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Letters to the Editors

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After reading an article found in your newspaper last week, I felt compelled to respond to it with what I believe is a solution to the problem discussed in the article. The headline of the article reads as follows: “Lecture on decreasing support for higher education,” and it addressed a serious issue regarding the economy in Wisconsin. In the article Professor Trostel makes the valid suggestion that as financial support for college education declines so will the economy, not only in Wisconsin but nationwide. While reflecting upon the content of the article which I had just read, it hit me that the source of this issue is no one other that Wisconsin’s own Gov. Jim Doyle.

It was Doyle who proposed the $250 million cut to the UW System in his first budget plan. Apparently Doyle’s actions speak much louder than his words, because despite his campaign promises to resist tuition increase, he has managed to raise UW tuition by an entire 18 percent this year alone. No, that’s not all, folks — Jim Doyle dismissed the link between student aid and tuition increase, on top of the damage already done to the bank accounts of struggling students. Is anyone else seeing what I am seeing? Jim Doyle is no friend to the UW System. Someone call John Stossel — it’s time for “Give me a break.”

Erica Christenson
UW student

eachristenso@wisc.edu

Herald’s headline math mystifies

I was intrigued to read the front-page headline in the Oct. 22 issue of the Herald stating, “UW MBA program earns top rank.” Then I read the fine print: UW’s MBA program actually ranks 27th. By this logic, the Milwaukee Brewers, who finished the 2003 season with a 68-94 record, 26th-best in Major League Baseball, are the top-ranked team in baseball.

Tim Kiefer

timothy_kiefer@hotmail.com

What about dignity?

I’ve never been an extremely proactive person when it comes to social issues, but Nicole Marklein’s Oct. 22 article “Disregard for human life” struck an extremely emotional and angry cord in my body. While the Terri Schiavo case has been on my mind for days now, it was only when I read the article that I felt the need to make my own feelings publicly known.

In extreme opposition to Ms. Marklein, I must say that, out of the Schiavo case, we “learned of a most blatant and abhorrent disregard” for human dignity. For clarification not given in Ms. Marklein’s article, Terri Schiavo has been in her current vegetative state for 13 years, not several years, which typically implies a much smaller amount of time.

Imagine for a moment that you married someone who was the light of your life, whose humor, smile and touch brought you joy beyond what you could have ever imagined.

Now imagine his or her smile, quick wit and consensual touch was taken away and all that remained was a shell of someone who once was. Could this person, this body, still bring you the joy that you had once possessed? Wouldn’t it be hard for you to look at that person, knowing he or she would not want to be anything less than what he or she used to be?

Imagine how this once self-sufficient person would feel knowing he or she no longer controlled anything about his or her body, no longer had the capacity to make decisions for himself or herself, no longer had the ability to feed himself or herself, to wash himself or herself or to change his or her own clothing.

This is what Michael Schiavo has to live with.

Day in and day out he had to deal with the fact that his wife was brain dead and that she would never be the person she once was. Ms. Marklein seemed to scold Michael Schiavo in her article for having a girlfriend now with whom he has made a family. Note that he had been fighting the courts for six of the 13 years his wife has been in her vegetative state. This leaves seven years that he waited for her to recover.

It’s not as though he gave up on her right away. And why shouldn’t he have found a new love after he so tragically lost his first? Widows and widowers get remarried all the time. It is in our human soul to love and to want to be loved. The only reason that he has not yet married this woman is because of the fact that he is still legally married to Terri, who has no cognition or ability to grant a divorce.

To truly love someone, you have to want for him or her to be happy. I know that if I were ever to be in Terri Schiavo’s place, I would want my husband to be happy after I no longer could.

No one is saying Michael won’t cry when his wife finally dies. In fact, I am sure he’ll be devastated. Yet, amongst the sorrow, I’m sure a bit of relief and happiness will shine through. His wife, his love, will finally have the chance to go beyond physical life and find what lies ahead of her in the unforeseen notion of afterlife. He will finally be able to carry on with his life and to make it into what he has always wanted it to be, either with her or another woman.

In response to the “secret videotape” that Schiavo’s parents have brought forward, maybe Schiavo is blinking her eyes and moaning. But she will never open her eyes in the morning, laugh at a joke or go for an autumn run in the park ever again.

Nor will she ever get to walk up to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a man she has never met, and thank him for allowing her the chance to live life again after she has been laying dormant for 13 years.

The question in this case lies in whether we as people have the rights we are promised we have. As her husband — the man with whom Terri shared a checking account and a life, and who stood by her for years — Michael should have the right to decide what should be done with his wife, because she could not do so.

Who is Jeb Bush to say that she shouldn’t be able to finally let go? Why does he care? He isn’t the man who watches others bathe her and change her feeding tube each day, who watches her muscles deteriorate from lack of movement. Michael is, and it is his decision as to what should happen to her. I would hope if I were in Mrs. Schiavo’s position that my husband would decide — for my own good and my dignity, as well as his — to let my suffering cease.

From the perspective or a tax-payer and the daughter of a nurse, I don’t think that there should be over 60,000 people, not counting family members, suffering each day in nursing homes while being kept alive just because it is illegal for them to be put to rest.

It is a financial burden on our economy; the money could be used for better care for other patients and for strengthening other fields of medicine. It is a burden on our already overworked nurses and understaffed facilities; nurses could be using their time to care for patients with the ability to recover.

We have to examine what is humane and what is not. Not to compare humans to animals, but countless people have put their ailing pets to rest, because it is the right thing to do. If we have the right to end the suffering of some beings, why can’t we do it for others?

Don’t get all up in arms right now — I am not saying that people are on the same cognitive level as animals. I am simply questioning why we are so kind to our animals when they are suffering, yet we let humans suffer for years on end. Would you keep your dog alive for 13 years if he could not run or bark or play catch, if he just laid there in oblivion?

On a final note, if this case teaches us anything, it’s that we all need to have what is called a living will. This is simply an official document stating how we wish to be treated if ever something happens to us and we are rendered incapable of deciding for ourselves. This is a legal document and must be upheld by all care facilities nationwide. While people never like to face their own mortality, it is important for them to do so or they, too, may end up like Terri Schiavo — brain dead and undignified, without a choice and the conversation topic of millions of people worldwide who have never even met her.

Becky L. Socha

UW student blsocha@wisc.edu