Letters

Tuesday, January 19, 1999

Letters

Senate trial waste of time, money

OK, I don’t know why in his article "You can’t handle the truth
about Clinton’s impeachment" (Viewpoint, Jan. 11), John Strelow
suggests that the reason why America doesn’t care about the
impeachment of the president is because America doesn’t understand.
I feel that the opposite is true. America doesn’t care about the
impeachment because they do understand.

Strelow’s argument that perjury is perjury, no matter what trial
it came from, is flawed. If that were true, then all murderers
would be on death row. If a ruling comes from a court case that has
been deemed unnecessary or false, then the ruling is also moot. So,
since the perjurious ruling came from a case that was later
dismissed, that act of perjury itself does not hold much weight
anymore.

Strelow also writes that obstruction of justice should be the
key issue. Well here he is even more alone in his position. That
article of impeachment passed with an even lower margin than
perjury, showing that not even Congress really thinks it should be
passed. There’s less evidence of obstruction of justice here than
there is of perjury.

The alleged cover-up is a result of a civil case where all
testimony is hearsay anyways, unlike the criminal investigation of
Richard Nixon.

Strelow wants an exhaustive Senate trial for the impeachment of
the president when no votes exists anywhere for hopes of
conviction.

Such a trial will only serve to waste the taxes that we’ll be
paying come April.

Wayne Lu

Alumnus, 1998

Don’t define me by my race

I find it sad that anyone would want to define themselves by
racial classifications, yet Angel Walters did just that in the
column "Looking up to own race gives hope to ending bias"
(Viewpoint, Jan. 14).

Judging people because of their race is wrong. Classifying
someone, including oneself, unnecessarily negates a person into a
stereotype. If individuals are really different (as they are) then
stereotypes are impossible, since one could not group diverse
individuals into those classifications without breed
stereotypes.

Racism does exist, and there will always be people who will have
stereotypical and racist attitudes against some individuals because
of those individuals’ races.

This is wrong.

It is wrong, because they classified people by race. Classifying
people by race necessarily leads to viewing people as separate
racial classifications. This, then, can degrade into an "us vs.
them" view of the world. The only way we can escape this is by
viewing people as they truly are – individuals. If anyone asks, I
am not a racial classification, I am an individual!

Daniel B. Rego

Third-year

Chemistry

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