Opinion

Letters to the editor 04/16/02

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Kristin Wieben’s article “ASM: Be Like Mike” completely ignores several key facts.

It was ASM chair Jessica Miller and I that pushed for the Tenant Right to Privacy Act in City Council last year. We lobbied for the Federal Violence Against Women Act, preserving funding for the Rape Crisis Center, and brokered the $84,000 cut of ASM’s internal budget. This year ASM also pushed a statewide campaign to link financial aid increases to tuition increases for the first time. We organized an important rally, which the Badger Herald supported, to ensure the state restore essential funding to the UW System - and no offense, Kristin, but I will pit my knowledge about the state budget against yours all day, everyday.

Miller also fought ceaselessly to get the UHS/Student Activity Center funded and approved as Madison’s number one building priority, and ASM was integral in planning sexual assault awareness month and developed an amazing peer advising system, which, due to budgetary constraints, will unfortunately have to be temporarily postponed. And while Wieben may think increased harassment reporting is unimportant, the ASM Diversity Committee made unprecedented strides in improving reporting, turning around the Speak Up program and quadrupling reporting.

I am sure it would have been nice to have Mike Dean back so you could bash him constantly in the papers for being a fool. Mike loved being in the media - most people do - and that gave the Herald something to chew on. Miller, in contrast, prefers to work for the students and build a stronger campus community.

We have done some amazing work in the last two years. We also screwed some things up along the way. At the end of the day, Jessica’s allies and opponents have tremendous respect for the work she has done. I know of no stronger measure of success than the respect of one’s enemies.

Jeff Pertl

UW Senior

Anna Gould makes the tired claims that we who support Palestinian human rights (1) support suicide bombers and (2) are moral relativists. The first contention is patently untrue for the overwhelming majority of us (why is Anna forever unable to distinguish between explanation and justification?). The second claim is laughable: Who is more relativistic than Gould herself? She condemns (as I do) a Palestinian who kills in a restaurant, while wholeheartedly supporting Israeli soldiers who kill in hospitals and mosques! She most likely condemned ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, but supports it in Israel. Worst of all, she justifies oppression from Tibet to Vietnam, stating that “life is tough.” And she says we are moral relativists?

As usual, Gould is simplistic and uninformed. The claim that Israel must perpetrate human rights atrocities in order to defend itself is denied even by hundreds Israel’s own soldiers, who refuse to serve in the occupied territories, stating that the oppression of Palestinians does not defend — in fact endangers — the lives of Israelis. Gould’s claim that opposition must be motivated by anti-Semitism is itself racist, because it uses a few terrible incidents as an excuse to focus only on the (very real) fears, suffering and deaths of Israelis while completely ignoring the utter misery of the occupied territories and the murder of 1000+ Palestinians in the last two years. Both must be understood and taken into account if any peaceful solution is to be found.

Virginia Ravenscroft-Scott

Special Student, UW Madison