With meal plan, the choice is not yours
In response to Jasmine Hill’s submission “Extra meals hard to swallow,” (Aug. 23) I would like to thank the Daily Bruin for introducing this issue to the UCLA community. I feel UCLA Dining Services puts regular UCLA students at a low priority relative to conference groups and sports camps. Summer visitors do help relieve some of the costs for students during the regular year, but the administration should not neglect the interests of current summer school students, especially those of us who are paying exacerbated costs. I am paying $3,792 for 12 weeks of summer housing and meals.
Additionally, not only must we swallow 21 meals a week, but the meals are to be eaten only at one dining hall, and this hall is often packed with diners and offers little variety. While students who work for the residence halls, such as those working for front desks and Access Control, have the option of eating at the dining hall of their choice, residents do not. Like the student employees, I am also a full-time UCLA student who works for the school. We are no different from the employees of UCLA Housing. We deserve the same treatment and privileges. We are further restricted in where we can eat because another limitation of the plan is that the lunch coupon option that is available over the year is not available over the summer.
I have tried to speak with both Housing and Dining Services, but have not received a satisfactory answer from either party. On-campus housing officials need to reevaluate their priorities. The UCLA summer sessions motto is “The Choice is Yours.” With the current meal plan, we have few choices.
Yvonne Ha Second-year, art history
Swift Boat questions still unanswered
Ezra Klein’s submission “Kerry’s war heroism bears partisan fire” (Aug. 30) demonstrates his lack of understanding about military technicalities. Klein writes that the Swift Boat Veterans claim that at least one of Sen. John Kerry’s wounds was self-inflicted is “despicable.” The “Swifties” suggest Kerry launched a grenade against a river bank that was too close and that shrapnel flew back toward the boat, hitting Kerry. While this may qualify as an “accident” to a college boy, an investigating officer would have to classify this wound as “self-inflicted.”
It’s unlikely Klein has ever read any combat after-action reports, or accident reports that go along with military action. Such a claim is hardly “despicable”; it’s just the way the military looks at things in their official documentation. As to the issue of Kerry’s Cambodian Christmas, Kerry made many references to the incursion – some with such emphasis that the events were “seared” in his memory. Now that the vets are challenging his claims, the “searing” has become a “misrememberment.”
Wayne Martin Palo Alto