Letters to the Editor

School is my refuge?

College students have all endured gauntlets to get where they are today. We went to school for all of our young days and made it through high school or something similar so that we could have the opportunity to get a college education. We go to school because we strive for greater understanding and better lives.

What the world tells us is success doesn’t come from how you define yourself as a person but how you measure in terms of what the world thinks is important, whether its money or a variety of other superficial qualifications. Students should pride themselves on making the necessary sacrifices to obtain something that ninety percent of the world will never achieve, a college degree.

However, I don’t pay money to go to campus and be harassed in an effort to get this elusive college degree. Harassed you say, yes not by other students who share my struggle but those who wish to prey upon the marketability of college students.

My question to anyone who can answer is why I so often find myself turning someone down by not signing up for whatever they may be selling?

I don’t mind those booths that sit and let you come to them, it is those people that stalk you as you walk around campus that I could do without.

Just the other day I was approached three separate times on the same day by a group of teams who wanted me to work for them on some summer job. But since I did not want to join them in their pursuit, I was treated in such a manner that I felt highly disrespected.

Don’t I have enough to do and not enough time to do it, than be harassed numerous times while I am trying to have a productive and positive day? Should I have to dodge the other way so I can make it to class on time? School should be a refuge from these things, it should be a place where we expand our minds and push ourselves to mental exhaustion. It should not be a place where we are constantly barraged by sales pitches and empty opportunities.

Why can’t I say that I just don’t like to be bothered in the place that I pay money to be? If life is just a walking spam ad, could someone please send me some anti ad-ware software? Can we do something about this, is this not a more important issue than whether we should have bells at school?

 

Able Young

Boise, Idaho

—————————————–

The Women’s Center should be thanked, not protested

 

I am appalled by the attack on the Women’s Center, via the use of sidewalk chalk throughout campus, in response to “The Vagina Monologues.” Who knew that reclaiming yourself as an act of empowerment made you a whore?

I would submit many of the individuals behind the ignorant remarks have probably never seen the amazing performance. If they have seen the performance, then they clearly did not get it.

The ridiculous sentiments expressed by these uninformed individuals demonstrate the great need of programs like “The Vagina Monologues,” and other informative and empowering events sponsored by the Women’s Center.

It is clear to me that this campus is in need of additional resources to combat inequality and discrimination. I would like to thank for Women’s Center for their continuing efforts to do so and encourage Boise State students to donate their time and/or money to the Women’s Center to aid in bringing awareness and enlightenment to our community.

 

Chera Kelsey

Boise, ID

—————————————–

Article misrepresented the Christian religion

Recently, I read an opinion piece in The Arbiter about homosexual marriage. The article was more about bashing Christians than marriage. The author failed to realize Christians hold marriage as sacred, nothing more or less. Whenever I read an article like this I am taken aback by how Christians are misrepresented.

I am a Christian and I do have strong conservative views. I have absolutes (truths) and I apply these to my worldview. I see the world differently than others. Corinthians 2:14 says, “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”

I realize there are Christians who represent Christ in an ungodly manner, but that does not mean Christianity is flawed. It only means they (like me) need to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.

I am currently taking a diversity class with Dr. Morales and I’m learning that it is okay to have your own beliefs. In one of the articles by Wheatley (2001) she says, “We don’t have to let go of what we believe, but we do need to be curious about what someone else believes. We do need to acknowledge that their way of interpreting the world might be essential to our survival.” The key to diversity is accepting others in their world.

Accepting does not mean that you must embrace something. I might accept my poor living conditions but I don’t have to love it.

Diversity does not scare me, I am preparing to become a schoolteacher and I know that some days I will get the difficult questions from my students asking me things like why Johnny has two dads. I plan to answer that question and many others with same love Jesus used (kind words).

 

Daryle J. Fleming

Elemental Education

————————-

A heartfelt thank you

As a member of “The Vagina Monologues,” cast I would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to

everyone who gave their support and good will to our show.

Despite the controversy surrounding this year’s production, or perhaps because of it, we sold out all three shows and played to an incredible, supportive and Vagina loving audience.

Both members of the Boise State student body and the members of the surrounding community have remarkably impressed me.

Even in the face of childish and uninformed adversity, members of our community opened their minds, hearts and wallets to support the Women’s Center and send out a collective cry against rape, violence, genital mutilation and ignorance. To all of you who stood beside us this week, thank you for your support.

For those of you who stood on the other side of the line, thank you as well, if not for your support, then for your attention, after all as they say in show business, “There is no such thing as bad publicity.”

Bernice Olivas

Boise Idaho

—————————————–

Chalk this up conservatives

Your article on the protests over V-Day did not seem to resolve the question of who was responsible for the campus “chalkings,” or why, as concerned activists, they did not loudly own up to their protest.

I was walking through campus on President’s Day and saw three of the chalkers. Two were slender, apple-cheeked young men looking more wholesome than characters in a 1940s Mickey Rooney movie. The third, the lone woman, was pony-tailed, semi-athletic and stern looking.

I’ll leave it to a feminist to respond to the fact that two out these three chalkers were men, but what I find interesting is that conservatives’ “hot button” issues are almost always sexual.

Single mothers, abortion, “Hollywood,” and their clinical obsession with gay people are all reflective of their deep discomfort and fear that other people have sex lives less boring than theirs. They seem to have a nervous disorder that right now somewhere in California, a lesbian is aborting Bill Clinton’s baby.

The irony is that it is this very culture of sexual repression that is enforced by conservatives that gives rise to plays like “The Vagina Monologues” on the one hand and Paris Hilton and popular songs like “My Humps” on the other.

I think “The Vagina Monologues,” are a bit of cloistered academic fluff, but I give my full support to any production that keeps conservatives awake nights thinking somebody somewhere is having a good time.

Sean C. Hayes

Boise State alumni

Related Posts:

1. Letters to the Editor
2. Letters to the Editor
3. Letter to the Editor
4. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
5. Letters to the Editor