Dear Editor,

I am writing to congratulate the University of Massachusetts administration and trustees for the announced $182 million expansion of Commonwealth Honors College (Boston Globe, Nov. 18, 2010). What a fitting 50th birthday gift for the University Honors Program, which was inaugurated in the fall of 1960. The Honors Program has enriched the education and careers of untold thousands of UMass students from all faculties and departments of the University. The announced decision to create a new and much expanded Commonwealth College with increased faculty and students, represents a substantial investment in undergraduate excellence alongside the unbelievable growth of graduate and post-graduate programs, which have gained a world-wide reputation for our distinguished Amherst campus.
The construction of a new residential-teaching center where students can live and learn together, not only fulfills the dream of the founders of the Honors Program, but lays a solid foundation for the next half-century of quality undergraduate education and vastly enhanced opportunities and empowering choices for our students.

Louis S. Greenbaum,
Emeritus Professor of history, is co-founder and first Director of the University Honors program from 1960 to 1963
Amherst, Mass.

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Dear Editor,

Each day as a student I walk into buildings, holding my breath. Letting it out only when I’m in hallway or classroom. Before walking out of the buildings, I remind myself to hold my breath.
Why? I have to walk through a huge puffball of smoke.

It is quite inconvenient to have such difficulties with breathing when I walk through this mist. As a student walking on this campus, I have not had the time or motivation to count the number of cigarette butts that are on the street. Some are struck in the cracks on the street, on the road, in front of buildings and around ashtrays. Earlier last month I noticed the “No Butts About It” event which The Daily Collegian reported on Nov. 8. I also noticed the individuals who were walking around with trash bags and joined in.
Who were these people doing this? UMass students of course. UMass students were going around, picking up cigarette butts, as an attempt to help clean our community – our community – just a bit. This is the fifth year in a row this event has happened.

Ashtrays are provided on this campus, so a great first step would be for each smoker to put their cigarette butts into the ashtrays. This would definitely help to make the campus cleaner. Please show some consideration towards other students and for the environment in our community.

Smoking may provide short term relief for an individual, but we all know the health implications of smoking. And what about those of us who are nearby? According to the Surgeon General of the United States, there is no safe level of secondary smoke. Likewise, cigarettes are an enemy not just towards human health, but nature around us also. Discarded cigarettes are a leading cause of forest fires, and the number one cause of fire fatalities.

We are a community. Each of us has choices, but I hope all of us will choose to be considerate of those around us. We share this campus together, and whether it will turn into a giant ashtray one day is also up to us.

Lisa Hum
Undergraduate on Health Senate

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Dear Editor,

I am writing in response to your editorial on Nov. 16, “Amherst sends wrong message with vote.” I was the main petitioner for the Town Meeting article to which the editorial refers; the article’s accurate name was “Bring the War Dollars Home.” The editorial accuses us of lack of concern for Veterans of Amherst or the University of Massachusetts. On the contrary we talked with several local veterans and we expressed in our article our concern for “U.S. military personnel and their families.” In fact, we think that the best way to show that concern is to bring those veterans safely home to their families. Nothing in our article gives the least criticism to our service personnel, either past or present or future; we are proud of those who have served and wish them a return without damage to their bodies or minds.

As for the University, some us those bringing the petition, including myself, are or were long-time members of the UMass community with a great concern for its future. The main purpose of our petition is to bring our war tax dollars home so that they can fund important entities like the University, more cuts to which are being discussed in today’s Daily Hampshire Gazette. Our supplemental material to Town Meeting members mentions also that our tax dollars are needed for the Veterans Administration, already overwhelmed with the medical and psychological needs of returning veterans. That money could also be used for university scholarships for both veterans and others. Instead, $1 trillion has already been spent on these two wars; just think what else that money could have done.

The writer also accuses us petitioners and those who voted with us of “anti-Bush fanaticism.” I fail to see any proof of that, either in the petition itself, in the remarks made at Town Meeting or in our written materials, nor was it part of our preparatory discussions.

In summary, rather than being “self-righteous and arrogant,” as the writer accuses us, we believe that we had in mind the best interests of the University, its students including veterans, local veterans, veterans’ families and our local community when we crafted the article. Moreover, we are delighted to see that many other communities around the country have passed or are working on, similar articles.

Ruth Hooke
Petitioner

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Dear Editor,

If Michelle Durant and the University of Massachusetts Cannabis Reform Coalition are going to make Massachusetts the first state (Mass. Supports Marijuana Reform Laws Statewide, Nov. 22, 2010) to legalize cannabis, you must get it in gear.

California’s Proposition 19 organizers are already planning another proposition for 2012 and Colorado also is preparing initiatives for 2012 to legalize cannabis. Washington, Oregon, Nevada and others may join in.
Perhaps the next step is to make the effort to legalize the plant a race. There is some question as to which state will be first. Becoming the first state could appeal to America’s competitive spirit and may help get cannabis legalized sooner. As a Colorado cannabis activist and citizen, I challenge Massachusetts, California and the rest of the states to a race to legalize cannabis.

If I were a gamblin’ man, I’d bet on Colorado by an hour.

Truthfully,
Stan White
Dillon, Colorado

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Dear Editor,

I am a student here at UMass and noticed that cars are regularly ticketed and towed at the loop at the Student Union. The no parking signs there are only on the inside of the loop, not on both sides, even though they do say in small letters “both sides.” People park on the outside of the loop, because there are no “no parking” signs posted, and don’t even realize that it is illegal to park there. You really shouldn’t be giving people violations and having their cars towed when the postings are unclear, unnoticeable and ambiguous. I pointed this out this evening to a cop who was having a car towed, and showed him that there really weren’t any “no parking” signs where the car was parked and he replied, “You’re right, you should write your concern to the University”.

Clear markings and signage need to be posted, and in the meantime the University should stop punishing these students for parking where it is very unclear that parking is prohibited. You cannot expect people to follow regulations, which are not posted. There is no way for people to know in many of these spaces that it is illegal to park there. What ever happened to “students first?” I guess it is beside the point that the one of the cops doing this parked his SUV in front of a handicapped ramp, set of stairs and two “no parking tow zone” signs – at least it wasn’t idling like the other cruiser.

Please address this issue immediately. If you are unclear or disagree with my statement here, I would be happy to go on the website with you to explain and point out my concerns. After all, as police and parking enforcers, this would make your job easier – if people know it is illegal they are less likely to do it.

Thank you much for listening to and addressing this concern. Please let me know your thoughts and keep me updated on the status of this situation.

With Regards,
Travis Roberts

Editor’s Note: Shortly after this letter was submitted, UMPD Deputy Police Chief Patrick Archbald wrote to both Travis and The Collegian. Archbald, who also received the letter, wrote that he “support[s] installation of signage in the area” and has communicated with the Physical Plant about addressing the issue, adding that the “would not anticipate an issue or concern with more signage.”

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Dear Editor,

I am writing in response to the column “Amherst sends the wrong message with vote,” written by Justin Thompson, published on Nov. 15.

My name is Ben Grosscup, and I am a member in the Amherst Town Meeting, a position in which I’ve served since 2006. Contrary to claims in Thompson’s column, the Bring the War Dollars Home resolution was not aimed as an attack on a former president. Rather, it was a rebuke of a long-standing policy of the U.S. government – across multiple presidential administrations – to fund immoral and insane wars while stripping funding that supports our communities’ needs for education, health care, basic infrastructure and other things that perpetuate the common good.

In the debate over war, there is no group of people – veterans, students, health care workers or professional politicians – whose opinions count more than another group by virtue of their position in society. Moreover, veterans and active duty soldiers – like the rest of the population – have wide-ranging views on the wars. Many brave veterans have formed organizations like Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans against the War. These organizations have helped the peace movement to expose the plainly immoral things – extra judicial murders, random shootings, torture and use of depleted uranium that the military as an organization is doing to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan and now Pakistan and Yemen.

These individuals have realized that they have been part of carrying out the evil enterprise of U.S. imperialism, and they are making amends for these deeds by building a movement to stop the wars and to help themselves and their comrades heal from the horrors that they have both been subjected to and involved in perpetrating.

But let’s zoom out from what each group of people might have to say now and look at where American policy is going in the big picture. The Obama Administration and Congress, just like the previous administration was doing, are steadily working to make these occupations and their attendant carnage a permanent fixture of the national policy.

Although we’ve been told in the media that military operations in the Iraq War have ended, the fact is that is has merely been re-branded by the Obama Administration. The U.S. occupation has merely shifted towards ever greater reliance on corporate mercenary forces like Blackwater, which kill without accountability to American or Iraqi law. And when these mercenaries themselves die, their deaths are not counted in the official casualty rates, even though they now rival that of regular soldiers.

Rather than just quietly enduring the local budgetary crisis that the town of Amherst is suffering as a direct result of the government’s vast expenditures on such folly, I’m proud that Amherst Town Meeting took a stand to call for an end to this madness. The amount of money used for the military from Amherst tax payers would solve every aspect of the budgetary crisis the town is in now and have plenty left over for providing sick people, including returning veterans, with health care.

But it is not enough to talk about our suffering in Amherst as it is related to these wars.
We must also acknowledge the suffering our government is causing abroad to the primary victims of these wars – the civilian populations of the countries the U.S. Military is occupying and bombing.

Regular Afghans and Iraqis suffer from desperate poverty on an every day basis, but the U.S. presence in their homelands simply makes their lives more unstable. I think it is time that students at UMass who see the immorality of these wars challenge the Student Government Association to join with the town of Amherst in condemning them. There’s no hiding anymore behind the hollow rhetoric of “support the troops,” when it is so plain that the primary thing hurting the troops is the military itself. Let’s connect the dots and recognize that the same war machine that destroys lives abroad destroys them here as well. It’s time that we stand up loudly, and to be more daring in our resistance to militarism and war.

Ben Grosscup
Amherst, Mass.