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Show Views&Opinion Monday, Sept. 28, 2009 Page 12 Utah State University • Logan, Utah • www.aggietownsquare.com OurView Speak up or shut up T here are issues bubbling in the bowels of our university, and when the gossip begins to spill forth from the sewer grates around campus, we at The Statesman pay attention. It’s our job. Utah State is not just a school but a community and the issues within our campus community stand to link us together. We all pay tuition, we all deal with the cost of textbooks, and we are all affected by the policies of the administration, good or bad. When we, the journalists you rely on to shed light in to the darkest corners of USU, turn our ears to the wind, we are often stunned by what we hear. Thomas Jefferson said, “When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.” In this case the government is the administration and the people are the students, faculty and support staff of the university. We are your voice and we are hear to stand for you, to bring quiet yet substantial concerns to the public consciousness. We are your newspaper and when circumstances dictate, we are proud to depart from the comfort of stories on sports, speeches and social networking, gladly putting ourselves in the line of fire for the betterment of our university. This is our charge, and it is our hope that you, the students and faculty of Utah State, will hold us to this, remembering however, we don’t make the news, we simply report it. We take this role very seriously and so should you. When there is no public awareness of wrong doing, no awareness abuses, we all suffer as the system runs amuck. Jefferson also said, “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” Consider this a call to action. Professors have asked to speak off the record, hiding behind the notion that publicly speaking out against the practices and policies of Utah State University would stand to cast a negative light on our hallowed institution. Perhaps it’s the fact that a large portion of the universities professors lived through the Nixon administration that prompts them in their attempts to adopt a Deep Throat persona. Perhaps it’s fear of retaliation from the university’s administration. There is a stench in the air and predators smell fear. Less we forget however, there is safety in numbers. Our beloved university isn’t run by the mafia or the KGB, and there is no secret lever, which if pulled, will send you plummeting into a tank of sharks. Stand up, turn on the floodlights and defend your students against any injustices they may be unaware of, after all, your here for the students, right? Be not afraid, help us bring forth the truth. Your students will rally behind you. No need for all of the cloak and dagger, if it’s worth being said, it’s worth being heard. statesmaneditor@aggiemail.usu.edu ForumLetters Understanding in action To the editor: My name is Charles Prebish. I hold the Charles Redd Endowed Chair in Religious Studies at USU, and serve as director of the Religious Studies program. I am both interested in and impressed by Wednesday’s editorial on “Textbooks” in The Statesman. During my 35 plus years on the faculty at Penn State University, and now almost three years at USU, I have been a crusader against outrageous textbook prices that handicap our students and make outrageous sums of money for campus bookstores – many of which are owned by major establishments like Barnes & Noble. I want you to know that some faculty members are actually doing something about this problem!!! Six years ago, along with my best friend and colleague (who teaches at the University of London), we began an ebook program as a special project of an online academic peer-reviewed journal that we began in 1994. It’s called the Journal of Buddhist Ethics, and it was the first online peer-reviewed journal in the field of Religious Studies. It started free in 1994, and remains free 15 years later. Not one penny has ever been accepted as a basis for subscribing to the journal. It has over 5,000 subscribers in 50 countries. The e-book project was designed to contract with major scholars in various sub-disciplines of Religious Studies to create e-textbooks for Religious Studies students worldwide at prices ranging from one-third to one-quarter of the outrageous prices traditional publishers and traditional bookstores charge. We sidestep the traditional publishers and bookstores completely. Students purchase pdf e-textbooks completely online from our Web site and download them to their computers. They can make the e-books portable by copying the file to a jump drive or CD. Our prices save students tons of money, allow us to pay authors a truly fair royalty for investing the time and risk of entering our project, and we invest our small profits back into the creation of even more ebooks. Everyone wins except the bookstores and rip-off publishers. We’ve written an essay about our experiment, which we hope to publish shortly, and I’m attaching it for your (hopefully) reading pleasure. It documents what we’ve done, and why it has worked better than the projects cited in publications like “The Chronicle of Higher Education.” Please know that your passionate editorial does indeed make a difference. Poor planning To the editor: This is a rant and rave about some of the policies the school has for extra-curricular activities. I don’t support the amounts of money and time that are spent on athletics when this is a school for higher learning, so I am Letters to the editor • A public forum not going to mention it further. Thursday afternoon I experienced another example of the occasional error in focus. This week has been full of Homecoming activities. The activity for Thursday was Powder-Puff football – great idea but poor execution. It began sometime around 2:30 p.m., still in the middle of the school day for many students. However, what was worse was the sound system that went with it. That of course started much earlier as those involved got it set up and tested. So we lucky students who were trying to listen, pay attention and learn in our classes were subjected to loud music and annoying prattle such as a person repeating over and over again “linoleum, aluminum” and an intentionally poor version of “The Star Spangled Banner.” The organizers of this event could have fixed some of these problems by waiting until later in the day to start the event to minimize classroom disruption or moving the event to the HPER field. Instead it was on the Quad, a great place but surrounded by some of the oldest buildings on campus where most windows would typically be open on a warm day and thin seals which would not work well to keep out noise. As a class we struggled and even our instructor seemed to lose his focus occasionally. So maybe those in charge of “enhancing student experience” should pay more attention to why we are here at a university. I know I came to learn and eventually receive a degree, not to take part in any and all asinine activities. Beth Fowers Curiosity killed the cat, ice cream brought it back O n what may have been the most per- in Hades would anyone wait over 30 minutes in fect Tuesday afternoon in the history of line for a small cup of ice cream? The guys who weather, the only question I have on my waited in soup lines during The Great Depression mind is: Why are there 300 people in a line out- got more in their bowls than these practitioners side the TSC? of ice cream zealotry got, and they were actually Oh, it may not have been 300. Whatever the starving to death! number, they were five across and Insane. waiting patiently. What event was This is where the social disconhappening in good ol’ Logan to nect between myself and my felmake so many people wait in such low Aggies comes to the fore. Isn’t a massive line? Was it the line for it the oldheads who are supposed Re-Entry Thoughts Osmond Brothers tickets? Miley to be patient and the youngins Cyrus? Do Utahns wait in line for who are noted for not waiting on concert tickets? anything? Nearly everyone in that line was the Maybe it was a job fair for English majors. traditional college age – whatever that means. Doubtful. The new Wal-Mart is already fully The point – and I am not entirely sure I have staffed. It could have been the line to apply to one – is that the act of waiting in a long line for be lifeguard in the HPER. Impossible. Everyone a substantial amount of time for something you knows the lifeguards are hired out of prison work- can purchase for $2 in a fraction of time is flat out release programs. I thought it could have been the illogical. Perhaps there is no social disconnect at Yolanda Flores Niemann dunk tank. When I did all. And this is certainly not a regional thing that not see any of the HASS professors in line, I ruled I can use to scathingly insult Utahns for going to that out as a possibility. great lengths to receive a product without openThe curiosity overcame me, and I levitated ing their notoriously tight purse strings. This is just through the bulging throng to the front of the line. a bunch of young people waiting in line for free What was the cause of this mass of humanity wait- ice cream for absolutely no good reason whatsoing in line? Free ice cream. What? Free ice cream? ever. Well, except to eat ice cream ... for free. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Now, I fully admit that a man of my considerI mean, maybe a gallon of ice cream would able bulk (RE: I’m fat), talking about the vexing have been worth a conspicuous amount of time in effect of waiting for free ice cream is self-parody. line. But, the scoopers under the tent were giving I am sure that the moderators of a certain nameout those cocktail cups. Barely two scoops. Why less Web site that takes shots at my columns will Unconventional Wisdom fall over in glee in lambasting me. I will risk that. Despite how insignificant this column is, there are times when you scoff at relevance to call out 300 people for a mesmerizing lack of judgment and self-awareness. To sum up my argument, allow me to relate a story to you. Like Utah, Pennsylvania only allows liquor to be bought in state run stores. The price of liquor is considerably cheaper in New Jersey, which has privately owned liquor stores. On more than one occasion I drove with my father to New Jersey to buy liquor. Taking in a full reckoning of gas, the tolls to cross the bridge, the taxes New Jersey levies on the liquor and the time spent driving there and back, the savings seemed to be minimal. I asked my father if he agreed. He did. I asked him why we did it if we weren’t saving any money. “We got to spend time together,” he told me. Cheap booze and free ice cream. Logic be damned if they allow families and friends quality time together. Harry Caines in a senior re-entry student in interdiciplinary studies from Philidelphia. Unconventional Wisdom appears every Monday. Comments may be left at www.aggietownsquare.com or sent to chiefsalsa@gmail.com AboutUs Editor in Chief Patrick Oden News Editor Rachel A. Christensen Assistant News Editor Catherine Meidell Features Editor Courtnie Packer Assistant Features Editor Greg Boyles Sports Editor Tim Olsen Assistant Sports Editor Graham Terry Copy Editor Mark Vuong Photo Editors Pete Smithsuth Tyler Larson Web Editor Karlie Brand About letters • Letters should be limited to 400 words. • All letters may be shortened, edited or rejected for reasons of good taste, redundancy or volume of similar letters. • Letters must be topic oriented. 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