GSA protects the Tract
In "Student government fights for graduate housing," Nov. 7, my remarks on the Graduate Student Assembly's position on this issue have been paraphrased in a somewhat misleading way. I said GSA would not oppose relocating the University apartments in that we would prefer relocated housing to no housing at all. Our first choice would be to leave the housing in its current location, as in the resolution passed by SG (and written with GSA support).
Also, this article fails to show that GSA has been leading the efforts to protect the University apartments since the Brackenridge Tract Task Force was formed last year. As just one example of GSA's leadership role on this issue, President Powers will be at our next meeting at 5 p.m. Tuesday in the SSB Glenn Maloney Room to hear comments from the graduate community on Brackenridge housing. I encourage any interested parties to attend that meeting.
Brian Gatten Graduate Student Assembly president English graduate student
Misidentifying our threats
Daniel Earnest's Nov. 7 column "Can America fall?" raises many interesting points, and by interesting, I mean idiotic. According to Earnest, gay marriage, Hollywood and "Happy Holidays" are evidently driving America on the fast-lane to hell. I'm surprised Earnest didn't also mention the ACLU, abortions and Hillary Clinton as signs of our impending apocalypse.
Seeing as I am one of those "godless liberals" (never mind my membership in the Southern Baptist church nor my unwavering belief in God's divinity), I feel that Earnest has been listening to too much Bill O'Reilly and too little of real news.
I shudder to think of a world in which "Happy Holidays" is more of a threat to our national interest and security than a nuclear Pakistan overthrowing its American-backed dictator, creating a religious-extremist state. I'd be perfectly happy to never hear the words "Merry Christmas" again if I knew that the nuclear arsenal of a Middle East country was not under the control of an "Islamofascist," as the right-wing fringe would like us to call them.
As a conservative, it is also no wonder that Mr. Earnest hates Hollywood. One can only imagine the horrors that would come from a leftist Hollywood liberal such as Ronald Reagan as president!
Never mind the fact that the true threat to the American democracy was correctly identified in the editorial cartoon directly above Earnest's column. Voter apathy and citizen antipathy of the government are our true greatest threats.
The fact that, at most, only half the country votes in any given election (and often much less than that) is much more damaging to our democracy than any other threat. Voting "is like the payment of a debt - a duty never to be neglected." So sayeth Rutherford B. Hayes, a real American who knew the value of a vote.
Michael Redding Plan II, history and government junior
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