Thursday, October 30, 1997
Letters
Reaching out to students
The Daily Bruin editorial on Oct. 29 is headlined "Are Carnesale's office hours a PR stunt?" My answer to that question is a resounding "no."
The response to my announcement of office hours for students was overwhelmingly positive. In order to accommodate as many students as possible, we arranged for a combination of eight 10-minute private sessions, followed by a one-hour group meeting for those who could not be included in the private sessions.
I plan to continue to hold office hours for students and, in addition, to be available at a town hall meeting later this fall.
As for the timing of my meetings with the heads of student government, my office contacted the undergraduate and graduate student body presidents over the summer and invited them to meet with me at their earliest convenience.
Classes started on Sept. 25, and I met with GSA President Andrew Westhall on Sept. 26. USAC President Kandea Mosley scheduled her meeting for Oct. 13 (well before my Oct. 17 office hours), but had to cancel at the last minute for personal reasons. I look forward to meeting with her soon.
I value every opportunity to meet students and to find out what is on their minds.
I am grateful to those students who shared their thoughts with me, even if only briefly, and I look forward to many fruitful interchanges in the future.
Albert Carnesale
Chancellor
Where's the love?
I am saddened by the superficial and even jaded view of love that Stephanie Pfeffer had in her column "Until divorce do we part?" Her attitude of "free love" without commitment is a perversion of the very concept of romantic love. She suggests that we move on from person to person with our love, and that being with a single person only ties one down when they want to move on. She does not understand love at all.
I do believe that there is going to be a special person for me in my life. Though I have not found her yet (and there is a chance that I may never do so), I will search for that rare and delicate essence of the person that completes my being. Love? Love is not sex. Love is when you are willing to dedicate yourself to a person even if there was no sex. It is not the sex, but the presence of that very special person that fills one with the sense of quiescence and fulfillment - an ecstasy of the spirit. I may be a romantic, perhaps a hopeless one, but I can still search in hopes of one day finding that perfection of being that I will be proud to forever call my wife.
Daniel B. Rego
Second-year
Political science
Lack of
understanding
I have read, with a combination of amusement and annoyance, the ongoing Nike shoes/anti-sweatshop policy controversy in the Daily Bruin. I think many of the people involved have, at best, a very tenuous understanding of what they are talking about.
While I applaud the intent of the USAC resolution I think it is naive and a gross oversimplification of the problem. I'll use electronics as an example. (I ran my own electronics company before coming here to work at UCLA.) Do any of the members of the council, or the Daily Bruin editorial staff for that matter, own anything electronic? Surprise, you are helping to support some of the same companies you are so quick to condemn. While the name on the front of that slick little gizmo on your wrist, in your backpack, or on your desk may be that of some fine upstanding company, most of its parts come from hundreds of independent companies. Some of them use child, slave or otherwise criminally mistreated workers. It is, regrettably, nearly impossible to avoid working with these companies. There are just so many of them. You will hear about them occasionally, but no one pays attention to companies that aren't household names.
And far be it from me to defend ASUCLA. They clearly spend too much time believing their own PR. They do sell a lot of neat stuff and if I worked somewhere else I might be able to afford some of it. It's easy to condemn them for selling Nike shoes, for trying to make money, but that's their job - making money. It's also clearly their top priority. With their dismal financial track record I'm sure many ASUCLA staff are more focused on keeping their jobs than keeping USAC and The Bruin happy. The only way many companies survive is by putting the bottom line above everything else. Often, it seems you can work at that sort of company or not work at all.
I think if USAC and The Bruin would like to make a real difference, they should focus on the real issue; we are all patronizing these sorts of companies and most people don't understand the scope of the problem. Adopting this focus gives a better chance of making a difference than taking a sound-bite stance against a single company. With an understanding of the real problem, some of you may be better equipped to make a difference out there in the real world.
Greg Brown
Media Systems Design
Give Horey a break
I think that Steve Liao should leave Mr. Horey alone ("Horey's 'humor' libelous, childish," Oct. 29). I know it's really none of my business to complain about such minutiae (in fact, I have wanted to respond to quite a few editorials over the last few weeks), but I was a little disturbed by Steve's comments and I figured I would let my opinion be known.
Steve, do you know Justin personally? I do. He's on the air after me on Tuesdays on KLA, 99.9 FM, (the station that 99 percent of UCLA students don't even know exists, 70 percent can't even get, and 98 percent of the people that can don't know how to hook cable into their radio). Justin is a "weird, obnoxious, funny guy." Is there a problem with that? I think calling his comments "libelous" is a bit extreme and attaches a very bad connotation to his name. The Daily Bruin doesn't have a comics section, does it? Maybe Justin is our comics section every other week (or for me, every week).
Sure, I agree that the article had no point, but I think we need that every once in a while. I sympathize with Horey because I have just as stupid a sense of humor as he does, but I'll spare you for now since he's been here for four years and I've been here for four weeks.
If there was any point to the article (which there actually might have been), I think it was that if we don't have "concerns, questions or criticisms," then we feel inferior to those people who do (or who are just making some questions up so that they can say, "I had a worthwhile chat with the chancellor").
We can't keep jumping on people for being themselves and being a little silly. This may sound bad coming from a 17-year-old freshman, but I consider myself to be a young adult - and we adults are really just big kids at heart.
Randy A. Keith
First-year
Undeclared