No vegetables allowed!
Editor:
I am greatly offended by your use of Ronald Reagan’s caricature
along the lines, "Don’t be a vegetable. Write to Viewpoint"
(Viewpoint, April 5, 1995).
Alzheimer’s disease is devastating, and its sufferers should in
no way be made fun of for what it does to them, any more so than an
individual with any other disease.
If the Daily Bruin cannot come up with a more creative metaphor
than this for encouraging readers to write, perhaps they should
give up writing and pursue activities better suited to their
limited imaginations.
Elizabeth Sally
University Research Library
Actions necessitate responsibility
Editor:
I’ve read the latest letters to Viewpoint with a good degree of
dismay and distaste. Patrick Burns, for example, stated that the
Westwood merchants are at least partly to blame for the "lack of
space in which to party."
What’s wrong with the campus? Couldn’t you gather in front of
the Bear? Is it too much to ask that you keep your own dirt in your
own backyard? No. You’d rather gather in the village that you scorn
so. Where were you on Tuesday morning when the mess had to be
cleaned up? Still in bed nursing a gnarly hangover? Or were you in
the village volunteering to help clean up the mess you and your
fellow Bruins left behind?
It’s about time you children learned to take responsibility for
your own actions. Did you try to stop the idiots that made the
whole scene appear to be a riot in the eyes of any rational
individual? No. You would rather blame everyone but yourselves for
what happened. And believe me, that WAS a riot.
What do you call it when pedestrians tip over a van and jump up
and down on it, totally ruining it? Good clean college fun? NO,
that’s destruction of private property. Do you call stopping people
in their cars as they’re trying to get home, jumping up and down on
the cars, probably damaging them and perhaps injuring the occupants
in your drunken frenzy good clean college fun? I didn’t think
so.
Let’s call Monday night’s scene what it should be rightfully
called: UCLA STUDENTS RIOT IN DRUNKEN FRENZY.
You should be ashamed of yourselves and of each other. The blame
lies solely with you. If you weren’t involved but were there, you
should have done yourselves and everyone, including the
perpetrators, a big favor by taking care of the more impaired
people around you before this whole thing started.
Maybe this will open up some eyes to the idea of moderation.
Mike Brown
Westwood Village Resident