Targeted scholarships 'absolutely flawed'

Discrimination: n., a) the act, practice or an instance of discriminating categorically rather than individually; b) prejudiced or prejudicial outlook, action or treatment. A "targeted scholarship" is a politically correct term for money given to a student to pay for college expenses not because of superior academic, athletic or humanitarian achievement but because of the extremely minor variations in bone structure and melanocyte concentrations collectively known as race. There is no way to explain the need for a scholarship based on race without reverting, in a savagely ironic fashion, to the broad, overly general and totally unjustifiable statements that characterize racism.

Spending money allocated to the university by the state for the betterment of everyone's education to alleviate the financial burden of a single ethnic group is discrimination on the same order as the segregated public school system of the 1950s. Tom Campbell has the exactly wrong plan to create a more ethnically fair university.

How then do we provide an environment that makes no distinction based on race? Simple: Don't ask for race on university admissions applications and financial aid requests. Don't issue admission quotas and limits. Don't even keep track of the races of students here. If everyone forgot that race mattered, it wouldn't. Take the money that would go to aid students of a specific ethnic group and place it into a communal financial aid fund that goes to underprivileged students who apply based on merit, not diminutive differences in genetic makeup.

Affirmative action is a program set up by bigoted politicians trying their very hardest not to look bigoted. While the ideals behind affirmative action are noble, the way it works is absolutely flawed. The divisiveness inherent in spending government money on a single ethnic group is so great that affirmative action is the device through which Jim Crow will always be lurking on the periphery of our culture, and there is no reason we should increase our support of this well-meaning but ultimately wrong practice.

Brody Holohan
molecular and cellular biology freshman

GPSC has concerns about proposed student union fee

A couple of errors were made in Monday's Arizona Daily Wildcat article on the proposed $20 student union fee. The article asserts that the proposed fee will be for undergraduates only, and that the ASUA Senate and the Graduate and Professional Student Council will both need to vote to approve a referendum on the fee. This sounds too strange to be true. Why would the GPSC, which doesn't represent undergrads, have any authority to approve a referendum for a fee for undergrads?

As it turns out, the fee is proposed for all UA students, and so the claim that both the ASUA Senate and the GPSC will need to approve a vote on the fee makes sense, since the ASUA Senate only represents undergrads and the GPSC represents graduate students. Nevertheless, university administrators will not seek GPSC approval before taking the fee to a vote. This makes the process a lot easier for administrators, since they only have to persuade one group of the reasonableness of the fee. But the procedure leaves graduate students with no say about the particulars of the referendum, including dates and language. The timing of such a vote might make a big difference to graduate and professional students. I suspect that a large majority of graduate and professional students don't want to pay a student union fee. But if the vote is bundled with ASUA elections, as proposed, we will see a disproportionate turnout of undergrads from residence halls, fraternities and sororities. Representatives of these groups have already expressed support for a union fee.

Another particular that graduate and professional students might like to see is a separate count of how we voted. As a matter of policy, the ASUA does not release that sort of information.

Paul Thorn
philosophy graduate student
GPSC vice president of external affairs

Act now to save Reid Park elephants

Your Thursday article about getting the elephants at the Reid Park Zoo sent to The Elephant Sanctuary included a quote from city employee Susan Basford, who said, "We have no intention of sending these animals to a sanctuary. I don't know why we would." Basford either hasn't bothered to learn about the tragic effects zoo conditions have on elephants or she is simply willing to subject Connie and Shaba to captivity-induced health problems and premature death and put zoo business interests ahead of the well-being of the elephants.

The quotes and language used by Basford and Fred Gray, the director of Tucson's Parks and Recreation Department, are verbatim the language developed by the zoo-industry trade association called the American Zoo and Aquarium Association. The AZA routinely ignores and denies scientific evidence that highlights the divesting effects of keeping elephants in zoos and regularly lies about the natural 70-year lifespan of elephants in the wild. They claim to be animal "professionals" but are unwilling to acknowledge zoo-industry science that shows that the majority of elephants in zoos are not reproducing (due to the stress caused by zoo conditions), that foot disease - which does not occur in the wild - is the leading cause of death of elephants in zoos and that most elephants in zoos are regularly administered painkillers for captivity-induced health problems such as musculoskeletal disease and arthritis.

It's time the community and the Tucson City Council exercise what zoo officials do not: common sense. By sending Connie and Shaba to the Elephant Sanctuary, the Reid Park Zoo will not only do what's best for the elephants, but it will also have more space, resources and money to improve and expand conditions for other animals.

Please visit www.SaveTucsonElephants.com to get Tucson to act now to get Connie and Shaba to the sanctuary.

Deniz Bolbol
Redwood City, Calif.