Students should participate in tuition setting
I commend Eliza Mesa’s column (“”Student affairs require student action, Feb. 4) as a call to action for students to be actively engaged in tuition and fee setting this semester. Student apathy will be perceived as acceptance of any proposal put forth.
I urge students to become educated on factors that contribute to the price tag of attending the University of Arizona. Setting tuition is a complicated process that must account for the imminent budget cuts from the Arizona State Legislature to the University system. I encourage students to voice concerns and suggest solutions that recognize the climate the Universities face and express the effect these increases have on students.
I can promise that the Associated Students of the University of Arizona will represent student voice and welcome all thoughts, ideas and concerns. Together, we can work with UA administration and the Arizona Board of Regents to protect student pocketbooks while maintaining the excellence of the University of Arizona.
— Emily Fritze, Student Body President Associated Students of the University of Arizona
Americans incapable of empathy for Egyptians
In response to “”Americans have duty to stand with Egypt”” (Andrew Shepherd, Feb. 8):
As appropriate as the idea of Americans at large standing behind the people of Egypt is, it is unfortunately not possible. Americans, in general, have come to take their very own freedoms for granted.
We allow our congressmen to propose amendments to the U.S. Constitution that codifies discrimination against an entire segment of our population, those same people adamantly support DADT, and we re-elect them. We allowed our elected officials to pander to large corporations that move much needed jobs to China and India. We allowed these people to protect financial institutions that blatantly stole from the American people, that mismanaged so much money that it caused a worldwide financial crisis, then what did we do? We re-elected them.
When we feel that our most basic of rights are being stripped away day by day, when the economy crashed and so many people lost their means of income, when honest hardworking people are being kicked out of their homes, when our LGBT brothers and sisters are considered second class citizens, and when those with skin that is a color other than white are subjected to unnecessary abuses under the veil of immigration control, what do we do? Do we flood into the streets and demand that our elected officials represent what we the people want rather than forcing their own agendas on us? Do we demand recall of the most corrupt politicians who amass wealth unheard of by the majority of the American population? Do we even replace the legislators who want to protect the very people that brought the American public to its financial knees?
No, we do none of these things, we gripe to our friends, we gripe to ourselves, we complain quietly and hope that someone else does something.
Why? Because most of us still have warm houses, we have enough money to support a level of luxury that the Egyptian people have never known. Most of us have a car to drive, a job that barely pays the bills, and enough food in our bellies to keep the hunger at bay. Most of our children get to learn to read, most families can get warm coats for the cold mornings and most people have never had to choose between feeding their children or themselves. Americans for the most part are comfortable and in general unwilling to risk their own comfort to fight for their own rights that are being impeded upon more and more each day. This is why, even though we should stand with the Egyptian people in their fight for the basic rights that we take for granted, we cannot. We are not yet angry enough at our own government for taking away our rights to be able to empathize with those who wish to have only a fraction of the luxuries that we enjoy.
— Candice Eaton, Junior majoring in ecology and evolutionary biology
