Tuesday, September 11, 2001

Your views
Letters to the Editor

Undergrad experience remains focus of TCU administration

Please allow me to voice my disagreement with the Skiff’s Editorial on last Friday entitled “Down Here: Undergraduate experience must be retained.” This once again is a representation of the Skiff’s propensity to engage in one-sided attacks on the TCU Administration and attempting to create controversy just for the sake of having something to write about.
Apparently, the Skiff’s editorial board elected not to listen to Chancellor Ferrari's entire Convocation Address last Thursday. They simply heard him say something about improving TCU’s graduate programs and potentially adding new ones that will help increase our visibility and stature. Then they decided they could spin this comment into a message of gloom and doom for the TCU Undergraduate Experience. Get a grip.
Earlier in the same address, the Chancellor reiterated what he has said numerous times since he arrived at TCU: “All of us recognize that while doctoral programs and research are important at TCU, our primary focus is at the undergraduate level with selective ambitions at the masters’ and doctoral levels.”
TCU is, and always will be, a superior place to get an undergraduate education. TCU has shown this commitment repeatedly in the form of renovated and new residential facilities, renovated classrooms, new academic buildings, outstanding co-curricular programs, and, coming soon, a renovated recreation center and a renovated Student Center. This is a golden age. Why don’t we just appreciate it, instead of creating controversy?

Increase in parking ticket fines unreasonable, unjust annoyance

I am writing this letter in response to Emily Ward’s article about the TCU parking woes, “Prices go up, still no parking,” in the August 28th issue of the Skiff. I am very frustrated with the continuous parking problems at TCU.
I am a senior and, like Emily, I have recently realized that come May I will no longer have to deal with parking here. Sadly enough, I am more excited about that than I am about graduating. I feel that the University has put forth a fairly pathetic effort to accommodate its students when it comes to parking.
It seems as though TCU feels raising ticket prices will be seen as an effective deterrent to parking illegally. However, it only infuriates students more. I know for a fact that it is not our fault that the enrollment has exponentially risen making the housing more difficult to get into and therefore causing more students to move off campus. That, in turn, invites more commuters to park in consistently crammed full lots. To top it all off, there seems to be fewer crammed full lots available.
It seems to me that this is now in the hands of the TCU administration. Only they can rectify the situation. A student body like ours can only complain to each other while taking out loans to pay our parking tickets, but it is doubtful someone with any importance will consider our complaints.

— Stephanie Alderson,
senior speech
communication major

Events need advance coverage for full benefit to Skiff readers

To attend convocation, first you have to know about it. Concerts, dances, toga parties and the like, engender the slaughter of hundreds of trees as campus media and posters promote them well in advance, yet robed professors striding to TCU’s convocation overheard numerous students asking, “What’s happening? What’s going on?”
Skiff, where were you? Reporting an event past is certainly commendable. But isn’t it more important to promote it ahead of time, so that your readership will be informed and able to attend and enjoy the entertainment for themselves. Entertainment? Of course! Along with all those announcements about TCU’s immediate future, and recognition of important research and mentoring, there was also some really good music, an exploding and errant sound system, and a professor who proved beyond a doubt that she could chow down on a big wad of gum and walk down the aisle in her robe at the same time. Man! It was worth being there. But you didn’t bother to tell anybody it was gonna happen.
Unfortunately, it’s now too late to do anything about this year. If, however, we are lucky, there may be a next year, with its very own Fall Convocation. Perhaps, oh editors, you will pass along the idea to your successors that convocation is a worthy event, and that it merits advance mention.

— Bob Vann,
administrative coordinator
for the TCU Writing Center

Sunday’s speaker disrespectful, inappropriately vulgar to Greeks

On Sunday Sept. 9, a woman was invited to speak to the entire Greek community about sex. This attempt, if it even can be called that, was disrespectful and vulgar. It was a crude speech unfit for even locker room talk.
For this reason, I speak for many students at Texas Christian University who were most disrespected and appalled by this lewd speech. I heard many students say that it was unneeded and one of the most disgusting speeches they had ever heard. Across the auditorium I saw looks of embarrassment as people sat shocked. I hated having to hear how sex is the most important aspect of a relationship and most of all I hated feeling like the goal of everything... is sex.
Overall, this speech had no business being presented to students who attend a university whose mission statement is “to educate individuals to think and act as ethical leaders ...” This speech was unethical by any definition.
The speaker cheapened the importance of relationships by making sex come before respect. It instructed guys to try to seduce girls for sex and made fun of a relationship without it.
This perverted speech was unneeded and unappreciated by guys and girls alike which was obvious by the many students who got up and left the auditorium. I want to commend those who stood up for what they believe in.

— Angelica Rosas,
freshman broadcast journalism major

TCU-SMU rivalry alive and well throughout past several decades

This is in response to Rusty Simmons’ “story” about the SMU-TCU rivalry. Have you ever seen a football game in your life? I don’t mean flip the channel past it while you get to an after school special on arts and crafts. I mean really watch the game from beginning to end. Or, even better, play football. I guess you don’t recall that both SMU and TCU have won national championships. Maybe you slept through the eighties when the Mustangs were in such demand that they had to move from Texas Stadium to the Cotton Bowl to play. It is amusing that you try to qualify your article with stats like the 1950 game that was 9-3.
How dare you question the lack of intensity in this rivalry. I doubt you have any idea of the nature of this other than what they may have taught you in the dorms at Texas Christian.
You mention that Army-Navy is a rivalry and Harvard-Yale is a rivalry, but you turn around and say that the teams in a rivalry must be in the top 25. Are you joking?

— Vann Shank,
Dallas resident