Acknowledge funding repercussions
In “Congress may protect college funding” (News, Nov. 6), Lalitha Madduri discusses an amendment that Chairman George Miller plans to propose to the Higher Education Act.
While we are supportive of Congress’ attempt to make higher education more affordable for students, we would also like to urge them to consider the trickle-down effect that might take place if universities are penalized for raising tuition by having federal grant money restricted.
Nationally, more than 5.5 million students receive Pell Grants. At UCLA alone, more than 40 percent of students qualify for them, ranking as one of the institutions with the highest number of Pell Grant recipients.
Restricting federal aid from schools hurts the low- and middle-income students who need access to higher education the most.
Is this fair? Already, these are the students who are facing the most difficulties in regard to the affordability of higher education.
As the United States Student Association, we feel it is imperative that Congress passes the Higher Education Act and even made it one of our legislative priorities for the year. It is supposed to be renewed every seven years and it has been almost 10 since the last Higher Education Act was passed.
Congress needs to act now on this piece of legislation while keeping in mind the low- and middle-income students throughout the nation.
James Birks
Emilio Lacques
Jesse Melgar
Board of Directors, United States Student Association
Statistics do not give whole picture
In regard to Kia Makarechi’s article “Top sites no longer topless” (Nov. 6), it is great that we have found more wholesome ways to use technology, like staying in contact with friends.
However, Makarechi gives MySpace, Facebook, etc., an undeserved halo by saying that these sites reduce pornographic viewing among 18 to 24-year-olds.
His entire claim is based on the facts that the most visited sites are not pornographic and that the percentage of visits to pornographic sites has gone down over the past two years.
Statistically, claims that such networking sites reduce the visits to pornographic sites do not take into account the increase of overall internet viewing. So the percentage of pornographic viewing may be down, but the quantity is the same. Even if viewing such sites has gone down, it still says something that one out of every six sites viewed by our age group is pornographic.
Facebook and MySpace may decrease the symptoms of pornographic addiction but they do not and cannot cure the disease.
Joshua Nogales
Fourth-year, computer science