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Angelides is out to help the students

Phil Angelides is the only gubernatorial candidate to actually show his support for students by speaking directly with them.

He is not just a weaker version of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

His background in the California Democratic Party and what he has done for the group is amazing.

He will bring these talents to the table as the next governor of California.

He really is the stronger candidate, and he has made it clear that students are one of his primary concerns and that he will fight for us in office.

Katie Strickland’s column (“Surprise: I’m Voting for a Republican,” Oct. 12) makes all of UCLA look bad.

We students need to stick together and vote for the candidate who will help us most.

What we do not need is someone to make statements about how Angelides is under-qualified to be our next governor.

Taylor Kayatta,

Third-year, political science

Bruin Democrats webmaster

For the animals, be more humane

As an alumnus of UCLA, I was embarrassed to read Kenneth Hurst’s opinion (“Animals vital to research,” Oct. 13).

Hurst’s callous disregard for animals’ lives and their physical well-being, seen through comments such as “animals should be treated no differently than any other tool at a scientist’s disposal,” is alarming, morally bankrupt and completely unethical.

His assertion that “the only truly ethical treatment of animals is to use them for our benefit” is a truly twisted and deranged defense of an inhumane mind-set.

If a serial killer were to defend his actions with this sort of statement, the insanity would be much more readily apparent to the mainstream.

I would go so far as to suggest that Hurst be legally barred from keeping companion animals. Furthermore, I would keep my own pets and children away from someone so pathologically disturbed as to be unable to feel our commonalities with animals.

Instead, Hurst sees them as no different than the tools used to give them alien diseases and to vivisect them in university laboratories.

I would be suspicious of anyone who asserts that the millions of animals used in laboratories every year promise a cure for diseases we have been fighting for decades, especially when so many diseases can be prevented through lifestyle and dietary choices.

In addition, many of these animals’ lives are expended for tests that do not save human lives, such as drugs meant to enhance erections.

When did life become so cheap?

Our treatment of animals as a society betrays much about ourselves, and therefore, animals deserve our consideration as much for their own desires as for our own good.

After all, as the great Mahatma K. Gandhi asserted, “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”

On that count, our nation deserves a grade of F.

Eric Prescott,

UCLA class of 1993

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