Keep the nuclear frontier closed
Monique DeVoe's article, "Reopening the Nuclear Frontier," (10/3) was one of the worst solutions to the energy crisis I have ever read.
While denigrating the benefits of hydroelectric power Ms. DeVoe references the failure of the Banqiao Dam in China. While trivializing the dangers of nuclear power plant failures Ms. DeVoe urges us to not worry because Chernobyl was constructed using failed Soviet technology and the Three Mile Island disaster happened a long time ago. Ms. DeVoe fails to realize that the Banqiao Dam failure occurred before both Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. Also, she apparently has a lot more faith in the early 1950's Communist Chinese scientists that built the Banqiao Dam, but not Soviet scientists. In dismissing the Soviet scientists and blaming them for the failure, Ms. DeVoe fails to mention the nuclear accidents across the United States, UK, and Canada.
Ms. DeVoe dedicated 13 words in her entire article to the biggest problem with nuclear power: nuclear waste. Nuclear waste is a problem without a solution. It will be around for hundreds of thousands of years. There are also security issues involving the plutonium remaining in nuclear waste. Transporting the waste also becomes an issue. I wonder how Ms. DeVoe would react to trains of nuclear waste chugging through Tempe on their way to her back yard to store the waste she deems so inconsequential.
Ms. DeVoe should be less hasty to dismiss ecologically friendly sources of energy such as solar and wind power. She is living in a city that has more than 300 days of sunshine yet she claims solar power is unreliable.
I would urge Ms. DeVoe to do some research into the thousands of people who developed cancer as a result of the Chernobyl disaster which affected areas as far away as France and the UK.
Cory M. Pechtl
Alumni
Frat boy deserves no pity
(This letter is a response to "What about him?" which ran Tuesday.)
First, let me commend the girl who reported this sexual assault and then had the courage to ask it re-opened when the police tried to sweep it under the rug. Now to the issue at hand. In Thursday's issue Kenneth Anthony asked "What about him?" To which I respond, "Why should we care?" He is the one who did something morally wrong by sleeping with a girl who was incapacitated. He is the one who made a moral choice, and made the wrong one. I am appalled that in order to defend this unnamed person he would suggest that the poor girl "wouldn't take no for an answer." Guess what. It is still rape. The real matter though is the suggestion that "If you don't want sex don't get blitzed at a frat party." That is not only insulting to women, suggesting they if they are drunk they give up their rights as human beings or somehow deserve to be raped; but it is insulting to men because it is suggested that we just cant help but have sex with vulnerable people.
Both are false.
Just because a woman gets drunk at your party does not mean you get to skip the part where you convince her honestly to sleep with you and go straight to the fluid exchange. And no one should EVER, no matter how incapacitated they are, expect to be raped, because the people around them SHOULD make the choice not to do so. I don't care how long the guy goes to prison for. He made a conscious choice to sleep with someone who couldn't give consent, he deserves what he gets. If he was too drunk to consent as well, then it is just sad and creepy, and he may have a good defense in court.
Benjamin Allen
Undergraduate
Why DID you go greek?
In response to Jacki Rovner's "Not just another sorority girl," there's a lot of valid criticism of sororities that fit the stereotype as well as the people that preemptively assume that everyone who joins one fits that stereotype. And while both Rovner (and myself) acknowledge that many frats and sororities occasionally do positive things both for its members and the community, I find myself wondering if there isn't an easier way to achieve the same positive outcome without the suppression of self-actualization, without the stereotypes, without the expense, without the ceremony, and without the exclusion.
There's a suggestion given at the end of Rovner's article that actually poses a fairly pertinent question, then: given these negative connotations attached to Greek life, why DID you go Greek? What was offered by a frat or sorority that wasn't offered somewhere else, or by some other means?
Christian Parrinello
Undergraduate
