Letters to the Editor

Dear Editor,

Sometimes I look at people at our school and wonder what they are thinking. One of these people is whoever thought it was a good idea to raise the activity fee for housing to $40 compared to what it's been the last three years - $20. That's inflation of 100 percent.

My understanding is that the activity fee goes toward programs. I don't even remember the last program I attended. Increasing the budget won't do anything. PAs are putting on informative programs, that's great. Let people go to them. I'm sure student life will go on just fine the way it is. But don't make students pay more to put these programs together when you can just watch it on PBS at the Student Center and all it would cost is your student I.D. for the remote control.

If housing fees are going to increase, it better take care of the ant problems and make sure our rooms don't get flooded by dysfunctional fire sprinklers. Let ASF worry about entertaining students. You worry about the ants I've grown so familiar with, I've started to name them. 

ULV housing rules!

Liko Tubbs
Senior

Dear Editor,

"I pledge allegiance to the flag that once stood for freedom..."

I watch the news, seeing that over 75 percent of Americans still support the war in Iraq, yet four-fifths of the people I know are not in support of it. I look in the local times to see that America is working to create freedom, and liberate Iraq from Saddam, yet in our ULV newspaper a more convincing set of articles criticizes George Bush Jr. and his administration for the acts he has done. I watch as our President accuses Saddam of being in a league with terrorists, yet our own operation "Shock and Awe" was obviously a terrorist attack made by us, even in name. I watch as the war is shown on every channel, as our economy gets worse and worse, while the corporations get richer and richer.

Hating the war with Iraq is no longer on the top of my list. It has been narrowly beaten by another concern; what our President, and the big corporations behind him, have done to us as a people. People like me have no voice, no chance, no course of action. Nothing I can say will really mean a difference, because no matter what i do, no matter where I try to say it, I will not be allowed to have any influence on the world today.

Am I being paranoid? Consider this; television, our most popular form of media, is being run by the corporations that have supported George Bush Jr. and people like him for the last decade.

The Dixie Chicks, one of the most popular country music groups in history, have been banned from just about every country radio station, just because of their views on the Bush administration. This is obviously enough because the corporate sponsors for those stations threatened to pull out if the Dixie Chicks were allowed to be on air.

The war would generate a cheap boost for the economy, despite how much it is costing us, just like every other war. The Bush administration knows this, as do the companies supporting it. Oil, rebuilding licenses, trade markets; all of these are the end prizes that they would get after the ousting Saddam, regardless of what their public agenda may be right now. All these reasons are the wrong reasons to start a war, and the big shots running things are quite willing to oppress the freedoms of any number of people, just to have their way.

If I am being paranoid, then it is with very good reason; I have seen how freedoms have been denied here, and I can easily imagine how much they are being denied in Iraq, by our own army no less. The world hates us, and sadly I think that I am beginning to agree with them, if only for the fact that the Bush administration has turned us into something I can no longer support or love; a terrorist country, without freedom.

"And for the atrocities, for which it stands. Our nation, so help me *insert deity of choice here, unforgivable, with liberty for only the corrupt."

Peter Suzuki
Senior