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Show Letters to the Editor Grade grubbers Editor: Dear U. of U. : I've been on your campus several weeks now, sampling your classes, both grad and undergrad. Basically, I am dissatisfied with what I've seen, yet maybe my dissatisfaction is due to the courses in which I am presently enrolled. I suspect, however, that even if I had an entirely different set of courses, my attitudes would remain the same. Answer a few questions for me please. How can learning take place when there is such a definite distinction (in roles) between Dr. So-and-So and 581-00-7385? In one of my classes, for instance, every head bows down (taking notes for sole purpose of memorization and regurgitation at later dates) to any and every definition flowing from the mouth of the only person facing others' faces. How can such an institution graduate autonomous individuals when almost all class requirements are strict and rigid? To be sure, not all courses have their requirements so neatly prescribed. In those courses, the students then ask the professor what to do. and by what date. Am I the only one who believes that the evaluative and judgmental atmosphere created by a grading system is out of harmony with learning? Many undergrads cannot risk taking courses under the creditno credit system, for their future grad schools would consider would consider these "credit" courses as mere C's. So, they go to school for "good" grades, only to find the same old grade-grubbing syndrome, inflamed by a B average requirement some four years later. My own experience, tells me that a lust for A's is not equivalent to a desire to discover. I've heard some of your students refer to you as a "diploma mill." What have you to say for yourself? Jim Voigt Critique Editor: Bill Marling's article reexamining "This is the Place" (August 10) needs a little reexamining itself. The article crammed with half-stated half-stated and hardly proven assertions and implications regarding the character of the Latter-day Saints, their leaders and the early Utah pioneers. Among these sterile assumptions is one (in paragraph 3) that the Mormon Church is declining: a fact certainly not in evidence, is view of the fact that the Church is growing as never before, has more missions in more nations converting more people than ever before, and is not only doing well monetarily (as the article un-daughtedly un-daughtedly noted itself in paragraph para-graph 6), but is in fact becoming more and more concerned with social welfare of persons in and around church communities witness wit-ness the recent formation of the Church Social Services Department, Depart-ment, under Victor Brown Jr. Of all the world's religions, and especially those native to the developed de-veloped Western nations W Church of Jesus Christ o LaW day Saints has the least call to defend its social, econom, an membership status in an era "declining" interest m matte- moral. tup The parallel between W detrimental effects of drug usage and the "decline the Church would seem toJ counterproductive to Marling's thesis, if indeed te ; arguing a cause-. relationship, or ever , a , correlation between the two if one could credit his outr.g assertion that the Churcn "declined". k , The personal attac President Lee is wedang . (continued onPf persons are doing these things daily. Hundreds are pulled from the drudgery of drugs, into Christ, annually, while thousands of families accept the message of salvation and turn to Christ. The startling aspect of these things is not that a few families may fail to stay together, that a few individuals may fall into error, that liberalism and decadence permeates society, but that in the midst of all this chaos there exists an energetic, growing, self-sustaining, vibrant movement which is the virtual antithesis of the social feculence in which it is forced to exist. During this year, there will be more non-American Mormons than American. There will be thousands more turning away from the banalty of their old lives to the promise of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. All of this from the 1 500 souls appearing in the Great Salt Lake Valley 125 years ago. Brigham Young was right, this is the right place. Thomas B. Bond Water brothers Editor: It seems odd. In your last issue, it suid one of the reasons the "Owens Stomp" could not be held on a practice field was because of the expense and problems of stopping the computerized water system. Let it be known to all thut the water was shut off ull night for the "Summer Country Concert" held Aug. 3 on the grass in back of the Union. Also for the Tanner's Stomp, water was shut off on both sides of the Murriott Library plaza. Both these systems are computerized. Perhaps O.N. Hunter is a Republican. Tom Hurst Chairman, Summer Entertainment a iied from page 4) squitur. Harold B. Lee has ad thousands, contrary to IS MngT testimony" "of a 's vial non-inspiration. As to Mark pertaining to Pres. ! 'longevity, "will it take that n' - M years) for Lee and the un Church to recognize !jj 's happening?", it will 3 to remind the sophomoric . 3 ta a man wearing the he a We as Pres. Lee's in-.t. in-.t. the Family Home I "8 program to combat fl the forces breaking up le. f to which the young Bill he prefers. That program is ,r. 1 old as Bill is himself, to "W Correlation is another d emphasis of the Church of J ves to combat the ;ri ,f wees which threaten J!' unity. be ;t to this discussion, as ng the article itself, the of ;LwlU not have his offices be J ' thwh Office Building lr, " struction, but will L Jjto offices in the older the 73-year-old . ; ht the problems of the the Gospel of st, which can give each man a purpose beyond ; 'Ctfornography'which ' level? S!XUal d6sires t0 leve's, and which can free men from selfish motivations long enough to do his part to help ameliorate the other problems facing society. What is Editor Marling doing to fight these problems? While critics like Mr. Marling like to repeat the banal assertion that the Church pays no taxes, it is a point that I, for one, have never seen substantiated. It is my understanding, to the contrary, con-trary, that all corporate enterprises en-terprises owned by the Church, or even partly so owned, pay their full share of taxes: ZCMI, Beneficial Life Insurance, KSL, and the others. Another ill-designed supposition sup-position is that the Church "hard-sells" their "package" to visitors to Temple Square. The same historical "hard-sell" may be received by visiting the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. or by listening to a tour guide in Williamsburg, Virginia. While it is not hard to imagine an elder being somewhat more enthusiastic about the living God than a Smithsonian tour guide showing the Hope diamond, the analogy could be carried no further. Bill's statistics on drug use are questionable; on both extremes. One would think that there were more than 36 people in the hundreds of thousands of Utahns in 1962, who were addicted to heroin. As to the "inside estimate" of four to five thousand addicts presently, one is prompted to ask who the inside estimators are and what are their estimating credentials. In addition, ad-dition, given Mr. Marling's population mobility assertions, which he himself ties to the drug problem, how much of this questionable figure which can be conceivably connected to Mormon, or even Utahn, influences, in-fluences, whether causative or curative? The parade of contrasting scenarios placed at the end of the article serve only to highlight Bill's skill as a propagandist, and to point as well to the absolute omission of substantive criticism in the article, the total lack of information sources, the use of ad hominem argument, the outngh distortion of fact, and the complete circumlocution of he genuine characteristics of the Sect of the attack, the Mormon CoTa"l the people in our time, the Mormons are the most interested in-terested in combatting the drug nroblem, in uniting the family, m Sng homage to government m faxes and personal service m taxes anu v pur;tian lives living generous Christian and in serving their u Hundreds of thousands of |