Bernsen should resign for good of students

It seems like almost every day recently, the paper has been filled with allegations about ASUA President Cade Bernsen. I have seen articles ranging from an alleged sexual harassment scandal to his absence at Arizona Board of Regents meetings to various attempts to remove him from office. It seems like everything ASUA and the senate has been doing is dealing with this issue. Enough is enough, already. The UA has a new incoming president, we are facing more tuition and fee increases, and it is still impossible to get into some classes. We need our student leadership focused on one thing right now: leading students.

This is why Cade Bernsen should resign as student body president. I am not saying that any allegations made against him are true or false; I don’t know enough about the case to make that judgment. What I do know is that we need to be worrying about how to deal with tuition increases or about how to get more class space, not whether or not our president’s excuse from a board of regents meeting was valid.

Our student leaders are there for one reason: to at all times do what is in the best interest of the students. We need to move on with business; too much is at stake in the coming year. So, I say to Bernsen: If you want to live up to your campaign promises of doing the right thing for students, then do the right thing now and resign.

Possible impeachment of Bernsen constitutes a ‘witch hunt’

The current witch hunt against ASUA president Cade Bernsen by members of the ASUA senate makes me question if we are now back in the times of the Salem witch trials. Senators’ desperate attempts to grasp at anything that has the slightest possibility of resulting in an impeachment trial likens them to the accusers of innocent people in Salem. That they are willing to resort to such measures to impeach Bernsen also throws their own character into question.

For example, it’s outrageous that someone would want to go home and help his family and community after it had been hit by a hurricane. After all, he had more important things to do, like attend meetings that were obviously unable to take place without him. If I recall correctly, the entire UA was sent into chaos in his absence. Oh, wait. That didn’t happen. There are unforeseeable events that legitimately excuse someone from “”mandatory”” events. The fact that certain senatorial members do not accept this shows how heartless they are.

If Bernsen is impeached and removed from office, I say we push forward a recall of several senators who have not been doing their jobs and who have lied to the student body. As it is the duty of senators to represent the student body and act in its best interest, one wonders whether they could be better spending their time on more important issues germane to Arizona students. Instead, they are focused on a witch hunt and getting re-elected – which serves their constituents how? As far as the secret meetings go, apparently meetings including more than 10 people cannot be “”secret.”” I thought the fact that those present weren’t supposed to freely discuss the subject matter of the meeting with others, coupled with hiding the existence of such a meeting from someone, made them secret. I suggest that our ASUA members open a dictionary and look up the word; maybe once they know the actual definition they’ll recant and admit there were “”secret”” meetings.

Unfortunately, that would require honesty, another definition that I would suggest they learn.

Flag proposal both impractical and stupid

This is in response to Tom Mosby’s

letter yesterday defending the intelligence ofÿtheÿproposition toÿput flags in every classroom. I agree that the idea is impractical, but I submit that it is a stupid idea as well. There are two main reasons for this that I see.

The first is because it’s hugely impractical. What’s more important; a piece of fabric or textbooks for students to read? This idea supports the foolish notion that somehow patriotism is worth more than knowledge.ÿShall we further cripple our failing schools by forcing them to spend funds on something that in no way strengthens the learning process? In the pursuit of patriotism? Here’s an idea: Give kids interesting and engagingÿAmerican history and government classes. That’s the surefire way to instill patriotism: knowledge of how this country began and what it stands for. The flag alone cannot provide that knowledge. With that in mind, the idea is actually working against patriotism by denying students a way to obtain a patriotic spirit and thus is stupid.

Second, how exactly does having a flag in your vicinity increase your patriotism? Simply seeing a flag does not generate patriotism, and likewise, not having access to one does not eliminate patriotism. Pledging allegiance to the flag doesn’t even instill patriotism. To most students, it’s just an empty gesture. The flag canÿbolster your patriotic spirit, but it can’t create it.ÿPerhaps we as a nation should work on acting in ways that instill pride and patriotism in our citizens. The notion that the unpatriotic and those uninterested by politics and the state of our nation can be converted simply by increasing their proximity to flags is certainly a stupid one.

I agree with Mosby that our flag is a symbol of our freedoms and good fortune. The idea is stupid, not the flag.

U.S. should eliminate ties to OPEC

Ryan Johnson seems to have the right idea on the gas tax issue (Monday’s “”Raising gas tax no liberal war cry””). I attended the lecture by the dean of the Eller College of Management Johnson referred to and also found it very interesting. However, the right thing to do about the gasoline issue is to eliminate our ties to OPEC (cartels are the devil). The U.S. could and should switch overnight to E85 ethanol fuel nationwide and could stop using foreign oil altogether, eventually switching to fuels that have no petrol products in them at all. The oil is in the ground, and we should leave it there.

Gay marriage ban unjustifiably limits rights

Gabriel Leake’s letter last week regarding his feelings towards the alternate sexualities has, once again, brought the homosexual lifestyle to the forefront of campus thought. Regardless of our personal feelings (Leake made his quite clear), it is important to realize that the Constitution should not be used to needlessly limit the rights of a certain population segment.

Perhaps the best argument against gay marriage I have heard involves a concern over a slippery slope – that if we allow gay marriage, we will be setting a precedent that will ultimately allow other forms of currently outlawed sexual behavior. The worry was characterized by Rick Santorum back in 2003, who felt that legalizing gay marriage would lead to the legalization of other, far more disgusting sexual acts.

To a degree, supporters of this line of thinking have a legitimate worry. I think, however, that it is very easy to draw the line between homosexuality and, say, child molestation. The latter has been shown to cause severe damage to the psyche of a child, and at the very least violates the child’s rights to autonomy. Homosexuality, on the other hand, has not been shown to cause such a severe level of harm, and the worry over autonomy does not exist in the case of the homosexual couple – both are capable of giving consent.

The general point is this: The difference between homosexual relationships and other, currently illegal relationships is that invariably, one party in an illegal relationship comes to some sort of harm. That is very good reason to keep them illegal.

Consenting adults in a homosexual relationship, however, do not experience any undue and unusual harm (outside of the usual trauma that relationships incur, like a bad breakup). Outlawing gay marriage, then, can only be viewed as an effort to limit the rights of a certain group of individuals. Such a law would be very damaging to both the spirit and the ideals that the U.S. tries to instill, those of liberty and equality for every person in our borders.

Mathematics a ‘mental disease’

Math major Gabriel Leake’s Thursday letter was a particularly interesting insight into a mental disease gone unheeded by today’s collegiate liberals: mathematics. It is a disease where a man has an unhealthy relationship with numbers. Mathematicians frequently come from unhappy, Godless households where the parents do not allow the sons to partake in masculine activities like football or drinking beer. They advocate the infernal idea that some things are equal to one another. Such liberal ideas as “”equations”” should not be tolerated. Perhaps teaching such blasphemous ideas is why so many mathematicians are unhappy. Or maybe it’s because they have sex with as many women as gay men do.

I’m tired of liberals trying to justify this type of behavior. One does not need a mathematics degree to see a divergent trend in the self-hatred of mathematicians. Those who require proofs for all systems will never find happiness. Pull yourself away from your computer and take a shower once in a while, and maybe you won’t be so miserable.