SGA president-elect responds

To the Editor:

In regards to the tax on graduation and the subsequent student sentiments, as president-elect I would like to respond. I agree with the students and with the current executive board on principle, and principle alone. The students, specifically the president of SGA sitting on the Presidents Coordinating Council, should have a voice in University policy-making. That is, after all, the only reason that the SGA president is seated on PCC.

The graduation tax is an example of the chaos that ensues when there is a breach in communication between the students and the administration, which is something that should be avoided at all costs.

My choice to remain distant from the protest is a stance that I took both during elections and that I take currently: The 2005-06 executive board will work with the administration through open lines of communication and by participating in all policy-making and budget decisions, thus avoiding protests like the one that took place this week.

By working together in all endeavors, we will strengthen the SLU community and productivity will be the result. This is our goal for next year.

Humbly,

Cari Johns

SGA President-Elect

Commending protesters

To the Editor:

I want to applaud the Saint Louis University community for its recent leap into social consciousness. In the last week alone, we saw the SLU community gather in front of Griesedieck Hall for the death penalty "Die-In," and a protest in DuBourg Hall over the President's Coordinating Council's opposition to considering the Workers Rights Consortium.

I am even surprised and impressed by SGA's uncharacteristically strong response to the unfairness of instituting a $75 graduation tax. While some may argue we are once again riding on the coattails of Wash. U., with their socially conscious student body's well-publicized hunger strike for worker's pay, I would disagree. I wonder, as was recently the case for me, if their average student is receiving an almost daily assault of pleas from organizations to protest one cause, or support another.

Yesterday I moaned to a friend that all these efforts being pushed forth at the same time were resulting in none of them getting the attention they deserve. But, nay! Far better for my time to be so precious to so many worthwhile causes then to go unused at this privileged campus which is so often apathetic to social injustices.

I applaud the individuals who have led these movements, and issue a challenge to the rest of the student body for next year. Reflect on your own attitudes on such important issues as the death penalty and the rights of those laborers creating our University clothing. Ask yourself, is our school administration concerned with the rising cost of a SLU education? Question your beliefs on other social justice issues, and next year continue the efforts so many individuals have made these last few weeks of school.

Paul Kaiser

President, College Democrats

Academic Bill of Rights is flawed

To the Editor:

I am responding to several points that The University News failed to make in its most recent article on the proposed Academic Bill of Rights.

While the U. News mentioned that the proposed bill was authored by David Horowitz, president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, it fails to mention that this group is a politically partisan think-tank. Those SGA senators who have submitted this bill would literally allow an outside political group to write the very language of our University's policies. Also, Horowitz's Web site maintains a McCarthy-style blacklist where anonymous students have named SLU professors. Such anonymous smear campaigns are unacceptable threats to our professors' academic freedom.

The U. News does not report that students already have the right to appeal any grade they feel was issued on the basis of anything other than classroom performance. Because students may not be aware of this, a remedy more reasonable than allowing an outside group to write new, redundant policies would be to require syllabi to notify students of the existing policy, which is online at http://www.slu.edu/colleges/AS/gradeappeal.html.

The U. News has failed to even ask whether or not a problem with biased grading exists at SLU. I checked with the College of Arts and Sciences (the University's largest academic unit), and under the current administration, no student has ever filed a complaint about ideologically biased grading practices. I have confirmed this with a number of departmental chairs, who state that they have never received a complaint about biased grading. Many took offense at the suggestion that their curricula stifled debate; professors' livelihoods depend on academic freedom, and an instructor would have to be a colossal hypocrite to deny that freedom to his or her students.

With respect to the controversial Colorado professor Ward Churchill, whose hyperbolic comments have rightly been met with disgust, the U. News accurately states both that the University is unfairly reconsidering Churchill's tenure, and that the Colorado Legislature is citing his case as a reason to adopt the Academic Bill of Rights.

The U. News fails to mention, however, that the same Legislature considering the bill has condemned Churchill, and has pressured the university into its present course of action. In fact, the Colorado Legislature passed a resolution that called Churchill's statements "an evil and inflammatory blow against America's healing process." Clearly, the Colorado Legislature has no right to claim the cause of Churchill's academic freedom as its own.

Lastly, I would suggest that the proposed bill mistakenly identifies a primary objective of the university as "the pursuit of intellectual diversity," but to do this mistakes a means for an end. The purpose of a university is to pursue truth.

As currently written, the bill would disallow the suppression of hate speech in the classroom under the pretext of "intellectual diversity." Students should roundly reject this unnecessary, partisan and dangerous bill.

Bob Blaskiewicz

Doctoral Candidate, Department of English

In support of the judicial system

To the Editor:

Almost everyone on campus knows who Donald Jones is, but few know what he did. I asked a few of the protesters what Jones did to receive the death penalty, and several responded that he killed someone but they couldn't tell me how or why. Saint Louis University provides an environment for students to express their opinions, but those opinions should be well informed.

These protesters say that those involved in sentencing Jones to death are murderers. I agree, but should we support a man who beat his grandmother with a butcher slab, stabbed her repeatedly to quiet her screams and stole all her money and belongings to buy cocaine? Or should we support the people who have kept Jones alive (albeit, in jail) for the past 12 years, who are allowing him to see a priest before he dies, to say goodbye to friends and loved ones and are providing him a more dignified death than his grandmother was allowed? I support the judicial system.

The protesters say killing Jones will not bring his grandmother back, that it won't accomplish anything. But neither will a lifetime in prison. I think it's more merciful to kill Jones rather than force him to live the rest of his life in prison, where he faces dangers in the form of fellow inmates.

While I am unsure of whether or not I support the death penalty, I certainly do not support Donald Jones. I trust that the judicial system has made the correct decision.

I commend the students in the Quad for demonstrating their beliefs against the death penalty. But who will lie down for all victims of the murderers who have been given the death sentence?

If Jones is executed, there will be a vigil for him. But who will hold a vigil for his grandmother?

Rachel Pollock

Freshman, Doisy School of Allied Health