Letters to the Editor March 28, 2011

I read both articles titled “The death of liberal arts education” and “Failure to create an academic community.” I felt that both had a snobby attitude. You said in your paper that the world would be barren if the social sciences, humanities, philosophy and art were no longer a part of the educational dialogue. You would say that after we take our general education that we don’t study ethics, sociology or humanities. I would beg to differ. I am an accounting major and in this field being ethical is all that you have. This is a field of trust.

As a business person, you must understand the social environment where you do business. It is things like this that make business people seem like elitists who don’t care about humanity. The reason there are not a lot of students interested in those classes is because, quite frankly, they are boring. Before you start saying that the people in other fields besides the liberal arts don’t understand what is in the social sciences, humanities and philosophy, I would urge you to do research. I know what is in their way of thinking. I don’t know the specifics, but I know they are idiots, especially those Marx and Mao fellows.

You complain students don’t go to events. Not all of us are here to get the education that you are suggesting. Some of us want to get a real education that we can use in the real word. Ten years from now, I am not going to care what team won the PAC-10. I am going to care on how much I learned from this school. The reason people like me don’t go to games is because we live away from the school. We are not going to drive 30 minutes to attend school, drive home and drive back to school in four hours to watch a basketball game. We have this thing called a life and it consists of more than going to school. Some of us have kids, jobs – heck, for me just attending school is enough. Before you start throwing your opinion around, why don’t you do this: take 20 credits of classes, work at least part-time and see if you can make the extracurricular activities.
-Jory Smith

I was reading your article on low student involvement and something that was said bothered me. In your article it states, “703 students logged onto UVLink to vote. Two percent of the student body decided who would represent them and their 32,000 classmates.”

My problem is many people, including myself, didn’t vote because there was nobody to vote against – no options. I knew, whether I voted or not, the candidates would win; that was my reason. I guess I cannot speak for everyone.
-Cindy Nunez