Letters to the Editor

Holiday policy

To the Editor:

While I am pleased that the University canceled classes on Monday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I am disturbed that other national holidays are not given equal observation.

Columbus, Veterans', and Presidents' Days are all legal public holidays, and yet the University has ignored them by requiring students to attend classes as usual.

Dr. King's noble crusade for equality and justice deserves to be honored. Nonetheless, it is imperative that Penn administrators establish a consistent policy on the observance of federal holidays. I sincerely hope that such a policy would reflect nonpartisan respect for all legal American holidays, rather than just those that are especially appealing to special interests within the Penn community.

Scott Kahn, College '08

The real crisis

To the Editor:

In Kevin Collins' column ("Don't cut the safety net," The Daily Pennsylvanian, 1/18/2005) the limits of truth were once again tested.

Collins, who accuses the Republican Party of fabricating a Social Security crisis, is simply ignorant of history, at best.

The man who brought to public attention the social security crisis was none other than former President Bill Clinton. Although he did nothing about it, he started a major campaign speaking about the issue. In fact, Al Gore made a pivotal point of his presidential campaign the use of the budget surplus to solve the issue, for those of you who already forgot.

But you don't have to take my word for it. In President Clinton's own State of the Union in 1999, he spoke at length about the issue. In fact, it was the first issue he spoke about. "So first and above all, we must save Social Security for the 21st century," he said. "Today, Social Security is strong. But by 2013, payroll taxes will no longer be sufficient to cover monthly payments. And by 2032, the trust fund will be exhausted, and Social Security will be unable to pay out the full benefits older Americans have been promised." I recommend reading the speech, readily available online.

Collins then proceeds to propose simple solutions to the crisis that doesn't exist. Raising taxes and reducing benefits are precisely the non-solutions the president is trying to avoid, for obvious reasons.

Micah Wiesenberg

The author is a first-year graduate student in the School of Engineering and Applied Science

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