Editorial harshly portrayed fans\nA recent staff editorial titled "Courtside is for fans in red" printed a misleading portrayal of four dedicated IU students. The article portrayed four young women as "bouncing stereotypes" willing to trade their image to Varsity Properties in return for courtside seats to the IU-Purdue men's basketball game Feb. 22. \nIf the editorial staff chooses to unfairly depict these women as "bouncing stereotypes" or "spokesmodels," they should in all fairness, include that each is an IU honor student achieving great success in her time at IU. \nTo make the statement that courtside should only be for fans in red disregards the fact that at the game Feb. 22, the "fans" sitting directly next to these women were also not wearing red, and were in fact rooting for Purdue.\nWhat the readers of the column need to realize is that each fan who enters Assembly Hall is a walking advertisement. Any fans wearing Abercrombie or Nike are also "making a sales pitch." A full investigation of the events preceding the game would reveal that these women are long-time tenants of Varsity Properties and were offered this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for their loyalty and love of the Varsity Villas. \nThe decision to wear the "fluorescent money green" T-shirts was that of the four women and not of Varsity Properties. These women chose this color to stand out in the crowd and promote VarsityVillas.com. \nTo say IU is "losing out on big money" is unfounded as each IU student pays thousands of dollars to attend this great university. To humiliate these women is unfair. They were not shooed by any officials and did not impair the experience for those around them. If you watched the game that night you would have seen that they were the only ones on their feet cheering. These young women should be commended for their achievements and not smeared for their love of IU and the Varsity Villas.\nPerhaps a good hard look would be in order at allowing students, not alumni, to have the courtside seats. Most of the Big Ten schools do this -- why not IU? \nDavid Kerber\nVarsity Properties Manager
Students are good fans in the circumstances\nI am writing in response to the many alumni who have written in these past few weeks and felt the urge to rip on all of the current students and people who have or have not been attending Hoosier basketball games. These alumni who feel the need to compare their basketball and athletic experiences with ours and force their "I was a better fan than you when I was an undergrad" are immature, childish and in no way motivate me to be a better fan. \nOne alumni expressed how disappointed and appalled he was to hear us boo Sean Kline at Assembly Hall. Well, Mr. Alumni, after having an athletics department impose a $30 athletics fee to make up for mistakes they themselves made, after being charged $50-plus each year to watch a less-than-sub-par football team and finally being charged $120-plus each of the past three seasons to watch sub-par basketball, I think I speak for all of us students when I say that we have every right to boo at whomever we want whenever we want. I'm sure back in your day you did not have to be put through the torture of watching a sub-par basketball player make errant passes and miss wide open layups (to say the least).\nAnother alumnus imposed his "I-was-a-greater-undergrad-than-thou" perspective, criticizing the people who did not show up to the Michigan State game on Feb. 27. This genius of an alum assumed that all of us were too hung over to come to the game and that he was so extremely tough that "a couple of aspirin and a big bottle of water" couldn't handle. I'm surprised that, graduating from IU, you do not have more common sense than that. The game was around midterm time and I'm sure many of us (including myself) had tests we needed to study for and papers that needed writing. \nFurthermore, there is this little invention invented way back in the day by a Mr. Philo T. Farnsworth called the television. Did you ever stop to think that it is just as easy to cheer the Hoosiers on from Assembly Hall as it is from the comforts of your own home? There are many other circumstances as to why people could not show up, so your offensive assumption that we're all hung-over drunks is appalling. In conclusion, I would ask present and future alumni, before you decide to write your "I am appalled and I was a better fan in my day" opinion, try to use a little logic and common sense. Thanks.\nAaron Goldsmith\nSenior
Latinos contribute to community, America\nI write this letter in response to letters written by several students at our institution. I appreciate such letters because they point out where our institution lacks in terms of preparing students to understand the world around them. Similar opinions are shared by members of our society who have not had an educational background in humanities and/or have had very little contact with the ethnic/cultural groups in question.\nBrad Piechoski (Jordan River Forum, Feb. 1) argues that diversity isn't strengthening our country because a large number of Latinos are coming into this country illegally. The undocumented Latinos that he refers to represent the backbone of our economy, often taking jobs that the economically privileged will not take. Undocumented Latinos not only represent diversity, they also strengthen our economy.\nHe goes on to say if Latinos want to enjoy the privileges of United States society, they need to learn the predominant language without accommodation. In a diverse society, we should strive for mutual accommodation. Refusing to linguistically accommodate a person who does not speak English is not embracing diversity. Furthermore, Spanish is a dominant language in the U.S. (22,400,000 Spanish speakers live here and there are Spanish-only areas).\nEdward Delp ("Immigration Nation," March 2) and Piechoski both claim that Latinos should not come into our country illegally. Latinos are no different than Piechoski's Polish ancestors that came to the United States to improve their quality of life. If a person has the opportunity to improve quality of life for his family and escape poverty or political turmoil, he or she will do so, legal or not. The government is capable of stopping "illegal" immigration, but chooses not to because of the economic benefits provided by the Latino labor force. We use their cheap labor while denying them the benefits our "legal" workers enjoy. If undocumented workers were given the benefits enjoyed by others, they would not be an isolated group and would learn some English; then people like Piechoski and Delp could remain monolingual.\nOn a final note, our Latino community does not only contribute to our society as undocumented workers. Latinos also contribute to our community as doctors, teachers, police officers, athletes and activists.\nRichard J. File-Muriel\nGraduate student
IUSA has made improvements for students\nI am so sick and tired of people taking cheap shots at the IU Student Association. There has been so much talk during the past several weeks about how IUSA is just a joke. Sure, IUSA badly handled the athletics fee and has been plagued by internal scandals, but it has also done a lot of important things that have gone unrecognized. For example, I don't think many people realize that IUSA lobbied vigorously for months to get a new smoothie machine installed in Wright Food Court. Or that they were behind building the overhead above the bus stop in front of the Main Library (at least I think they had to do with that). And I am sure they have also done a lot of other great things that we just haven't heard about. Unfortunately, I think a lot of people shoot off their criticism without really being aware of what IUSA has done. There is probably nothing I can say to change these critics' minds, so I'll just do what I do best: sit back and enjoy a delicious strawberry-mango smoothie!\nJohn O'Brien\nSenior
IUSA editorial misleading\nYour editorial about how "IUSA denies fair election" is very sloppy and does not have all the correct information. If you bothered to spend three minutes and read the IU Student Association Elections Commission's decision at www.indiana.edu/~court/documents/2005_EC_kirkwoodvpedro_ECdecision.pdf, then you would have read that not only did it decide not to hear the case because the complaint was filed late, but also in the second paragraph of the decision it says that "however, a brief discussion of the underlying situation is appropriate to clear up what must certainly be a confusing matter for many."\nBasically, it says in paragraph five that when the elections code came out with the provision for a run-off (that wasn't supposed to be in there) Kirkwood was the one who e-mailed the commission to tell it that this was a mistake! Kirkwood was the one eagerly trying to not have a run-off because it figured it would win but not get 40 percent of the votes because of Vote for Pedro's quick insurgence ... now that it got second place it wants to have the run-off.\nSorry, but you can't have your cake and eat it, too. \nSo basically Kirkwood (and all the other tickets) knew before the election that it was a winner-takes-all decision. It just didn't think that Vote for Pedro would get more votes than Kirkwood. Surprise, surprise. Now that you have all the information, make sure the whole student body knows that this was a fair election, and it waas originally the Kirkwood ticket that first informed the commission that the provision shouldn't have been in there. \nNow that Kirkwood lost, it will do anything possible to try to get into office by "playing idiot" and saying it didn't know and that this is "unfair and hurts everyone" (which all is a bunch of political hogwash). Is the student body better off with a ticket that would try to bring up a frivolous case to get into office unfairly? I would hope you would say no. \nIUSA doesn't need the politics that tickets such as Kirkwood have. It needs students who are real people and can solve real issues like the execs on the Vote for Pedro ticket. Expect big things next year.\nSeth Kirschner\nJunior
Brand not credible on college athletics\nThe idea that Myles Brand should publicly pontificate on financial responsibility in college athletics, as he did in Thursday's "Talk of the Nation" on NPR, is suspicious given his record.\nThe fact is well-established that, under Brand's administration, the Athletics Department cooked books, reporting a financial gain to the NCAA when it was actually taking a loss. The good thing about mediocrity is, by the time it's discovered, it's too late. When this story broke in the Indiana Daily Student, Brand was already the president of the NCAA.\nWho was held accountable? The students, of course, as the new administration worked on refinancing the shortfall on the students' tab. What's more, Brand attempted to revise history, claiming that his detractors fabricated his fabled quote that college athletics should be restricted to intramural sports. It was Brand himself, in a direct quote from a public address he made at a conference at Washington, D.C.\nAs for Brand's assertion that student athletes aren't coddled, I had Spanish with one of his star basketball players. I think we were allowed to miss four total classes before we flunked. This player missed more than that the first month.\nIf a private CEO billed back fraud to investors the way Brand has billed back fraud to IU, he'd be tried and possibly jailed. Brand just gets a promotion. Maybe he'll get his own version of "The Apprentice."\nBryan Harris\nAlumnus, Louisville, Ky
'PVPs' term creative, but 'pedant' works just as well\nIn response to Colin Dugdale's column "Juxtapose the Quincunx" (March 4): I enjoyed the author's article about the idea of PVPs -- that is, "Pretentious Vocabulary Posers," a term that he created for the piece. However, if I might be so bold, I posit that there is already an existing word, a non-acronym, to describe such people: pedants. Of course, using -- even knowing -- such a word immediately demarcates you as, in fact, a pedant (or PVP). \nMy point, however, is simple. The English language is rich with potential, both for use and abuse. It is one thing to maintain a disdain for the exploitation of the thesaurus, and another entirely to disdain those things that a thesaurus contains: words. What was especially disheartening is that the author, majoring in both English and journalism, should be demonstrating a greater love for language, with all its grooves and niches, than most others on this campus. If freshmen English/journalism majors have no appreciation for word games, all is lost. Who will write the poems of tomorrow? The books? The crossword puzzles? \nFinally, I submit an ode to, as Mr. Dugdale terms them, "big words." (Is his use of minute words here calculated? Spiteful?) Allow me to quote a particularly cumbersome sentence from his article: "Big words merely complicate the transversal of speech to the point that the meaning and purpose behind the argument is lost in a labyrinth of language." Was the irony in this labyrinthine sentence intentional or incidental? The alliteration at the end is beautiful, but does nothing to help the tangle of clauses. Let me be so brazen as to submit a different version of the same sentence, indulging in the use of "big words": "Pedantry obfuscates." How easy was that? How direct? And how fun! This is the beauty of our language. I only hope that Mr. Dugdale, in the remainder of his brief tenure here at IU, comes to love it as I do.\nMatt McSorley\nGraduate student
Senators doing job with judicial nominations\nThe editorial cartoon published in the Jordan River Forum Friday is biased and misleading. It depicts an elephant labeled "judicial nominees" standing in front of a series of "gates" containing brick walls and padlocked doors, presumably the work of the donkey "artist" standing to the side, implying that the Democrats are being obstructionists in confirming judicial nominees. Actually, the Senate has confirmed far more nominees than it has blocked. It has refused to confirm a relatively small number of nominees because of specific concerns about their background, including lack of judicial experience and ties to corporate interests. Recently President Bush has tried to nominate these same previously blocked nominees again. Those Senators who hold the line and say that unacceptable nominees are still unacceptable are doing their job.\nElizabeth Rytting\nGraduate student
Column needed more research on Church history\nI took offense to "Putting on the friend-ly face" (Feb. 25). What kind of Catholic sees nothing "extraordinary on the surface" of the conviction of a priest for molestation? Adam Sedia's assertion that "friendly" priests are at the root of the Catholic Church's molestation scandal is blind assumption and stereotyping at its worst. The main fault of Mr. Sedia's article is his unsubstantiated and absurd association of sexual abuse and the Vatican II Council -- surely Mr. Sedia isn't suggesting that such abuse never occurred prior to 1962? Wasn't the public's shock and outrage at the concealment of the abuse partly a result of the "aloof and unapproachable" nature of the Church? As in most of his writing, perhaps Mr. Sedia should more fully research the topic on which he is attempting to express his views. \nJustin M. Crider\nSenior
Hate has a new face\nSaturday my friend and I stopped in a restaurant-bar just outside the famous Sample Gates of your fine campus to catch a chicken sandwich dinner after a full day of hiking the beautiful trails of Hoosier National Forest. We were happily served our appetizer and drink. After being served our sandwiches, I noticed the lack of a top bun on our sandwiches. I casually mentioned this to our server, to which he casually mentioned "I am sorry -- I hate fucking Mexicans" (referring to the kitchen staff).\nHe said it so casually, it took me a beat for the statement to sink in while he stomped off to rectify the small error. The full gravity hit me when I looked at my friend's face. You see, he is Mexican, and although we kid each other about our ethnicity amongst us (I am Cuban), this was wholly unacceptable.\nMy friend has made incredible accomplishments in his lifetime: a B.S. and M.S. in engineering at two of the top schools in the nation, he holds several patents and is a senior staff engineer at a Fortune 500 company. All of this is second to his humanity, as he helped found and run a center to assist migrant workers. He also independently volunteers his time to mentor and motivate inner-city students. He travels to college campuses across the nation to help students prepare for their career choices. All of this while maintaining himself as a beacon role model for all who would follow (ethnicity regardless).\nThis incident unfortunately slaps him in the face as an individual and us all, as a society. Had "Mexicans" been substituted by "Chinese" or "blacks," would it be any less of a travesty? I had hoped we'd have progressed further. I am afraid that my friend may feel that no matter his own or his people's accomplishments and contributions to our great nation, Mexicans haven't come far enough in "some" eyes.\nMy hope is that this does not create more of a barrier, but rather, a call to awareness that Mexicans are worthy of respect equal to all.\nMiguel Ramirez\nChicago, Ill.
