Letters to the editor

Students apparently don’t need 1,500 basketball tickets

As I walked up the hill to… Students apparently don’t need 1,500 basketball tickets

As I walked up the hill to attend the inaugural men’s basketball game Saturday night, I found it to be unusually quiet. After reading the complaints the past few weeks directed toward Steve Pederson and the athletics department, I fully expected to pass thousands of students walking back down the hill that were being denied admission to the game. However, this was not the case. Of the nine sections reserved for the students around the court, only two of them were full. This is not to take anything away from the couple of hundred who did show up. Those that were there were energetic and enthusiastic without a fault. But where were the others?

Saturday night was a perfect opportunity for the students to show the athletics department that it seriously underestimated the level of student support for the basketball team, instead all it did was raise doubts as to whether their complaining should be taken seriously at all.

Douglas Schulze

CAS 1989, CGS 1996

Don’t pander to apathetic voters

While I do agree with the Editorial Board’s assessment in “Election Day should be a holiday” that voting should be an enjoyable event, the establishment of yet another holiday ignores the true cause for voter turnout, apathy and ignorance of local, state and national issues and candidates by both the registered and unregistered voters. The commonly used “I had to work” excuse is both tired and inaccurate. If you work a 14-hour shift on Tuesdays, fill out an absentee ballot. Short of paying people to hit the polls, little is going to light the proverbial fire underneath the rear ends of people that just do not care. Republican, Democrat, Libertarian or Green, the well-informed, educated, enthusiastic voter is what I want to see at the voting booth. I shudder to think that someday our elected officials, who will determine policy during the next two, four or six years, will be put into power by a group of lazy, half-drunk, couch potato Election Day picnic goers. The right to vote is one that people throughout this world are in search of, often at the cost of lives. Much like many other holidays in this country, I am afraid the meaning of this day would be lost as just another day to sleep late.

Bernard J. Komoroski

Graduate student

Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences