Union needs to get off crutch

To Director Dan Adams of the Student Union Memorial Center: Are you proud of your work? Does it please you that you run an organization that is so inefficient that it once begged the student body to support it with a fee and so foolish with money that it only survives by price-gouging? How about this: an 18-ounce pack of Oreos for $3.79 at Safeway, a 14-ounce pack of Oreos for $5.69 at the Park Avenue Market. … If the union were profiting, I’d applaud. However, the union has been in a financial crisis for years. Let’s get off the crutch of parent dollars – how about a real capitalist operation that can actually survive by providing competitive prices and quality product, rather than a lumbering, bureaucratic, welfare-driven failure?

Mike Hathaway
geography junior

Businesses don’t need more regulation

Proposition 206 sounds like a good idea, doesn’t it? Do private businesses really need more regulation? Restaurant and bar owners are forced to comply with thousands upon thousands of regulations regarding every aspect of their businesses. Should they not at least be afforded the right to attract the clientele of their choosing? Prop. 206 would ban smoking in all restaurants and bars (unless they have a separately ventilated room). Many businesses in the service and hospitality industry have voluntarily become smoke-free as they seek to attract nonsmoking customers, just as some remain smoking for customers who smoke. We don’t need more regulations passed on businesses; they have a hard enough time as it is.

Alex Hoogasian
political science senior