Failure to sign complaint puts other students’ safety at risk

The student who refused to sign a complaint against the two suspects involved in the incident at Sherman Avenue and Noyes Street was wrong.

Maybe he wasn’t harmed, but someone else will be. We are dealing with a serious wave of crime, and the police need all the support possible. By refusing to sign the complaint, more people will be at risk, and it is very discouraging for the police.

Danielle Pickard

Program assistant, Information Technology

Men lack the biological basis for reproductive rights debate

Memo to Ben Snyder and James Fee (letter to the editor, Nov. 3): Men will have a right to dictate reproductive choice when men can get pregnant. Until then it’s none of their business.

Janet Caires-Lesgold

Secretary, department of materials science and engineering

Reclaiming one race doesn’t require insulting another

When I read the headline on Marisa Maldonado’s Nov. 4 column, “Reclaiming a white identity on campus,” I thought, “Oh look, The Daily has reverted to shock tactics to make me read this article.” Upon reading it I was disappointed the headline was not merely a ploy.

Marisa, I agree it is important to recognize both sides of your heritage. If you ever want to find out more about your Irish heritage, take history Prof. Thomas Heyck’s class on modern Ireland in historical perspective. Surely you’ll see Ireland’s rap for having “blander food” than Puerto Rico results from the potato being the sole provision your ancestors survived on that “colder island.”

You seem to be confused about “ethnic pride,” including your example of “one California high school student (who) is starting her own white pride club to celebrate her ethnicity.” First of all “white” is not an ethnicity. Based on historical perspective, “white,” as well as “black,” has always been a socially constructed category in the United States and around the world. Secondly, the NAACP has spoken out against 15-year-old Lisa McClelland’s club idea, because such a group would reopen wounds of racial bigotry.

It is an insult to the Polish American Students Alliance and Russian Students Association to group them with a “white pride club.” Maybe it’s time you learned groups such as the Polish and Russians haven’t always been considered “white enough” by people who form white pride clubs.

By all means embrace all sides of your heritage, Marisa. But not at the expense of others.

Meryl Alper

Communication junior

Students need to recognize crime as a part of ‘urban life’

The Daily’s Oct. 30 editorial about crime in Evanston reflects a belief that is either naive, disturbingly elitist or both — that college students deserve a special exemption from the perils of urban life.

In pieces such as yours and in the overall fury about assaults on students, the notion seems to be that crime shouldn’t happen to students because, well, they’re students.

You say if an Evanston resident were subjected to an attack like the one that happened Oct. 25 on Clark Street, “the outcry would be overwhelming.” Do you read your own newspaper? You frequently publish police items of only one or two paragraphs about assaults and robberies, some of them quite brutal, committed against nonstudent residents. That these crimes do not trigger a hue and cry in the community reveals that folks off campus are sadly aware of and resigned to the level of crime afflicting the city.

I wonder if you have considered that on some blocks in Evanston, crime is nearly a daily occurrence. I am sure the people on those blocks, like Northwestern students, wish that city government and police would do more to prevent assaults. But until the criminals pack up and move away, nothing short of a cop on every corner is going to ensure that a person, student or not, can walk anywhere and at any time and expect absolute protection from harm.

I understand that the campus community is frightened and disturbed by recent events, and I hope the university and the city police are successful with new measures in crime prevention. But a little recognition that it’s a big, bad world out there that doesn’t give free passes to those with student IDs is in order.

Terry Stanton

Oak Park, Ill.