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Show edjtor@statesrnan.iisu,e statesman@cc.usu.e AboutUs OurView Editor in Chief Seth R. Hawkins The nitpicky student well within rights News Editor Arie Kirk' Assistant News Editor Liz Lawyer Features Editor Manette Newbold H ere we go again. Last year former student body president Quinn Millet's booting case went to court on the grounds that booting bypasses the due process of law, and was met with a big, fat, "No way, kid." Now someone's at it again, trying to find a way to get at the booting companies that are so often a pain in students' butts. Last Wednesday, a group of three students set up a sting operation - of sorts - in which they parked cars in lots that were inappropriately marked according to current city code. They parked six cars without permits and coughed up $70 a piece for the three cars that were booted. The owner of Cache Auto Booting was quoted in today's paper as saying, "When students get booted because they trespass, they want to figure out how to get around the law. They can't fight it in court because Quinn Millet lost that one, so they nitpick with the signs." Welt, yeah. That's the democratic process. If a group of citizens doesn't like a law for whatever reason - maybe they think it's just wrong or it's biased against a particular group or it seems too heavy - they have recourse with the law to argue for redress of grievances. Students have complained for a long time that booting is too severe a punishment for parking in the wrong place. And now that the maximum booting fee is $70. It's a penalty that's getting even harder to tolerate. It's students' right to try to effect change. It's also the right of any citizen to make sure the law is being adhered to. So even if Brady Newswander's complaints are "nit-picking," he is well within reason to demand the signs be in compliance. Adhering to the law works the other way tod. This: includes students obeying the law by not parking in lots marked as permit parking only. Regardless of what students may think of the lack of parking spots available, the owner of the parking lot wanted spaces for their tenants. But in order for students to comply with parking lot restrictions, they need to clearly be able to see signs to know where they can and cannot park. Even the owner of Cache Auto Booting seems to have recognized this, as less than a week after the students' sting operation he replaced all the errant signs. He did that in less than a week, even though he had since last May to do so legally. Even the original code, which was changed in May required reflective background, though the definition of reflective background could be disputed. Logan City Prosecuting Attorney Lee Edwards said that would have to be determined by a judge. So maybe it is nitpicking, but that's what's required to make sure everyone is on the same page. To be booted just because you couldn't see a sign in the dark simply enrages the booted and enriches the booters. The law needs to be fair on both sides, after all, justice is blind. Fighting back against workplace discrimination As the space race reached a fever pitch 40 years ago, an unheralded employment rights pioneer named Celio Diaz Jr. held fast to a dream. He didn't endeavor to set foot on the lunar surface, but his ambition was still difficult to realize in 1967. Diaz wanted to be a flight attendant. Today, when in-flight opulence is limited to perusing the SkyMall catalog while sipping your one complimentary can of Sierra Mist, Diaz's aspiration understandably elicits a shrug. In 1967, however, air travel held more allure. Being a flight attendant meant serving cocktails to captains of industry and chain-smoking celebrities aboard jetliners destined for exotic locales. Being a flight attendant in 1967 What others are also meant being a woman - spesaying about Issues. cifically a young, pert and unmarried woman. Though men exclusively served as flight stewards at the dawn of commercial aviation , by the 1950s all the major airlines reinvented the occupation as an exclusively female domain. Targeting businessmen as their core customer base, many airlines established academies where they would train stewardesses to walk that fine line between mini-skirtclad siren and nurturing potential wife. Blanching at the very notion that a man might elect to do a job they'd made synonymous with femininity, airline managers unequivocally stated that men need not apply. Nonetheless, Diaz, a married father of two from Miami, tried to get a job as a flight attendant with Pan American World Airways. Title VII, part of 1964's landmark Civil Rights Act that forbade employment discrimination on the basis of gender (as well as race, Assistant Features Editor Brittny Goodsell Jones Sports Editor Samuel Hislop Assistant Sports Editor David Baker Copy Editor Rebekah Bradway Photo Editor Tyler Larson Assistant Photo Editor Patrick Oden Forum Lett e r$ Books still used by students the library catalog to find a book. That anecdotal evidence along with librarians' contact with students at the MerrillCazier Library information desk To the editor: and our interaction with 10,520 individual Aggies in 1,183 class Following up on the "Student sessions last year indicate to ethics questioned by use of me that many students are at Internet/'feature in the Sept. 24 least aware of books. Many are issue of the Statesman, I want genuinely interested in them. to reassure anyone who worGranted, we all appreciate ries that USU students don't the convenience of the Internet read books. 1 had the pleasure and like finding online articles of meeting with about 220 stu- or other text instantly accessible dents in a Biology 1010 class to read or print, but I believe yesterday so 1 could show them that students will continue to now to find reference books look for books for at least the for a class assignment. At least near, future. (The.library offers 40 students raised their hands hundreds of e-books for those when I asked who had used into Book 2.0.) As for the temp- tation to buy or borrow text from the Web for a research paper, I am heartened to hear many professors say that they see very little such activity at USU. Professors can tell when a student's writing doesn't sound like their usual voice or match their style. And students know that teachers can easily surf the Internet to find copied text, or they can use plagiarism detection software to identify unfortunate cases of cheating. Shameless plug: Never hesitate to call, write, visit, or IM reference librarians if you need help finding books or other information sources....,_ ~-^-~v. Flora Shrode The decline of American prosperity Last week over lunch, a friend in his 30s prodded me to explain how my generation, the boomers, had botched so many things. While not exactly conceding that we had, I said that the one thing none of us had anticipated was that America would cease to be a land of broadly shared prosperity. To be born, as I was, in mid-century was to have come of age in a nation in which the level of prosperity con— m m m m m m — . ^ . ^ i ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ tinued to rise and the circle of prosperity continued What others are to widen. This was saying about issues. the great given of our youth. If the boomers embraced such causes as civil and social rights and environmentalism, it was partly because the existence and distribution of prosperity seemed to be settled questions. Nor were we alone in making this mistake. Our parents may have gone through the Depression and could never fully believe, as boomers did, that the good times were here to stay. They remembered busts as well as booms. But the idea that the economy could revert to its pre-New Deal configuration (in which the rich claimed all the wealth the nation created while everyone else just got by), the notion that the middle class might shrink even as the economy grew: Who, among all our generations and political persuasions, expected that? Yet that's precisely what happened. Median family income over the past quarter-century has stagnated. The economic rewards from increased productivity, which went to working-class as well as wealthy Americans from the 1940s to the '70s, now go exclusively to the rich. The manufacturing JODS that anchored our prosperity were offshored, automated or deunionized; lower-paying service-sector jobs took their place. Nat'lVoice dSee WORKPLACE, page 11 Letters to the editor • A public forum It's no great achievement for a people to recognize that their nation's economy has tanked, but recognizing that their nation's class structure has slowly but fundamentally altered is a more challenging task. It's harder still for a people who are conditioned, as Americans are, not to see their nation in terms of class. Which is why a poll released this month by the Pew Research Center reveals a transformation of Americans' sense of their country and themselves that is startling. Pew asked Americans if their country was divided between haves and have-nots. In 1988, when Gallup asked that question, 26 percent of respondents said yes and 71 percent said no. In 2001, when Pew asked it, 44 percent said yes and 53 percent said no. But when Pew asked it again this summer, the number of Americans who agreed that we live in a nation divided into haves and have-nots had risen to 48 percent — exactly the same as the number of Americans who disagreed. Americans' assessment of their own place in the economy has altered, too. In 1988, fully 59 percent identified themselves as haves and just 17 percent as have-nots. By 2001, the haves had dwindled to 52 percent and the have-nots had risen to 32 percent. This summer, just 45 percent of Americans called themselves haves; 34 percent called themselves have-nots. These are epochal shifts, of epochal significance. The American middle class has toppled into a world of temporary employment, jobs without benefits, retirement without security. Harder times have come to left and right alike: The percentage of Republicans who call themselves haves has declined by 13 points since 1988; the percentage of Democratic haves has Editorial Board Seth R. Hawkins Arie Kirk Liz Lawyer David Baker Manette Newbold Brittny Goodsell Jones About letters • Letters should be limited to 350 words. • All letters may be shortened, edited or rejected for reasons of good taste, redundancy or volume of similar letters. • Letters must be topic o r i ented. They may not be directed towara individuals. Any letter directed to a specific individual may , be edited or not printed. • No anonymous letters will be published. Writers must sign all letters and include a phone number or email address as well as a student identification number (none of which is published). Letters will not be printed without this verification. • Letters representing groups — or more than one individual — must have a singular representative clearly stated, with all necessary identification information. • Writers must wait 21 days before submitting successive letters — no exceptions. • Letters can be hand delivered or mailed to The Statesman in the TSC, Room 105, or can be e-mailed to statesman@cc.usu.edu or click on vvww.utah statesman.com for more letter guidelines and a box to sumbit let ters. Online poll What is the best method of enforcing permit parking lots? Cl See DECLINE, page 11 Booting Towing Parking Tickets Providing guest parking Tell us what you think. Getting the boot Submit a letter to the editor at www.utahstatesman.com Punishments for violating the law are no news flash, especially those dealing with parking restrictions. The all-too-familiar parking ticket sits on some car windows because too much time has elapsed at the meter or a parking permit tag wasn't displayed properly. Sometimes a car gets towed for being parked in the wrong y place. But in this neck of the woods, booting seems to be the ' •" 1 most popular enforcement method. Logan, especially near campus, has seemingly no parking spots .^.; available to guests, making it difficult to visit friends. The penalty for &*rA parking in these lots without a permit is booting -.a giant padlock of sorts placed on the wheel of a vehicle to prevent the driver from moving without severe damage to the vehicle. To get the boot removed requires a $70 fee. Is booting the best form of parking lot enforcement? Is there a better way to handle this? Are the fines too much? Are students always in the right when it-comes to booting? Or are booting companies just fulfilling their contracts with companies? 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