in the current academic climate. Which, I guess, shows how truly far we've come in the construction of an arena of ideas open to free, vigorous debate. Right, Mr. Larry Summers?

Matthew Seaton
biochemistry senior

Pima just as tough as the UA

In response to Badreddin Edris' comments concerning the availability of baccalaureate degrees from junior colleges, the argument is made that the education received from these institutions is inferior. Wrong. Simply stated, Pima Community College, the junior college closest to the UA, is an accredited college. By whom? The Commission on Institutions of Higher Education of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools. This institution is the same one that is affiliated with Northern Arizona University, the same one affiliated with the University of Michigan. If Pima can manage to meet the same expectations as these well-known schools, who is to say that it is incapable of extending its abilities beyond the associate's degree and various certification programs? Pima in particular has also shown the ability to produce better students than the average UA underclassman. The graduation rate of transfer students from Pima at the UA is 62 percent; the average graduation rate at the UA after six years is approximately 55 percent. In the first year of education, approximately 22 percent of students do not return to the UA. Great deals of people make the mistake of assuming that just because Pima is a junior college it is easy, and this is not true. I have attended both schools. I have seen first-hand students from the UA with big egos and feelings of superiority come to Pima, take classes at "easy" Pima and fail. The requirements to pass equivalent classes at the UA and Pima are the same. Some classes are easy at Pima - where else will you take reading classes or Math 050, Approaching Math Positively - but the UA has notoriously easy classes as well, i.e. NATS 104, Food, Nutrition and You. It is the class enrolled in, and instructors' willingness to help students, not the school where one is enrolled in, that dictates the applicability of your education. On a last note, Pima does offer joint venture programs for baccalaureate degrees with colleges such as NAU, so you never have to leave Pima for your education.

Ben Reddoch
molecular and cellular biology junior