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Show 5 Wednesday, September 12,2007 OPINION www.dailyutahchronicle.com LETTERS TO THE EDITOR The Chronicle should do some real reporting Editor: I am aghast at this story ("U employee rewarded for public service," Aug. 29). Like corporate television, The Chronicle has taken the easy route by assigning a "reporter" to a non-story, only to report a non-story. (It's symptomatic of a perilous trend at your "independent student voice.") While Lundgren is to be applauded for punching three digits on her cell phone, the real story lies elsewhere. Hundreds of staff and faculty at the U do real, beneficial public service—valuable volunteer work benefiting our communities. Professors organize confer- ences, work-study students pick up garbage and you sit at your desk, reading poorlyworded press releases. Here's a story you missed, one of a true "U" public servant: www.dailyutahchronicle. com/media/storage/paper244/ news/2003/09/25/NewsAJ. Custodian.By.Night Activist. By£>ay-47593?.shtml Instead of taking the path most convenient, and covering what the police want you to, I implore you to investigate. Do research. Meet the need that your readers demand and commend WORK well done. Jason Hardy Alumnus '06 Smoking must be banned on campus There's some trouble brewing in Vermont A pproximately 13 percent of Vermont supports a theoretical secession from the United States. I say "theoretical secession" because there is little chance that Vermont will actually secede. They want a peaceful secession— the worst kind of secession. Peace has never won anyone anything but a crucifixion. A lot of people in Vermont would have to die before America looked up from their television sets, or more accurately, changed the channel on those sets to a station which gave the deaths of countless Vermonters a cursory mention. They're counting on the United States to let them pack up and leave. It's hard to fathom how a group of people could be more mistaken. They seem to have an awful lot of faith in the discretion of a government whose brutality they abhor. A large portion of this country still has wet dreams about spanking Yankees. The president could just give Vermont to the people of New Hampshire. There's no reason for two states up there anyway. Forty-nine state stars wouldn't look right, so we'll have to forcibly annex Puerto Rico, or split Texas into two: Old Mexico and New Cuba. STEVE COONS How the government decides to subdue one of the smallest and least violent states probably isn't a fruitful area of discussion—I could pull off a pretty stellar Will Sherman impersonation with four Cub Scouts and a golden retriever. Of course, Vermont thinks Canada will protect it. But it can't hide behind Canada because Canada is too busy hiding behind Canada. If the people of Vermont want to be Canadians, they'll have to move to there. No country is going to risk war with a superpower over four square miles of wilderness and Montpelier (the jewel of northwestern New Hampshire). The people of Vermont are too worried about their own financial well-being to rebel in a coherent way. Every state would be better off without taxes, but secession based on personal comfort, while claiming ideological supremacy, is shameless. Vermont's secession is clearly an empty gesture. This is about lengthening the gap, and pulling up the ladder behind them, not rebellion. It could, however, function as a sort of jumping point. After Vermonticide, some group with actual convictions could misunderstand the situation and be inspired to rebel against the system. I'm against blind patriotism as much as the next guy but these treasonous fiends have merely switched out national patriotism for state patriotism. They want all the glory of America but none of the sludge. There is no reason to be proud of Vermont citizenship. State loyalty is a thing of the past and by all rights it should have dried up in the early 19th century. I don't care if Utah falls into the ocean. I'd go as far as to say that I vaguely hope it will some day, so long as I'm not in Utah at the time. The state of Vermont doesn't belong to its citizens any more than it does to the citizens of New Hampshire. This secession is so far from happening that any reasonable person would have stopped reading this column after the first paragraph—possibly before the first paragraph. letters@chronicle.utah.edu We have the right to know Students should be encouraged to mourn losses instead of being sheltered from truth and fact A man who had worked as a custodian for years at the U jumped to his death off of the observation deck on the fifth floor of the Warnock Engineering Building on Aug. 30 around 8:45 p.m. We may never know the man's name, why he did it or even what he looked like. In order to properly mourn the loss of life, the student body should be informed of the loss of one of our valued staff. After the incident, the dean of the College of Engineering, Richard Brown, sent the faculty and staff a mass e-mail lamenting the loss of life on campus. This was never sent to students, yet many were present when the body was discovered. Somebody should have had the presence of mind to formally announce the loss of life to the entire university. Even in The Daily Utah Chronicle, the mention of him was minute as U administrators were unwilling to release much information about him. If it had been anyone else, with any circumstance other than suicide, there would have been a captioned photo of him with a detailed article telling of his life and contributions to the U. A staff member, a donator, a student, but not a custodian. True, MELISSA SCHACK It's important that humans properly mourn to retain their sanity, and it seems impossible without a face to put to the incident. there are thousands of workers on campus, but they don't die everyday. It's not unreasonable to spend a few minutes to talk about the death of someone on campus. In our society, we treat suicide as a mortal sin. This doesn't make the loss of life any less painful. If anything, it makes the loss more painful and unbearable. It's difficult to imagine someone who we see everyday, walking our halls, watching after our messes, making sure everything moves smoothly, suddenly jump off of a building where everyone can see him. Seeing something like this must be beyond surreal, hearing about it is unbelievable. We have been denied his identity because of the nature of his death. All those who were close to him and loved him know, yet I can't help but feel cheated by this lack of information given to the people at the U. It's important that humans properly mourn to retain their sanity, and it seems impossible without a face to put to the incident. In our hearts, we all knew this man. He was the one that made our lives easier. He was the one that prevented us from getting that nasty cold. He was the one that gave us cheer when he smiled as we walked past. He was the one that worked behind the scenes making himself just as valued as any faculty or staff at the U. Light a candle, say a prayer, meditate. Mourn him, because he was there for us. letters@chronicle.utah.edu Editor: I want smoking on campus banned or restricted to areas that would keep smokers out of the majority of people's walkways. I am very annoyed when I am walking to class in a large group of people and suddenly I inhale a nice breath of second-hand smoke. I often am tempted to thank the person who is puffing for putting my health at risk. People cannot smoke in Liberty Park, so why should they be able to smoke on one of Utah's finest education establishments? I take great pride in being a Utah man and I want our campus to be even more clean (no cigarette butts all over the ground in places) and a healthier, more enjoyable campus, too. I don't know where to start with this movement; hopefully someone else does. Harrison Smith Sophomore, Engineering Religious fanatics can't be tolerated Editor: The methods by which religion is taught today are no longer working. Universality orders the respective truths among us. The declaration of one God is irrational. Prophets for millennia have commanded the right way. It is arrogance on the part of anyone who dares to apply it to the whole. Violence ensues when words of rage perpetuate discrimination of all forms. The "us against them" war cry is a state of mind spared only for barbarians. If creationists believe in manifestation, why do some destroy our majestic earth? Mother Nature has enough chaos and natural phenomena to wreck havoc on us without the help of rogues in cloaks. For too long, we have tolerated fanatics, on campus and off. They use blame, oppression, intimidation, persecution, domination and ostracism to maim and kill our fellow humans for thendifferences. It's clear some our most popular, opinionated leaders lack the core principles of human being. These selfrighteous radicals need to be fired, impeached, imprisoned and reassigned to a more basic school of learning. Revisiting the golden rule from kindergarten might be a place to start. Some are below sub-human with their wicked delusions of sacred words. On the contrary, the world creation myths are innumerable. They always design tales of sexuality, passion and the unity of love. The wisdom therein is powerless unless practiced in daily life. If not, the mystery behind the words, i.e. the deeds of love, remain a dead, unspoken language. Reading and literacy has everything to do with the way in which we read ourselves, society and the universe. Religion alone or the study of "The Word" cannot heal the sick mentality of those we must dethrone. The driving force of behavior is what proves individual and collective valor. We choose by the acceptance of interpretation what we project onto the world. As autonomous beings, we are mirrors and masterpieces in our relative, multi-dimensional experiences. Along our life journey, we share moments of affection as we learn the value of art objects with like minds. For this reason, the humanities are anything but human without the mind and heart connection. No wonder the world stops listening when the thunder is so loud, we lose the meaning of our own heartbeats. We need leaders and professors with visionary hearts who further our hope for world peace, justice and safety. Angela Peedee Palmer Senior, French letters@chronicle. Utah, edu |