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OPINION
| October 15, 2003
Editorial/Our View
Letters
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| The Shorthorn: Ryan Hartsell |
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Psychiatric treatment should be
left for doctors
RE: Order for Disorders Oct. 8
The Shorthorn has recently published articles regarding people with
eating disorders, which have been informative. However, Carrie Lutter’s
column totally threw me for a loop.
She suggests that UTA uses taxpayer and student funds to establish
an eating disorder program. She laid out her plan, which I am sure
she is passionate about, but there is one thing wrong with it. It
is a plan for a psychiatric hospital, not for an institution of
higher learning.
There are plenty of hospitals dealing with psychiatric problems,
including eating disorders. Also, there are numerous other non-profit
organizations where one can obtain help.
Rather than placing the responsibility on students to seek help,
she is assuming that the university or government can run lives
better. As students who pay tuition funding the salaries of employees
of this institution, we should demand better allocation of resources
to more relevant academic programs.
Our university needs more parking spaces, more dormitories and better
facilities to meet demands of the future. One question students
should be asking themselves when reading her column is: where are
our higher tuition and fee payments are going to go when they are
raised this spring and next fall?
— Hunter Bonner, information systems senior
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| The Shorthorn: File Art |
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Columnist has one-sided view of
environmentalists
RE: More human than humans Oct. 3
I agree that people dressing up like cows and protesting drinking
milk in front of children is absolutely hysterical. And I’m
sure you would agree with me that people in California burning down
houses of people who own SUV’s is far more an act of terrorism
than an act of environmental protection.
But, I could not disagree more with your one-sided portrayal of
environmentalists and their beliefs. I found your opinions on environmentalism
to be completely based around a one-sided intolerance of left-wing
politics.
Do you not think everyone would benefit from having a cleaner environment?
Well, I do. I don’t want my children to grow up in a world
where there is no undeveloped land and too much pollution and most
of the wild animals can only be seen in picture books. I love this
country, and my father, grandfather and great grandfather all served
in the military as I probably will.
Our country uses a rather disproportionate amount of natural resources
that aren’t limitless. I think we all need to ask questions
about how we live and be concerned with the fact that future generations
will have to deal with what we are doing today.
After reading the column, instead of getting angry I realized how
glad I am that not everyone thinks like you. I think that everyone
should care more and be more upset when the president has the power
to let industries release more pollutants into the environment,
or decide that protected land can be drilled.
I know we need to lessen our dependence on oil from the Middle East
and we could face a serious energy crisis if they decided not to
sell fuel to us. I also don’t think the right wing that runs
this country is to blame.
I think the biggest problem is most people aren’t really aware
they are contributing to the problem by driving a car on unnecessary
trips, and not recycling.
The developed world simply is not providing any real solutions to
the environmental problems and the problem is only worsening.
— James Roberts, biochemistry sophomore
Columnist should ditch generic view of liberals
Re: More Human Than Humans Oct. 3.
I read with amazement Jessica Smith’s column entitled “More
Human Than Humans.” When I read an opinion column I expect
to learn an individual’s opinion, with which I may or may
not agree, set forth rationally and supported with actual information.
In this case, though, I can only conclude that Smith’s opinion
is as ill-informed as the column that expresses it.
She said liberals are “out of touch on many issues,”
especially those related to the environment. She denounces People
for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, apparently mistaking this
radical animal rights organization for a liberal environmental group.
We are told that these hysterical environmentalists have the support
of the Democratic leadership. How, one wonders, did the Democratic
leadership become involved in this? What precisely has the Democratic
leadership done or said in support of a PETA anti-milk campaign?
The writer makes the statement “They also oppose drilling
for the oil and natural gas we need to fuel our country.”
Who are they? The Democratic leadership? PETA? Ah, no. We are back
to liberals — environmentalists who want to put “our
economic livelihood in jeopardy just to protect an endangered animal
species,” specifically the Porcupine Caribou. This is followed
by several paragraphs that intermingle activists, liberals, environmentalists
and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which all of the preceding
groups are apparently trying to protect. Refuge can hardly be “pristine”
anyway because Alaska’s own Republican senator has described
the refuge as “a flat, treeless, almost featureless plain.”
Pristine and scenic are not exactly synonymous.
The writer tells us we should be most shocked not by the misguided
liberals, environmentalists, PETA radicals, Democratic leadership
or activists, but by the “evidence that drilling for oil may
actually help the caribou population grow.” The evidence is
that the caribou herd in Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay has grown from
6,000 to more than 19,000 in the past 25 years. Based on the information
presented, I am unable to establish a relationship between drilling
for oil and the growth of this particular bunch of caribou.
Smith employs the common conservative tactic of labeling as “liberal”
any people or ideas with which she disagrees and lumps them together
with environmentalists, who in fact may or may not be liberals.
And she does this while making no case in support of ruining Mother
Nature on behalf of nuclear energy and hydroelectric plants except
that she thinks it would be a good idea.
— Gloria W. Eyres Johnson, retired graduate studies assistant
vice president
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