LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Work With the Current System

To the Editor: There is no room for complaints about the UA not representing the student body. All of us as undergraduates have the right to vote for the UA, and when only 13 percent of us do so we can blame no one but ourselves. With voter participation that low, it should not be hard for any group to gain more than adequate representation. If the UC seat is worth having, it should also be worth the minimal amount of work needed to gain the seat, under the current system. The solution proposed by the DP editorial staff is less representative than the current system. They suggest that the NEC, a smaller group, select two thirds of the students to sit on UC. While well intended, this would only shift the blame for the lack of representation, not solve the problem. If you want better representation don't waste your time changing the system, spend that time using the current system to your advantage. Sean Marzolf Engineering '98 Protest Raises Important Issues To the Editor: Having just read "The Pseudo 60s," I must protest. I was one of the protesters on last Friday involved with the classic Berkeley activism example, the Clinique protest. The protest was not silly and sophomoric. The issues it brought up were and are important. There was not one focal point like make-up. It was an event that posed many questions from education to womens self-image in which many different people participated. There was not one point of view and there was not one spokesperson. Elliott Witney, half the time with his name is misspelled, is mentioned constantly. He was an involved member, but not the leader or the maker of the "brain-child" protest. There were many people who organized it and participated in it. A lot of work went into planning it. In the end, I believe the crowd was entertained, lisened, and thought about the issues involved. The absent parent rules the universities imposed where the focal point of the protests in the 60s, as well as were the strict university educational programs. The activist students protested the freedom of speech (saying the F-word at Berkeley) and the educational programs their university had. It was not until the end of the 60s when the protests got political, making Vietnam the focal point well into the 70s. The womens movement also had its start in the 60s. Apart from job opportunity and equality, the women protested make-up. In the Miss America protest, they dressed up a sheep and burnt lipsticks -- street theater entertainment. Karina Sliwinski College '98 n To the Editor: Abby Beshkin ends her column about the Clinque protest, "Covering Up Issues" (DP 11/30/95), by stating, "If the protesters could channel their energies a little more concretely next time, they might just do some good." As a participant in the protest, I take strong offense at this remark. Beshkin implies that we, the protesters, wasted our energy, were too abstract and in turn, were ineffective. She also implies that the protest did no good. On all of these counts, Beshkin is wrong. Hundreds of people passed by as we protested in front of The Book Store. Most of them were curious as to what was going on -- a group of costumed, poster-waving people yelling loudly about issues is not commonplace on Locust Walk. Many people stopped to see what we were all about. Some ridiculed us, I am sure. But more, I think, were amused by the catchy chants tossed back and forth and were intrigued by the unusual guerilla-theater style format for the protest. And as people stopped to watch the entertainment, they were forced to think, for at least a moment, about the questions we were raising. In the two weeks since the protest, numerous people have approached me, many of whom I'd never met before, wanting to talk about the protest. The vast majority of these people thanked me for the effort we made in bringing awareness to issues that they considered extremely relevant on our campus and in society as a whole, but had too often been ignored. They spoke of the satisfaction they felt in seeing these issues being brought to attention and expressed overwhelming support for our attempts to raise awareness about these issues. Abby Beshkin, in her column, hoped that maybe next time, we protesters "might just do some good." Abby, I think we already have. Holly Shere College '98 Title IX Anyone? To The Editors: As a big fan of both men's and women's basketball here at Penn, I was pleased to see as I picked up the Nov. 27 DP issue that it was the annual "Preseason Basketball Issue." Unfortunately, I have somehow gotten a copy which covers only the men's team. Was this an error which occurred across the entire print run? Are there complete and/or corrected copies available? Shelley Krause Graduate School of Education student Undergraduate Admissions staff member

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