Criticism prolongs war, costs lives\nI'm a staff sergeant in the U.S. military writing in response to several issues I have with topics appearing in the IDS and specifically in the Jordan River Forum. \nFirst let's talk about the recent military bashing. I do not appreciate the lies by Sandrine Catris and AOI (Against the Occupation of Iraq). Your allegations of "strategic" bombings of hospitals and heavily populated areas are false. \nCivilian casualty is a part of war but in no way do we target them. I build the weapon systems and they are so accurate that some could be put through a window. Along with that is the unsubstantiated claim that we are wiping out witnesses to war crimes. No war crimes are being committed, so there are no witnesses. PROVIDE PROOF! Your bitterness over the successful elections in Iraq is very transparent. We are fighting a just war with honor and integrity, two words you know nothing about. We have freed millions of Iraqis and Afghanis from ruthless leaders and that is a great accomplishment. \nThe second issue is the armchair generals calling for College Republicans to join the military. Well, I'm challenging YOU to join us! I attend IU and I was in the combat zone with my unit while you were back here shouting and holding a sign. The College Republicans ARE fighting this war alongside me by SUPPORTING us. Those of us in the combat zone are no more important than the servicemen here at home and no more important than the family and friends that support us and the CR's are my friends. Join in! Join us! I am NOT asking you to pick up a rifle and stand beside me, scary thought, all I want is for you to support the guys fighting for you instead of criticizing and lying about us. So, what are you waiting for? \nStop the attacks on us and lies about us! Your actions only make our jobs harder and you prolong the war, which costs more American lives.\nSergent Robert Fortson\nSenior
Academic Bill of Rights irrelevant\nI commend the editorial board of the IDS for publishing a balanced analysis of House Bill 1531, but I must comment on the very real partisan nature of this legislation. I urge all students interested in this matter to visit the Web site of the Students for Academic Freedom, www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org, the organization behind the bill.\nThe leader of the SAF is David Horowitz, editor in chief of the conservative news outlet www.frontpagemag.com. In a 2004 documentary titled "Roots of the Ultra Left," produced by the Leadership Institute, Horowitz states, "Modern liberals are socialists, they're not liberals. What are they liberal about besides hard drugs and sex? Everything else they want to control in your life. That's true of the Democratic Party. It's true of the British Labor Party. They're socialists. That's their religion." \nThis is a fallacious statement. The Democratic Party does not endorse the tenets of socialism, i.e., the ownership of the means of production and distribution being held by the populace or a centralized government.\nThe SAF, as led by Horowitz, can thus be deemed radical in their views of liberalism, and their push for an Academic Bill of Rights is a means for furthering an agenda along these lines. As pointed out in the Feb. 17th edition of the IDS, measures are currently in place to curtail discrimination of all kinds, so it is up to the SAF and the lawmakers of Indiana to argue for the relevance of the proposed bill. Until this has been sufficiently done, I exhort each Hoosier voter to write her or his state representatives in Indianapolis to stop HB 1531.\nAs students, we are free to roam the academic landscape that has been laid down by those before us. We are charged with the task of leaving it better than when we found it. To those who do believe that a bias permeates through Indiana University, please strive to become professors and grace future students with your views. Academia should not be constricted by partisanship, and it is your right to experience and perpetuate this virtue.\nRyan D. Fenno\nGraduate Student
Professors already open student minds\nI am writing to express my dissent with Chase Downham's view of litigating an "open-minded" teaching perspective as proposed by the Academic Bill of Rights. This bill has a laudable goal of incorporating all viewpoints into classroom discussion, but fails to limit its implications in its current form. If applied to the social sciences, my primary field interest, this bill could create countless "disclaimer" lectures, which would minimize the conveyance of the material at hand.\nMark Hursh\nSenior
Sports column mean-spirited\nAn evolution course, which is fundamentally based upon theory, would never be able to thoroughly discuss the topic of evolution, as every point would have to be minimized by the incorporation of alternate perspectives. What this bill would accomplish is to foster a feeling of government control over professors' pedagogy. A professor would be in a constant state of fear that their perspective may be misinterpreted as non-pluralistic, or jaded, inspiring apathy amongst our distinguished faculty. \nWhat is most disheartening about Mr. Downham's rhetoric in regards to the Academic Bill of Rights is that he assumes that most professors are out to change his political ideology -- how egotistical of Mr. Downham.\nIf anything, these professors are already attempting to open their students' minds to alternate perspectives, otherwise why would they be teaching in the first place? Perhaps Mr. Downham is not aware that Indiana University has many avenues for discussing problems with faculty, from discussion with the departmental ombudsman, talking to your adviser, or discussing the matter with the dean of your school. Mr. Downham does not have to resort to litigation to discuss his grievances. It seems that Mr. Downham fails to be able to open his own mind to alternate perspectives.\nWhat I most enjoy about our academic community here at Indiana University is the passion amongst our faculty; these professors are truly interested in the subject matter and sincerely want to help students appreciate the topics at hand. Let us not reduce their passion for teaching by litigating our faculty's approach to teaching. As students, let us not require our academic career to be about researching disclaimers rather than the material at hand.
The sports column, "Cakes' Takes," (Feb. 18) was worthless. It attacked Donald Perry and his decision to leave the IU basketball team in a mean-spirited way and had no journalistic point to make. I know the IDS is a student paper, but the column had no redeeming qualities whatever. An apology to Perry and to IDS readers is in order, I believe.\nJames Capshew\nFaculty
Overall indication of\ndiscrimination on TV towards Latinos\nFelipe Maya's article "Small-screen Hispanic," indicated that when he was a child in 1991, there were only two prominent Latinos on American TV, one being Geraldo Rivera. He stated that not much has changed today, where Latinos are usually typecast as "maids with accents or gardeners." When the networks feature what Maya calls a "hidden Hispanic," it is "the whitest Latino actor they can find and give no hint of ethnicity on the show." \nWhen I arrived in the United States from Cuba in 1961 as a refugee child, there were also only two Latinos on television: Desi Arnaz in "I Love Lucy" and Tony Martinez, a Puerto Rican who played Pepino the Mexican farmhand on "The Real McCoys." Indeed, after more than 40 years, Latinos are not a regular fixture in television land.\nUnfortunately, typecasting also affects Latino programs on Univision and Galavision, where dark-skinned and indigenous actors are frequently typecast as maids and gardeners in popular Latin American soap operas and white Latinos have the lead roles. \nAntonio de la Cova\nFaculty
Sexual double standards
The other day I read a letter attacking Elisha Sauers' column, "La Crème de porno." The letter stated "only in the last hundred years has it become fashionable" to have sex without marriage. This is utterly irritating for history majors because the author fails to realize that only in the 19th century (specifically the Victorian age) was there ever a social demand to be so "moral" regarding sex. For example, in the 18th century adult literacy rates jumped because of the rise of printed pornography. People in jobs that didn't require reading would not let the skill fade because they could now read for enjoyment.\nThe modern marriage itself, which the author states as having been around "for millennia," has only been a religious sacrament (and thus harder to divorce) since 1205 A.D. Before then it was a legal arrangement, and divorce was rather common. Also I must ask, if monogamous marriage has only fallen out of fashion in the last hundred years, how does one explain the prevalence of prostitution throughout history? After all, Shakespeare's theater was in the red light district of London, a stone's throw away from a \nbrothel. \nObviously if this occupation has lasted so long, there must be a demand for it. And that brings me to my point. There was a larger issue in Ms. Sauers' article. It was not so much about porn as the disappearing double standard on sex. For millennia, it was perfectly acceptable for men to vent their sexual drives as they pleased, but only in the last century has it started to be so for women also. The traditional society was oppressive and hypocritical to spurn women who enjoyed sex, but not the men they were with (who no doubt enjoyed it, too). Fortunately for us, since women like Ms. Sauers can write such articles on women enjoying a perfectly natural desire, those days are changing.\nWesley Shaker\nSophomore
Illusions of Wal-Mart\nI am writing in response to Edward Delp's article "Wal-Mart Wars" (Feb. 15) to correct the numerous fallacies that have created a "straw man" argument to fit into Delp's ignorant schema of unions and the working atmosphere in America.\nFirst, Delp ignores information about how Wal-Mart pressures American companies to start manufacturing products overseas, thus increasing profitability for Wal-Mart while losing American jobs at the same time. A report by PBS' "Frontline" stated that Wal-Mart has roughly 6,000 global suppliers, 80% of which come from China where workers are paid 50 cents an hour and most times lower. \nIgnoring this, what are American employees of Wal-Mart paid? Delp displays figures which actually contradict his argument, including the average hourly wage, which is false. According to the AFL-CIO and the Economic Policy Institute, 70% of Wal-Mart employees are paid $9.64 per hour for an average of 34 hours per week. Yearly, this results in a wage well under the federal poverty guideline of $18,850. But Wal-Mart jobs don't stop there, they also sexually discriminate against you! According to a class action lawsuit, Wal-Mart has been said to have discriminated against all females in terms of promotions, job assignments and pay. \nSecond, on the subject of how "good" Wal-Mart jobs are, Delp tells a story without any sympathy of how a woman had to work off the clock to get her job done. "That's what leaders were supposed to do," says Delp. So, Mr. Delp, would you be perfectly content with working "off the clock" for upwards of two hours every day to get your job done while losing out on overtime pay and time for yourself? I'll let another class action lawsuit speak for you. This time states have sued Wal-Mart for not paying overtime to workers who work off the clock and locking employees in the store until their job is done. Good jobs indeed.\nJames Madison stated in Federalist Paper 10 that unequal distribution of wealth would cause for long-lasting factions in America. Maybe it is not that union workers don't understand capitalism, rather people like Delp don't understand democracy.\nMike Doyle\nFreshman
Wal-Mart no capitalist example\nThis letter is in response to Edward Delp's column ("Wal-Mart Wars," Feb. 15). Workers' participation in a democratic election to unite and bargain a contract with their employer is an essential part of any capitalist system short of corporate oligarchy. All American (and Canadian) workers have a constitutionally protected right to organize into labor unions to improve their wages and benefits. Mr. Delp, just like Wal-Mart management, denies this right exists.\nPerhaps if he had expanded his research beyond the Wal-Mart corporate Web site, he would have discovered these facts about Wal-Mart (source: Feb. 16, 2004 Report of U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce.): The U.S. government has been forced to issue at least 60 complaints against Wal-Mart at the National Labor Relations Board.\nWal-Mart's labor law violations range from illegally firing workers who attempt to organize a union to unlawful surveillance, threats and intimidation of employees who dare to speak out.\nWal-Mart uses more than 3,000 Chinese factories -- almost as many factories as it has stores in the United States. Depositions in wage and hour lawsuits reveal that company headquarters leaned on management to keep their labor costs at 8 percent of sales or less, and managers in turn leaned on assistant managers to work their employees off-the-clock or simply delete time from employee time sheets. Wal-Mart's low wages and denial of adequate employee health benefits cost state governments hundreds of millions of dollars in social welfare costs. \nWal-Mart offers rock bottom prices by paying its workers an average salary barely over the poverty level and buying cheap goods made in China where underage workers labor in unsafe conditions. These practices drive more ethical community friendly small business owners out of business and destroy towns. A paint and wall-covering supply store recently closed here in downtown Bloomington, undoubtedly in part because of unfair competition by this law-breaking corporation. \nWal-Mart's recent threat to close its first store where employees have successfully organized into a union is undemocratic and a violation of their legal obligation to bargain in good faith. It is encouraging to see communities across the nation resisting this destructive corporation. Capitalism is designed to serve the people, not the other way around.\nArthur Traynor\nGraduate Student
The Wal-Mart empire strikes back\nWe can't let Edward Delp's Feb. 15 column "Wal-Mart Wars" stand unchallenged. Judging by its tone we doubt we'll change his mind, but IDS readers deserve more than the recycled company propaganda he puts forth. \nWal-Mart is now the United States largest private employer, with 1.2 million "associates" on the payroll. This makes Wal-Mart's practices a benchmark for how other companies treat workers. Perhaps the most egregious of Wal-Mart's practices is its systematic discrimination against female employees. While women make up 72 percent of Wal-Mart's sales staff, they are only 33 percent of management. Wal-Mart's competitors, on the other hand, average more than 50 percent female management. As the Dukes vs. Wal-Mart case, the largest class-action civil rights suit in U.S. history, is revealing, Wal-Mart discriminates not only in promotions, but also pays female supervisors less and routinely intimidates and demotes women who raise sexual harassment complaints against supervisors.\nDelp cites Wal-Mart's statistic that its sales staff average $9.72 an hour. However, for a working mother trying to support her children (a description that fits much of Wal-Mart's staff), this doesn't amount to all that much, especially since Wal-Mart makes employees pay out of pocket for the company health plan. In some markets, as California State Assemblymember Sally Lieber points out, Wal-Mart even encourages employees to supplement their sub-living wages with welfare. So taxpayers subsidize Wal-Mart's attempts to undermine decent paying jobs.\nWhile Delp might be willing to do work off the clock for his employer as Wal-Mart managers must do, people who actually work for a living recognize forced labor when they see it. Perhaps he should be reminded that such unpaid labor was outlawed constitutionally in the 13th Amendment back in 1865.\nDelp's portrayal of Wal-Mart as an unsuspecting bystander being attacked by a malevolent labor movement is not just inaccurate, it borders on mendacity. In the face of Wal-Mart's blatant discrimination against women and systematic labor rights violations, labor unions stand as the only hope of the working class in their struggle against this corporate giant.\nSolomon Boyce\nJunior\nDavid Woken\nGraduate Student
