We are proud of the efforts made to eliminate the newly imposed graduation tax. The quick and reaching action taken by the student body is admirable and deserves to be commended. However, as students concerned for the oft-forgotten of society, the blatant neglect of more important issues must be illuminated.

It seems that the Saint Louis University community does not have its priorities in place when more signatures are gathered in protest of a $50 graduation tax than to save a man's life-which is priceless. Is our campus more concerned with a $50 fee or matters of life? We think we found out the answer to this question in the past week. SLU students are ready to mobilize for $50 yet ignore issues that do not affect their own checkbooks. While one might say that the $50 tax is disrespectful to the SLU community, isn't the death penalty disrespectful of humanity? The tax is unjust-bottom line. But it would seem that a student body that devotes itself to 750,000 service hours would care more about others than themselves. As a Jesuit University, we are called to be "men and women for others," not "men and women for ourselves."

There are countless examples of our failure to live up to this Jesuit ideal. One example was a comment made to Saint Louis Today. In it, a SLU student protesting the graduation fee expressed solidarity with Washington University students in their pursuit of justice. This is a smack in the face for those Wash. U. students who have seriously jeopardized their standing as graduating seniors. How can this correlation honestly be made?

This shows that SLU students feel that our protest is on par with the sit-in at Washington University. The importance of these issues is not at all similar. Whereas Washington University students stand up for the rights of employees, all SLU students are able to do is refuse to pay a fee for their own ceremony.

Let us analyze the priorities of students by looking at the results of two petitions presented in the past week. The first petition received around 900 signatures while the other received only 500 signatures. One petition was to smite the graduation tax, while the other petition was designed to save inmate Donald Jones' life and uphold the value of the human person. Can you guess which one received more publicity? If you answered that the graduation fee petition received more attention, you are right. I would now like you to consider the message that this campus sends to the world. We care more about ourselves than we do about solemn issues of life. Why are we so selfish?

Further, as students of SLU, we have the ability and obligation to put pressure on the administration to better our University. We should be putting our influence in more important places than a small graduation tax. For example, SLU senior Charlie Crowley has been working for four years to ensure that SLU apparel is not manufactured by sweatshop workers. This issue, however, was ignored at the latest presidential council meeting, but the issue of the graduation tax was discussed. If Crowley's advocacy of the Workers' Rights Consortium was equally supported by the SLU community, then it would have been addressed. The failure of the SLU student body to unite with Crowley is a striking example of where our priorities stand.

To top it off, many of you probably witnessed a courageous protest against Missouri's practice of the death penalty on Tuesday. Featuring chalk outlines of those executed at the hands of the state of Missouri, it was a sign of hope. We were shocked to see new chalk outlines imitating the earlier protest with the words, "Gamma Phi or Die." Are you serious? Can you have any less respect for human life and the work of many dedicated individuals? This shows callous disregard for the sanctity of human life. It sickens us to think that individuals would make a mockery of such a powerful expression. The SLU community should be ashamed. This destroys the ideal of "men and women for others" by mocking those students who stood up for life. While some might say this was "just a joke," there are places where jokes are just not acceptable.

If we are to embrace the Jesuit ideal, we must do much more than protest a $50 tax.

Tim Kieras, Aaron Meyer and Matt Ziegler are freshmen in the College of Arts and Sciences.