Letters to the Editor

Code Pink “childish,
disrespectful”

With all due respect to Mark Davis’ letter “Jones is
childish, disrespectful” (April 7), the comments regarding
the Code Pink women were way out of line.

I sat a few rows in front of them (at the pro-war event), and
their behavior was anything but courteous. During opening
statements they made remarks of such crassness that they should
remain unspoken.

When the question and answer session started, they constantly
interrupted and disrespected the speakers while refusing to obey
the authority of the ushers who politely asked them to step away
from the microphone.

Lastly, their boorish manners were manifested when they got out
their signs. It’s a good thing that the ushers confined them
to one side of the room, as they wanted to advance towards the
speakers’ platform. The people who should apologize are those
unrefined women who refuse to allow others to exercise the same
rights they seek to defend. Their quarrelsome behavior threatened
to turn a political discussion into a circus.

The sad thing is that the free exchange of ideas between people
of different perspectives was threatened by closed-minded people.
When the elderly act like kids, they give liberals and moderates a
bad name. This is a case where wisdom clearly does not come with
old age.

Paul Marian First-year, history and political
science

No BruinGo! will hurt community

I am writing to urge that changes to BruinGo!, especially the
policy change regarding weekends, be reconsidered. The proposed
changes are disturbing to my understanding about educational
pedagogy.

My assignments to classes, mostly projects that require group
work and extensive research at both the undergraduate and graduate
level, will have to be rethought if students don’t have the
maximum opportunity to use the libraries and the additional time to
meet together. The students’ final projects are of a high
quality. BruinGo! has made it possible for greater communication
among students as they undertake the research and group
efforts.

I realize there are financial costs, but a great university
should encourage a sense of community that carries forward into
students’ lives and future work. I am concerned about hurting
the spirit of community that UCLA in many other ways tries to
foster among its students. BruinGo! has helped in that effort.

Jacqueline Leavitt, Ph.D.

Professor, Department of Urban Planning

Cartoon makes impact

I would like to commend Jason Liu for his inspired cartoon in
the April 8 edition of the Daily Bruin.

The silhouette of the Iraqi soldier breaking into a house and
forcing the male members of that household to fight by threatening
that poor woman and her child was just chilling.

He truly captured the brutality of that (former) regime.

Scott Evans Ph.D. alumnus