LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Bill Salli stood up for Idahoans by voting no on $700 billion bail-out plan

I didn’t vote for Bill Sali in the 2006 election cycle, but I admire his stance against the bailout of Wall Street. The idea of voting to spend our hard earned money on the big investment banks, mortgage companies, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, etc, is absurd. It would be a colossal mistake to bail these companies out. We should let them fail as we would fail if we made bad business decisions here in Idaho.

When the Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson came to Congress and tried to sell his bail-out – Rep. Sali balked. He was on Fox News, 630 AM and other shows spreading the word that the plan was suspicious and that he would not vote to throw tax payer money away. He still up for Idahoans on this issue – and while I don’t agree with him on a whole lot, I appreciate this stand for us. He is absolutely right to be questioning the Bush Administration plan. Keep up the good work, Bill!

Daniel Kern is a
resident of Meridian

Response to the Sept. 29 article, ‘Don’t worry, academic funds are safe’

I would like to commend Mr.Bell for his brilliant response to a one Mr.Bode in his latest article. I think I speak for many when I say that BSU athletics is a passion and a tradition and it seems that either you get it or you dont. Mr. Bell gets it and I applaud him.

Sean is Bronco fan and
former Boise resident

In response to ‘Campus ROAR Sponsors Christian Week’

Around campus there has been a loud murmur. “Christian Week”, the source of these mutterings has led to a discussion on the appropriateness of this event. Christian Week is exclusionary, and doesn’t represent the beliefs of the entirety of this campus. I understand that not everyone is able to be represented at every event held, but a topic as controversial as religion, deserves a little more forethought. Allowing this event, to take place on both sides of the quad lead to a gauntlet of often unwanted proselytizing that was unavoidable if you had to cross the campus. While I recognize an individual’s constitutional right to free speech, I feel that I also have a right to not be subjected to unsolicited advice on the care of my soul, or lack thereof. If the campus administration was going to allow an entire week be devoted to religion, they should have allowed other faiths the opportunity to present their beliefs to the campus on the same stage. Moreover, this event should have taken place at an alternative location, where students, if interested could have sought further information or discourse. According to the UCLA Law Review religious harassment law, which is structurally almost identical to racial and sexual harassment law, speech when it’s “severe or pervasive” enough to create a hostile, abusive, or offensive work environment based on religion, race, or sex. Now I will admit that while these proselytizers were not individually hostile, the environment they were creating could be construed as hostile. Foot soldiers of Christ handing out bibles at strategic bottlenecks, and gauntleting the main quad, funneled people into an uncomfortable situation. I am comfortable in my lack of faith in a higher power. I don’t need a condescending discussion implying that I’ll never truly know this world until I walk along the path that Jesus set forth for his faithful disciples. When it comes to the faiths of the world there is no one right answer, and there is no one wrong answer. As an institution of higher learning, the administration shouldn’t be condoning a one-right-answer approach.

Kevin Wallior is in his second year studying engineering

A letter to the editor responding to the Sept. 29 article, ‘Faith is the antithesis to truth’

Earlier this week I read an interesting guest opinion in the arbiter entitled Faith is the antithesis of proof. There are many interesting points, unfortunately they don’t seem to prove the title. The author also seems to have forgotten that Galileo and Copernicus were “religious” and people “religious” people are described in the article as “too poor to think or lazy to think for themselves.” This article also states that “religion” is based on “poorly written passages from ancient texts”. There is no proof that these texts are poorly written, there is good proof to support the opposite. Hollywood has made good money by making movies based on the “poorly written stories”. There are volumes of good music that was inspired by the ancient texts and the poetry found in the ancient texts is very beautiful. The article dose make a strong case that 4.7 million is a big number, a fact which doesn’t seem to relate to the topic being discussed. The main claim of the article seems to be that religion is for fools and science rules. It is true that religion can be used to control people but you think science doesn’t. There are plenty of people who are “too poor to think or lazy to think for themselves” who will believe anything science tells them. If religion is just like Santa Claus, the Easter bunny and mother goose, nothing but false stories then what is there left? Evolution? That is just as bad as Santa Claus. You mean to tell me that life suddenly came out of nowhere? Do you know what the odds of that is? 10 to the 40,000 power, now there is a number worth examining.

Andrew Mckeeth is a freshman studying communication

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