Slivka construction shows students arn’t top priority

They just don’t get it.

If University President Henry Bienen and the Office of Development still don’t know why Northwestern has a problem soliciting alumni donations, I have two words for them: Slivka Hall.

Now being built smack in the middle of the fraternity quad, where students used to congregate, socialize and play basketball, is a future engineering residential college. Besides being an eyesore, the project reeks of every reason why alumni donations are difficult to raise.

Plain and simple, students feel like they are not the main priority on this campus. How else do they explain that their one remaining open space other than the Lakefill was taken away from them without any student input whatsoever? How else do they explain that Dillo Day, the one day where NU actually has a campuswide day of fun and community, will never be the same because there will be a dorm where the student body used to spend it’s time?

Last year at an Associated Student Government meeting, I asked Bienen about the general feeling among students that they weren’t the university’s top priority, and he replied that my claim couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s time administrators open their eyes and ears, and stop living in the lie that NU students are as happy as ever and feel as if their $30,000-plus tuition is being spent with their wants and needs in mind.

Evan Levine

Weinberg junior

Appeasing terrorists will only lead to more attacks

When your country is being subjected to a continuing, vicious attack by a barbaric and implacable enemy, and your country has the means to defend itself, there can be only three possible reasons to oppose military action: stupidity, cowardice or treason.

Just how does one make peace with an enemy so dishonorable and unprincipled that it refuses to even acknowledge that it is attacking you? By changing U.S. foreign policy, as some suggest? By “reducing their poverty?” To give the terrorists anything they want would be to teach them that killing Americans works. They have learned that lesson too many times before.

History gives us ample proof that appeasement does not work. At best, we might buy ourselves a year or two of respite until our enemy decides to demand more and attack again, perhaps with even more powerful weapons. Our enemy despises us. We cannot make them love us, and we can only make them respect us by defending ourselves.

I am not a knee-jerk hawk. I vocally opposed our involvement in the Gulf War in 1991 because I thought it was a bad idea to get more deeply involved in the conflicts of that region. And I recognize that U.S. polices provided part of the motive for the Sept. 11 attack. But, however this conflict came about, the battle is now joined. The enemy will never relent unless we force it to relent. To try to walk away from this fight now would be to invite our enemy to shoot us in the back.

Gary Hantsbarger

Graduate Student in statistics