Jordan River Forum

It's your parents' house, make them happy\nI wanted to respond to Jamieson Hawkins' article, "Home and other 4-letter words" (Dec. 3). Everyone becomes accustomed to the freedoms college life introduces to students, but your parents own their house and should have total say in what does or doesn't fly there. When your friends are all riding around with you in your car, who's in charge of the music that's played? You are. You own the car. You can tell people not to smoke in it or to wear their seat belts. If they don't want to follow the rules you set, they can ride with someone else. Same goes for staying at your parents' house. And if you don't buy any of my logic, take into consideration the thought that not swearing while you're home is a simple, harmless way to make your parents happy.\nBrent Mackey\nSophomore\nLiving on N. Jordan: Gotta love the 'B' bus\nYou have to be excited for the upcoming winter if you live on North Jordan. Standing at the bus stop watching countless "A" bus after "A" bus pass by while waiting for that single "B" bus is always a great feeling. It's very comforting to know that those freshmen who live within walking distance of anywhere on campus are able to catch an "A" bus every 15 seconds, while we, the "B" bus riders, are stuck waiting 25 minutes for a bus to take us somewhere that we would not even dream of walking to on a sunny day. When the "B" bus finally arrives, of course it's full because people have been waiting at every other stop for just as long as you have. I love to wave to those people as I think to myself that I'm stuck in the cold for another half hour. There is only one thing that the average "B" bus rider can enjoy more. That's when you're so cold that you can't feel your face, and you've been waiting since the day before for that one miracle "B" bus to arrive and all of a sudden 3 show up together. Of course the first one is pretty full, but those second two are usually empty because they serve no purpose. I feel bad for those bus drivers. They must be lonely since no one is on their bus, and so they feel that they need to caravan around together. Of course no one has pointed out to them that if they spaced themselves out like they were supposed to, they would have the company of actual passengers on their buses. I once asked a bus driver why they follow each other like that. His answer was that sometimes they just decide to leave Assembly Hall together instead of following their schedule. I'm glad that they're such good friends that they have to drive around together, but I really see no purpose to this. Unless of course their purpose is to make students late to class and keep them waiting outside forever.\nJosh Dolgin Graduate Student\nPtak disguises social fears with metaphors\nApart from its sheer mindlessness, the most disturbing aspect of Joe Ptak's criticism ("Don't take away my sports bra," Nov. 25) of the proposed dress code for the SRSC/HPER is how his homophobia (however veiled) so thoroughly structures his argument. Ptak opens by comparing the proposed code to "setting Pee Wee Herman loose in the crowd of a Harry Potter showing." As arbitrary as Ptak's metaphor seems at first, it accrues greater meaning as his column unfolds: Ptak utilizes the scandalous nature of Paul Reubens' sexual activity to map out a complex series of associations between alleged gay men and pedophiles. Ptak follows this opening metaphor with the parenthetical address to "sweet dudes like you," initiating a link between male gymsters and dominant notions of effeminacy that he later reinforces with references to a "greased up" Richard Simmons, a narcissistic friend intent on modeling his hard-earned "guns," and finally, "guys who wear colorful tank tops." What such allusions suggest, of course, is that Ptak's more primal worry about public, sweat-filled facilities is not the threat of an enforced dress code but, more urgently, the threatening nature of the "sweet dudes" he encounters there. Worse, through his unimaginative associative leap, he links homosexuality with its age-old stereotypical counterpart, pedophilia.\nCuriously, Ptak aims to deflect his readers' attention away from such worries with continual references to imagery associated with heterosexual males, such as "Night Moves," the recent Shane's World scandal, Victoria's Secret and the pleasure Ptak admits to in watching "a fly honey" jazzercise beside him. Such references function, I assume, to reinforce Ptak's endangered sense of heterosexuality, an issue entirely divorced from the dress code that his column purports to critique.\nAnd that's what disturbs me most, that Ptak, apparently so preoccupied by the instability of his own sexuality in his readers' eyes, seizes upon one subject (a dress code) in order to address another (his unchecked homophobia), using a series of dangerous and offensive metaphors.\nLuckily, Blattert didn't fool everyone\nCherry Blattert's article "Protest is not Extortion" (Dec. 4) was definitely not what it seemed. It began as an article introducing a controversy between a man who protested against abortion clinics and the National Organization for Women (NOW). Slowly, though, the article turned into a way for Cherry to push pro-life sentiment onto a confused reader. It was a dirty trick, and the article was blatantly irrelevant to the stated original cause. \nAs I alluded to earlier, after the introduction and a short paragraph, Cherry's article greatly strayed from the subject matter. She made the typical mistake of labeling pro-choicers or members of NOW as "abortion proponents" and "pro-aborts." Oh Cherry, how your obvious ignorance shines through in your article. People that are pro-choice are not pro-abortion. We are simply for a woman's right to choose. The gift of creation is a powerful one that should not be taken lightly, nor should it be forced upon anyone. \nThe difference between people that are pro-choice and those that are pro-life is an obvious one. Pro-life people cannot see any other way. People such as Cherry are emotionally void and are unable to empathize with those in difficult positions. When a woman is going to an abortion clinic, don't you think she feels the pain of making her choice? Do you not think she has spent nights tossing and turning, wrestling with her decision? Hasn't she been physically and mentally distraught enough that she does not need your insulting slurs? Protesting is one thing, but for God sakes, be human. Show some decency. On the other hand, we that are pro-choice do not protest women having babies instead of abortions. We solely support a woman's right to make the best individual decision. \nSo Cherry, next time you write an article about people being "anti-American," make sure you stick to the subject. Don't slam your pro-life rhetoric down my throat and then try to disguise it. Trying to promote democracy and push amendment rights in order to fool the reader into believing typical slanted pro-life propaganda is just not right. Luckily, you didn't fool me.\nJordan DiPietro\nStudent porn stars should get new career\nPerhaps the students who filmed pornography on the IU campus have learned something: How to be porn stars and how to prostitute themselves for fame and money. It seems their education is complete and that they might feel they have "graduated." Maybe they should leave IU to look for a job in their field! They have valuable career experience, after all.\nHeather Constantinescu\nAlum