Opinions: Letters to the editor

 published on Monday, March 31, 2008

Cough up that dollar

Correction Appended

(In response to Friday's article by Andre Radzischewski titled "Cost to double fee? One dollar")

Students at ASU Tempe need good representation with all the challenges that they are facing, including campus safety, mandatory meal plans, tuition increases and unaffordable textbooks.

Both of our tickets are running for USG office so that we can work on those challenges, and that is why we are both supporting the Arizona Students' Association's referendum to Strengthen the Student Voice on the ASASU ballot this year.

ASA has spent nearly 35 years fighting for students in order to make higher education accessible and affordable. Last year they saved undergraduate residents $91 on tuition and worked to increase financial aid to more than $10 million dollars, or roughly $83 per student. They also have worked to make textbooks affordable and have registered over 55,000 students to vote since 1988. But in order to face all of the ever-increasing challenges that students face, ASA needs students to continue to support the work that they have done and vote yes for ASA on Monday and Tuesday.

Mark Appleton and Josh Pittel
USG presidential candidates

Forget about it

(In response to Friday's column by Lindsay Wood titled "Forgive and forget")

Lindsay Wood's great idea about teaching memory strategies in public schools is unfortunately unrealistic here. Before we were the world superpower, it was possible to convince our elite to improve public education: a competitive lower class could bring the U.S. up among countries, pushing our plutocrats up with it. Now that we're on top, they are terrified of the idea of an educated public; such a public could subvert the status quo.

Today, most high school graduates don't understand basic fractions, let alone their relation to decimals and percents. What more could an employer ask than for his employees to be totally clueless about what they are being paid?

A friend of mine teaches public junior high in Scottsdale and received only blank stares when she asked her class whether a pound of feathers or a pound of bricks weighs more. In her native Brazil, that is a kindergartener's riddle.

Sadly, what "No Child Left Behind" really means to the fat cats who wrote it is: "No Chance Any Child of Mine Gets Left Behind Any One of Yours."

Ian Scott Montgomery
Graduate Student

Off-balance

I am writing you to express my disappointment that The State Press missed an opportunity to report an extremely visible and beneficial community service project a few days ago. From March 24 to the 27, both Delta Upsilon fraternity and Delta Gamma sorority hosted the first annual Teeter-a-Thon. We placed a humongous teeter-totter on Hayden Lawn and teetered nonstop for 72 hours, raising more than $1,000 for the local Boys and Girls Club.

I find it strange how The State Press manages to miss an extremely visible event that affects both the ASU general body and the surrounding Tempe community but manages to extensively cover even the smallest crime committed by one member of the Greek community.

Not only does this call into question your motives, it damages your credibility as a source of news as well as your ability to cover the most relevant stories. This instance really shows me how much your integrity as a newspaper has been rotted by the politics of ASU.

Chad Wolver
Undergraduate

Correction: April 2, 2008

In Monday's letter "Forget about it," the writer's name was misspelled. He is Ian Sean Montgomery.