Letters to the Editor

Shame on U.

To the Editor:

As a member of the University's championship football team, I feel a few words of praise and disgust are in order.

Kudos to the 18,000-plus fans who braved the non-stop rain and cold to watch us, and for the hilarious chants that they threw at Harvard. I didn't quite hear too much out of Harvard's side after the first quarter. It was a nice pregame showing for the national audience as well, that can make us all proud to be Quakers.

Shame on the University of Pennsylvania Police for their needless display of their might and their attempt to keep celebrating fans from the goal posts. From only a few feet away, I watched cops violently throw two students to the ground and hold them down with nightsticks.

Shame on University President Judith Rodin and the whole administration for pressuring the police department to do so. On a national stage, our fans should not rush the field and attack the posts the way they do everywhere else? You knew the posts wouldn't come down anyway, so why the display of force?

Kudos to the University for saving a few thousand dollars and investing in the sturdiest goal posts known to man and sinking them 30 feet into the ground. You embarrassed the sports fans of our school on national television. I hope you put the money to good use.

All in all, I'm proud of our school as sports fans, but disgusted by our administration.

Roman Galas Wharton '03 The writer is a member of the Penn football team. War, but not for oil

To the Editor:

The recent discussion in the pages of The Daily Pennsylvanian about whether or not to go war with Iraq never once mentioned the primary reason for going to war with Iraq -- the likelihood that al Qaeda is likely to release Iraqi-made biological or nuclear weapons in our cities.

Iraq's support of terror is well known. Although the intelligence community has not disclosed any information they may have about Iraqi links to the Sept. 11 attacks, they did release information about those links for the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. Those discussing war with Iraq seems to have forgotten what Iraq did to Kuwait and what Iraq might have done if the United States had not intervened and what it might do to Kuwait if it does get weapons of mass destruction.

Those who argue that war will hurt Iraqi children are ignoring the fact that, under Saddam's regime, humanitarian aid is being diverted from feeding children to the development of weapons. If Saddam were to get control of Middle Eastern oil, poor children all over the world would suffer.

Gamaliel Isaac Biomedical Graduate '92

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