Letters to the Editor

To the editor,

On Tuesday evening I started receiving text messages from unknown numbers urging me to vote for Bridget Halligan and Allison Webb. I waited until I was texted for the third time to respond politely, but what I should’ve said was, “You’ve got quite some nerve texting a number you don’t know, begging for votes. Did it ever occur to you that I might be a senior, and therefore my involvement in this election is completely irrelevant? Sending repeated texts to students who you don’t even know might actually irritate them and dissuade them from voting for you.”

Sadly, however, I did vote for Bridget and Allison. Later that night a friend of mine asked if she could log into mine and my roommates’ accounts to rack votes for Bridget and Allison.

So what does this really say about student politics? Well, first of all, it was apparent that these girls have little knowledge of market targeting and normative re-education techniques. Otherwise, they would’ve acknowledged that if one wants to organize people for a cause, one should at least know who one needs to lobby to, and afterward, challenge that demographics’ rational self interest.

Secondly, to what extent are students willing to go to win an SGA election? Apparently voter fraud is an acceptable measure on this campus.

-Silvino Edward Diaz Burns

Class of 2010

 

To the editor,

I was extremely disappointed and upset at the cover of the March 25 issue. 

Throughout the entire season, Scottie Reynolds has had almost exclusive rights to basketball picture space in The Villanovan: win, lose or tie. To show him now, in total dejection, is not only disrespectful and exploitative to the point of provoking a classmate to compare The Villanovan to a tabloid, but it also continues your misrepresentation of the basketball program. There is an entire basketball team that has been winning, losing and tying right along with Scottie, but where are their pictures? Why has this been depicted as the battle of Scottie Reynolds against the world, culminating in Scottie Reynolds alone losing the whole war? Show the scoreboard, show the team leaving the court together, show some sign of compassion for a disconsolate student like any other. 

I am disheartened by the route The Villanovan chose to take in covering our exit from the tournament and can only hope that next time, your cover portrays the strong community of the basketball team and Villanova as a whole.

-Susanna Seibert

Class of 2011

 

There is no irony about the fact that many students who champion domestic and international causes, like Habitat for Humanity and mission trips, Darfur, Relay for Life, etc. have a big issue with health care. These students have no qualms with the redistribution of wealth. They believe very strongly in charity and voluntary acts of kindness. What they have a problem with is forcing others to perform the so-called charitable act of creating a universal health care system. Regardless of whether you think the poor deserve health care (and I believe, without reservation, that they do), there is still the intensely moral question of whether or not we should be taking someone’s justly earned money to give it to someone else. 

Charity at gunpoint is not charity.

Furthermore, it doesn’t take a genius to understand the disaster that regulation has brought our health care system in this country. Medicare has cost us enormously, more than even our most conservative projections in 1965. Not everyone takes as economic gospel the projections of the U.S. Congress. 

And for that matter, polling has demonstrated that the majority of Americans are opposed to this health care bill. Do you, or do you not, believe that congresspeople should accurately represent the interests of the people who put them into power? 

Finally, stop with the economic baiting. Not everyone opposed to this bill is a Villanova student. 

I suppose it isn’t surprising that you favor socialism. In a free market, nobody would part with one penny to listen to your drivel. Please stop trivializing the issue. You do us all a disservice.

-Andrew Mackenzie

Class of 2010