Letters

CBS flubbed it!

Editor:

I would like to make a few comments on the NCAA Championship
game. First, congratulations to our guys for giving us yet another
reason to be proud Bruins. Ahhh, it’s so sweet to celebrate as
L.A.’s major sports championship drought ends!

Second, I would like to address CBS’ atrocious handling of
UCLA’s victory. Very shortly after time expired and the Bruins
became champions, CBS went into a major flurry of ads. How tacky
was that? A major championship had just been won and we were stuck
watching car and beer ads instead of watching our team celebrate.
And those who watched know that these were long segments of
commercials.

Broadcasters also made little to no mention of Toby Bailey after
the game (and he gave us one of the best freshman performances in
NCAA Championship history) and let us miss most of the net-cutting
as we instead had to watch Quinn Buckner, Coach K. and that CBS guy
with the mustache.

True, I’m extra angry because all of this involved UCLA, but any
sports fan should have been insulted by this kind of coverage. I
say we don’t let CBS get away with this crap! This is the address I
found for CBS, so please send your comments to:

CBS Inc.

524 W. 57th Street

New York, N.Y. 10019

Turi Altavilla

Junior

English

Overreaction must not be tolerated

Editor:

As a staff employee in the physics/astronomy department and a
former member of the board of directors of the Westwood Village
Association, I was shocked and dismayed to see that for one more
time, the Los Angeles Police Department has chosen to overreact in
a situation that was not causing harm and certainly not threatening
lives.

Having grown up in the "Kent State" era with state troopers
shooting college students who were my peers, I am dismayed to see
police take a similar stance in dealing with a very positive
student celebration of a very exciting victory for the UCLA
basketball team.

From watching the 10 and 11 p.m. news on Monday, it was clear to
see that some semblance of order needed to be maintained, however,
as far as I could tell, no real estate or citizens in the village
were at risk. The college students, however, certainly were, with
rubber bullets fired into the crowd for crowd control.

As we enter the last five years of this century and the
millennium, I think we need to seriously look at a harsh and life
threatening over response, and to how it could have been handled in
a more human, compassionate manner. If we continue to make errors
in judgment such as was done once again by the LAPD in a war-torn
town fed up with gang violence as well as police violence, we would
do well to question where we will be on these issues in another
five years.

If nothing else, Monday night’s violence on the part of the LAPD
can be a true barometer of how far we will have to go in order to
interact as human beings with one another.

Chief Willy Williams, please take note that these actions cannot
be tolerated without much outrage on the part of the citizens you
were named to protect. UCLA students, use this incident as a
jumping-off point to make things different. You are the future, and
the 21st century is yours to make of it as what you will.

Laurie Liles

Program administrator

Physics/astronomy Department

More Monday night memories

Editor:

I am very concerned with what happened Monday night. I
participated in the whole thing and enjoyed the festivities, up to
a point: police repression. The American dictatorship, masked under
the names "democracy," "American dream" and "freedom" showed its
ugly face one more time.

Being very tolerant, I am willing to understand the reasons why
the cops showed up at OUR party. However, shooting and beating up
Bruin fans is not a perfect example of democracy (by the way,
democracy means power by the people, for the people, not the
opposite).

Still, this is not the worst. Around midnight, after the police
charged over the students’ party at the corner of Gayley and
Strathmore Avenues, a few students were arrested. Here it becomes
revolting: the cops paraded the handcuffed students all over Gayley
so that everybody could see the face of democracy. Sad reality. If
I did not have a few brothers to stop me I would have probably done
something stupid and ended up parading on Gayley, surrounded by 20
peacekeepers myself.

Thomas Lagathu

Senior

Political Science