Friday, December 03, 2004
Good God, you're wrong
Editorial 1:
If the United States military tomorrow became an equal-opportunity employer, they would be welcome on our campus. But since they show no inclination to do so, it is the university’s responsibility to demonstrate, through example, what we think of the military’s bigoted practices.
The bigoted practice of defending our country, for instance. There's more to the military than their policy towards gays.
Editorial 2:
Like good liberals, the Daily Cal urges us to SPEND SPEND SPEND!!!
The last time students were given the seemingly masochistic opportunity to raise their own fees in an act of altruism was in 2001 when a $37.20 fee increase passed, giving every student the Class Pass that still adorns our UC Berkeley identification cards.
We must differ in our definitions of 'altruism.'
The rest of our $98.75 doles out money to ASUC, the student center and the ethnic studies department, and includes fees for intramural sports facilities, “Life Safety” and the recruitment and retention centers. These are arguably worthy causes, but couldn’t we do more with students’ money?
Those look like pretty stupid causes, actually. Why should these particular examples be exempt from the begging process most organizations use? And doing more with students' money is nice, but this editorial is asking us to do more with more students' money. Not all money that students have belongs to the university community, as this editorial seems to imply.
The problem is that referendums are few and far between on this campus. Students should have a say in how their money is spent. Likewise, they should be given the opportunity to pay additional fees for causes and programs they wish to support.
Referendums are a positive way to let students better their school and therefore should become a more regular practice, not just an uncommon event.
Okay, here goes the very complicated one-point explanation:
The group STUDENTS is made up of many individual and different students.
So when you say "students like such and such" you actually mean "some students like such and such," and when you say "students spend money on programs they wish to support," you're actually saying "all students are forced to spend money on programs that some students wish to support." I would be happy to see students "be given the opportunity to pay additional fees for causes and programs they wish to support." This is called 'donation.' A referendum does something very different. It coerces a minority into paying for something a majority wants.
Finally, I'd be more inclined to vote for referenda if there was a possibility of them being reversed in the future. As is, however, once a pet project passes, there's no way to get rid of it, because its supporters will cling to it and the ASUC will mindlessly say "Hey, we'll defend it!" Consider the uproar if we tried to defund ethnic studies, and ask them to work on a level playing field with other departments.
. . .
|
. . .
|
