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The Daily Wildcat

The Daily Wildcat

 

Letters to the Editor

Bias: the fogging and disruption of honesty and integrity in academic and journalistic reporting

What I don’t understand is how someone’s bias could actually drive him or her to create a fictitious situation in his or her head like the reporters on the issue of divesting from Israel last Monday. I must say, your intolerance and blatant anti-Semitic sentiment has blinded both of you, based on your opinions and reporting.

Portraying the situation without bias and emotion is what good reporting and good academic scholarship really requires. This is especially true when it comes to the manipulations of quotes from President Shelton, who publically said he was heavily misquoted and that what he said was obviously and purposefully distorted. What were these two reporters thinking? Did both reporters not think people would investigate this “”so-called”” student group for divestment from Motorola due to the fact of cooperation and association with Israel?

It upsets me, as someone who calls himself a Zionist and has studied both Zionist and Anti Zionist/Post-Zionist/Palestinian narrative versions of the conflict, that reporters like these cannot recognize and provide mutual criticism of both sides in this conflict, not just one (in this case, Israel). No one is perfect in the situation. Atrocities have occurred on both sides.

There is no doubt that both sides in this very long conflict, many people (like myself) who are emotionally, spiritually, passionately and academically invested in the issue have made mistakes when dealing with their “”other.”” One must learn to accept and understand all sides and all opinions of this conflict. One must recognize claims of both the Israelis and the Palestinian-Arabs (because both sides do have legitimate claims to the land of Israel/Palestine) in order to pragmatically approach the situation. There is both a crescent moon and a star of David in the famous sign that uses religious symbols to spell the word “”coexist.””

Maybe we should all take the hint. To coexist, we need to accept everybody and every religion’s right to freedom of expression. Truth, understanding and acceptance will help move this conflict forward, but only if people are serious about a two-state solution, not manipulation of fact bias and utter hatred for another’s opponent.

—Adam Bellos

Judaic studies senior

 

 

ASUA pres and GPSC VP take stance on fees

Since learning about the potential significant fee and tuition increases students face in Fall 2001, the Associated Students of the University of Arizona and the Graduate and Professional Student Council have worked to voice students’ concerns and priorities to the UA’s administration. A fruit of our combined labor is a joint statement to President Shelton and administrators regarding proposed fee increases. This joint statement represents the collective wisdom of undergraduates and graduates throughout campus providing — in our best judgment under these trying circumstances — the most reasonable position on the proposed fees.

The chief elements of our stance are: 1) to support maintenance of effort levels of funding to provide financial security to sustain critical student services and 2) to offer several general fee policy recommendations to ensure a consistent student-centered framework is instituted when creating, implementing and assessing fees. Specifically, the joint statement 1) supports the library increase in full because it is vital to our university’s promise of academic excellence and invaluable Research I status, and 2) supports only necessary increases of the Campus Health Services/Student Recreation Center and University Information and Technology Services fees to maintain the services that are immediate priorities to students.

The ASUA-GPSC collaboration is deliberately aimed at ensuring that the UA administration takes our united student voice seriously. Because we are the elected university-wide student government bodies, we trust that administrators will seriously consider our ideas. Respectfully, the programs funded by the fees are primarily student services and facilities, and, therefore, the student voice is paramount and merits deference.

Of course, these are controversial issues, and our fellow students are free to express their own opinions. The ASUA-GPSC joint statement offers the most reasonable approach because it navigates between the two extremes of supporting every increase in full and rejecting nearly all increases outright. Both stances are flawed because they do not make the difficult choices of prioritizing which increases are truly appropriate, and they do not face the unavoidable economic reality that some of these services are important to students and need our funding to function.

In the end, our joint statement makes those difficult choices of prioritizing services at the appropriate and balanced level.

We spent time and energy debating and voting on this joint statement because we care deeply about our university and its excellent people: Students, faculty, staff and administrators. We sincerely believe this approach provides the best solutions for supporting this great community during these challenging times.

—Chris Nagata

President, Associated Students of the University of Arizona

—David Lopez-Negrete

Vice president, Graduate & Professional Student Council

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