Non-believers shouldn’t reap benefits

In light of the recent budget passed by the Arizona legislature and signed by Gov. Jan Brewer, the Arizona government has made it clear that they do not believe education is a priority in this state.

I won’t rehearse the magnitude of the cuts to K-12 and higher education; anyone who has been paying attention knows how devastating these cuts will be to current and future students of Arizona and the kind of lasting, negative impact they will have on Arizona’s economy. What I would like to do is call upon our state officials to stand by their principles.

So, I ask everyone reading this letter to join with me in demanding that all state legislators who voted in favor of the cuts to education, as well as Gov. Brewer, who signed them into law, to undertake the following activities:

1) Remove all children in your family from any publicly funded K-12 educational institute. If you do not believe that the government should fund these schools, then your families should not be reaping the benefits. Instead, enroll them in private schools or, even better, see if they can get a job. You should even pay back the state for all the years they attended school without paying tuition.

2) If anyone in your family is receiving any scholarships or financial aid to attend a public institute of higher education, they must immediately cancel all such aid and pay back any loan debts they may have accrued. If they wish to continue at the college or university, they must pay full tuition and registration fees.

3) If they are unable to afford to attend the college or university without financial aid, too bad. Tell them that they can get a job and support themselves.

These are the least of the activities you can do to demonstrate to your constituents that you really believe in your budget. If you don’t support education, then you shouldn’t get it. I am sure that as principled adults, you will all follow suit immediately.

Ryan Paul
English graduate student

Praise deserved for making hard budget decisions

I, for one, would like to applaud new Gov. Brewer and the Arizona legislature for the budget cuts passed during the special session. Students and faculty quick to demonize the Republicans forget that this billion-dollar deficit comes to us thanks to the record increase in spending of former governor Janet Napolitano.

In five years, the state budget has almost doubled. The cuts are certainly painful, but necessary; it’s simply being fiscally responsible. Those who would continue the trend of deficit spending are hurdling debt on the next generation.

We have functioned and grown to where we are today as a university on a similar budget a scant half decade ago, so I feel that melodramatic statements like “”40%=death”” are simply that: comically melodramatic.

The university, like everything else in these hard times, will have to become more efficient -ÿwhich is not an entirely bad thing.

Kai Kaapro
Russian senior

Stand-alone photo headline paralleled ESPN headline

There have been many different ways that the Daily Wildcat has disappointed me this school year, but the headline “”Great six-cess”” run over the picture of the Steelers fan in Monday’s paper was one of the biggest disappointments yet. Anyone that visited ESPN.com yesterday immediately after the Super Bowl (or any time Monday) would have realized that the headline the Wildcat ran was the same headline used on the ESPN.com homepage.

Such a blatant rip-off by the Wildcat shows a lack of creativity and integrity. I’ve always known the Wildcat was extremely biased, poorly written (with the exception of a few writers), and boring, but I never expected the Wildcat to get so lazy they resort to stealing headlines from credible news organizations. The Wildcat continues to prove it doesn’t deserve the title “”credible”” news organization.

Jon Torrez
chemistry junior