Letters
Student leaders, not gods
Editor:
How brown is Brooke Olson’s nose after writing the article on
York Chang ("York Chang speaks out," Feb. 5)? She noted that this
left-wing radical holds the most influential office in
undergraduate life. This is not true – undergraduate government,
maybe, but not life.
I am not influenced at all by this lunatic Olson thinks is a
god. If voter turnout in student elections is any indication,
students don’t give a rat’s ass about student government, let alone
their idiot president.
This ass-kissing crap should not occupy so much space in your
newspaper. York Chang is a friggin’ idiot and all students know it.
When does this bum graduate?
When you eliminate such biased articles from your newspaper, its
primary function may cease to be a cat box liner. I’m glad it’s
free.
Michael MacNeil
Second-year
Political science/history
Activism of many
Editor:
I appreciated the opportunity to express my views in a great
Daily Bruin profile. However, I wish I could have been clearer that
all of the work and accomplishments students have made recently
should never be seen in terms of individual personalities or
views.
If it is not a collective effort, then the work is hollow and
inconsistent; based on nothing more than a personality’s ego in
overdrive. The concept of grass-roots organization and power is
that MANY individuals must be conscious and active in order to
create change in a society and institution. This is the opposite of
an individualistic perspective on leadership.
UC students stopped fee hikes for the last two years not because
of "representative leadership," but because of a mass movement of
thousands of students statewide protesting and writing letters.
Activism on campus is resurgent because of who is in office. It
has been alive and well for many years in the hard work and
dedication of student organizations/groups like Asian Pacific
Coalition and MEChA (who are putting together a huge sixth-week,
system-wide campaign to protect immigrant rights), Samahang
Pilipino, African Student Union, Muslim Students Association, the
Environmental Coalition and the Students Association of Graduate
Employees.
These and hundreds of other groups are constants in activating
thousands of students each year on important issues that affect us
all. They work hard at fighting for their communities. This is the
real leadership on campus.
The Students First candidates last year campaigned against
student government filled with ego-driven individual personalities,
and for a focus on relevant, everyday issues that affect us as
students. Keep us in line if we stray from that.
York Chang
President
Undergraduate Student Association Council
Lust for power
Editor:
Despite the praise of other undergraduate council members, York
Chang is nothing special. He is merely a tool of the self-serving
UC bureaucracy. Ever notice that every policy proposed by UC
employees or "student representatives" justifies more spending and
interference by the state of California? I wouldn’t call it a
conspiracy, just an unspoken coincidence of interests.
Forget intentions; look at the affects of those interests. York
Chang, "visionary" that he is, would divide the classes, divide the
races and divide students against themselves with every legal
sleight the state grants him. He reduces individual students to
pathetic groups that bicker over budgets and plead for favors from
Sacramento and Pete Wilson.
Chang proclaims unity and strength, but he is a divider and a
crippler. He and his cohorts call it diversity and
multiculturalism, but it’s nothing more than division and
manipulation. It’s lust for power, conceit and bigotry.
York Chang and the other diversity wonks are petty collectivists
perverted by a false promise of "empowerment."
Cosmo Wenman
Fourth-year
Economics
Fight for peace
Editor:
The fight by Huong Nguyen and her many supporters to end
discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is certainly
worthwhile and admirable. What concerns me, however, is that the
occurrence of such discrimination seems to be the only time that
the Reserve Officer Training Corps’ (ROTC) presence on campus
becomes problematic.
That the U.S. military is responsible for the deaths of three to
four million human beings in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos in between
the years 1965 and 1975 is a non-issue. That the military proudly
slaughtered tens of thousands of Iraqis in the Gulf War does not
seem to merit our concern.
That the U.S. military trained soldiers and developed in-depth
relations with military elites from some of the world’s most
repressive countries (from Guatemala to Indonesia to Haiti) is not
a matter worthy of our discussion.
That the Pentagon devours tens of billions of dollars every year
while Washington politicians and their corporate allies slash
funding for public education and social welfare does not lead us to
protest.
Clearly, hyper-nationalism and militarism have become so deeply
embedded in our culture that we often fail to see their profoundly
negative implications.
From Chechnya to East Timor, to the former Yugoslavia to right
here in the United States, the tragic costs of militarism are
obvious. Let us continue to fight to end discrimination on the
basis of sexual orientation. But more importantly, let us work to
put an end to war and militarism.
A good start would be to get ROTC off campus and fill the
resulting office space with a department of peace studies.
Joseph Hassett
Fourth-year
EconomicsComments to webmaster@db.asucla.ucla.edu