In response to "Getting thick skin" (SN 4/10), I would borrow from White House press secretary Tony Snow in describing Jessica Byrom's argument: "It melts on contact." First, she cannot assume people "were not outraged" at the vandalizing of a congressman's office during the anti-war protest.
I'm writing in response to Kate Lester's column "Anonymous voices" (SN 4/5), in which she claims that abortions only affect women.
Has anybody else noticed the dishonest way that parking tickets are being given out on campus? On April 4, my wife parked on West Circle Drive at a meter.
To help alleviate the state's budget deficit, Rep. Jack Hoogendyk, R-Kalamazoo, has introduced a bill to declare English as Michigan's official language. The designation, according to Hoogendyk, would save the state millions of dollars currently allocated to translating governmental documents from departments such as the Secretary of State. The state currently is facing a combined $3 billion deficit. While Gov.
I think Jessica Byrom, in her column "Getting thick skin" (SN 4/10), underestimates the effects language can have and the ways in which it shapes our perceptions of people.
As is typical with Mike Ramsey's cartoons, his Laissez-faire Pizzeria cartoon grossly oversimplifies a complicated issue to the detriment of the truth.
In her column "Getting Thick Skin" (SN 4/10), Jessica Byrom implies that calling a Baptist a fundamentalist is tantamount to calling him a terrorist. Christian fundamentalism refers to a specific movement within Christianity that stresses the infallibility and literal truth of the Bible, and is not a disparaging term.
The dorms are a lot like your parents. They provide food and shelter, wash your clothes and monitor your guests.
I love meat. But I don't eat meat every day. Drew Winter's column "Meatless alternative" (SN 4/4), is right; it can be quite bad for the body for many reasons, as with many food items eaten in extreme amounts.
Like some kind of ill-conceived, legislative zombie, No Child Left Behind is back on the plate, and it refuses to die. Pressed by both the president and the legislators who supported it the first time around (oh, Teddy Kennedy — what were you thinking?), No Child Left Behind is now being considered for renewal in Congress. It's time to break out the shotguns (to stick with the zombie analogy) and destroy this thing before it can do any more damage. When it was initially conceived in 2001, it seemed like a good idea: Pass a law that requires schools to be held accountable for educating their students.
How very lucky we are to live in an era of advanced medicine and longer lives. It is incredible to think of how many people are alive today because of the advances in medical technology and treatments that have been made in the past 50 years. In one such example, a friend of my family found out nine years ago she had chronic emphysema, which rapidly depleted her already thin lung tissue.
After reading Jessica Byrom's column, "Getting thick skin" (SN 4/10), one particular comparison stood out to me with stomach-wrenching clarity: The better-forgotten incident of Ann Coulter calling John Edwards a "faggot" and Ms. Byrom's following introduction of the term "fundamentalist." The difference between these examples are as vivid as night and day. Ann Coulter, having laughed at her comment immediately afterward, had written that very comment as a deliberate, vicious personal attack on John Edwards.
After reading the column "Getting thick skin" (SN 4/10), I would suggest Jessica Byrom take a leaf out of her own book.
Talk-show host Don Imus claimed the members of the Rutgers women's basketball team were a bunch of "nappy-headed hos." This put the black community up in arms: "How dare this white man call our people nappy-headed?
Having worked here long enough to qualify for tuition assistance, I'm going to be an MSU student again in May.
In a long overdue decision that will greatly impact the future of the automotive industry, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last week that the Environmental Protection Agency has the ability to regulate carbon dioxide emissions under its authority. The 5-4 decision on April 2 aims to correct negligence by the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, of regulation of carbon dioxide emissions and provides one of the first governmental actions toward recognizing global warming. It would follow from its moniker that the EPA would be the nation's leader in promoting the movement away from dangerously high carbon emissions. But this has not been the case.
The major issue concerning MSU Webmail for me is that I have to spend most of my time deleting so many spam e-mails.
In response to Jay Timmerman's letter "Slant on vegetarianism is a liberal 'cliché'" (SN 4/6), I would like to thank him for pointing out the flaws in Drew Winter's column "Meatless alternative" (SN 4/4). I did have one problem with Timmerman's letter, and that was the line "Self-awareness is something uniquely human." Humans have been trying to separate themselves from "the animals" for a long time.
Ann Coulter couldn't have caused more of a stir if she had showed up to the Conservative Political Action Conference on March 2 buck-naked.
I'm going to assume most of you have already heard of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, considering it has seemed a constant news topic since its foundation.