Letters to the Editor

To the Daily:

I just want to say that I’m sick of everybody crying about
the LSA foreign language requirement (Estoy enojado,
02/11/04). I’m always hearing about people lobbying to have
the requirement shortened to two terms, or even doing away with it
entirely. Well, guess what, almost any four-year school in this
country has a very similar type of requirement: fourth-term
proficiency in a language. Are people so lazy that they want to
sacrifice much of this great school’s integrity by
eliminating a requirement that even the nation’s worst
colleges endorse? One argument used by many against the foreign
language requirement is that our full matriculation as adults in
this society does not necessitate knowledge of a foreign language.
Well guess what, that’s not the point of the foreign language
requirement. The point of the foreign language requirement is to
prove to an employer or a graduate school (or yourself, as hard as
that may be to fathom for some) that you have the capacity to learn
anything, including something as complex as the intricacies of
Spanish (or some other language’s) grammar.

I’m an LSA student and I don’t like the language
requirement any more than most of you do, but LSA, or LS and Play
as it has been affectionately termed by many of this school’s
non-LSA students, needs a tough requirement to maintain some level
of difficulty. Let’s face it, when compared to many of the
other colleges at the University, LSA doesn’t exactly stand
out as the most challenging. You don’t like the foreign
language requirement? Major in engineering! I guarantee that the
substantial difference in workload between LSA and Engineering more
than makes up for the lack of a foreign language requirement.

Jason Goldstick

LSA junior

Convenience no justification for illegal music
downloads

To the Daily:

Like Ari Paul, I download music (One fallen tower I’m
not crying about 02/11/04). I also believe the idea that Tower
Records went bankrupt because of online file-sharing is a laughable
notion. However, I am not as self-satisfied with my file-sharing
activities. Be the license-holder a two-man outfit or a major
corporation, without their investment of time, labor and money I
would not be able to listen to the music I have downloaded. I
personally have not yet decided what their rights as intellectual
property owners are. It appears to me that many who defend
downloading music are couching ease and convenience into a moral
argument. I find this behavior disgusting done by anyone, whether a
businessman justifying his actions in the language of free-market
capitalism or the consumer aggrandizing his savings of $16.95 into
a crusade for the free flow of information.

Brian Wiers

LSA junior

SDS ‘insulting;’ why Nation of Islam speaker is
important is ‘beyond’ reader

To the Daily:

Once again, The Michigan Daily has displayed its profound lack
of journalistic integrity. I find it insulting that speeches by an
aging ex-college activist — whose militant student group
folded more than 30 years ago due to internal squabbling —
and a minister/activist — who belongs to one of this
country’s most racist and anti-Semitic organizations —
warranted front page coverage (SDS founder hopes for new revival
on campus, 02/11/04).

Since when did a talk by Alan Haber, the first president of
Students for a Democratic Society — a student group known for
its uncompromising socialist ideology and violent scare tactics
— deserve above-the-fold coverage? Additionally, I do not see
how the University’s NAACP chapter is commemorating its
parent organization’s 95th birthday by inviting Nation of
Islam minister David Muhammad, who claimed yesterday that the U.S.
government “(does) not want to see the rise of the black man,
the black woman (or) the black family,” and is engaged in a
“conspiracy to destroy the black man.” As for why this
conspiratorial rant also received front-page coverage is beyond
me.

Eli Segall

LSA senior