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Volume CXXXIII, Number 3 |
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Overreaction to new keg policy
To the Editors,
I'm writing to clarify some aspects of last week's article about Howell House and Inter-House Council (IHC) policy. The IHC has never allowed Howell to register kegs, nor does it have the power to grant that ability. The college houses are allowed to register six of the ten kegs permitted on campus each weekend night. The new policy reported last week is simply a formalization of the common IHC practice of spreading out parties between houses as we have always done in past years. The kegs that the other five houses are not registering on the nights of Howell events are still available to the general campus, just as on any other night when the college houses register fewer than six kegs. In fact, last Friday not one of the ten kegs available to the whole campus was requested for.
I think the displeasure this policy created is, in general, an overreaction resulting from misinformation. Our keg distribution policy is an internal procedural matter and, in practice, has not changed from previous years. Not having an alcoholic campus wide party at another house on a night that Howell has a party is not a guarantee of great time at Howell, however, it is certainly not a guarantee that other houses will lose out. If the issues of alcohol or other programs at College Houses are of great concern to you, feel free to bring it up with your affiliate house.
Mark Lucci '04
Inter-House Council President
To the Editors,
This is in response to Pat Rockefeller's column last week, "Cali-freakin'-fornia in shambles." After the 2000 presidential election effectively cost most rational Americans their faith in others' ability to remove their own hanging chads, the California secretary of state decertified the use of punch-card machines, effective March 2004. Six counties - Los Angeles, Santa Clara, San Diego, Sacramento, Mendocino and Solano - have yet to replace their voting machines with more user-friendly technology.
It is true that the California constitution does mandate that recall elections occur within 80 days of obtaining the specified number of signatures. However, when we re-elected Gray Davis in November, no one could anticipate the need for new voting machines prior to the March deadline. Knowing that punch-card machines carry a margin of counting error 2.5 times that of other machines, and having learned from the mistakes of Florida in the last presidential election, can we in good conscience condone the disenfranchisement of an estimated 40,000 people when there is still time to do something about it?
There is an argument, I think a pretty good one, that anyone who is not responsible enough to remove chads from a ballot probably shouldn't be voting in the first place. After all, voting machines, even the new ones, are only more user-friendly, not idiot-proof. However, as a registered voter of Los Angeles County, I'm personally grateful that the 9th Circuit believes in the basic democratic principle that all of us, even Cali-freakin'-fornians, have the right not only to vote, but to have that vote count.
When you live in the country's second-largest metro area, and your little neighborhood by itself has 200,000 people, you already feel enough like a number. The fact that any one of us can run for governor as long as we have $3,500 and 65 friends, or $0 but 10,000 friends, is the best possible argument that democracy is, in fact, alive and well in California. So maybe it's only the wahoos who come out of the woodwork at a time like this - porn stars, washed-up child actors, a former Mr. Universe. The rest of us have jobs and lives and absolutely no interest in balancing the world's fifth-largest economy. However, rather than proclaiming California to be in shambles, think about how rare it is, how special it is, that so many people from so many walks of life can come forward and say, I may be but one lowly person out of 35,000,000, but I have something to say, and you're going to hear me, even if I have to threaten you with my uzi or, worse, images of me engaged in group sex.
And please, before you start comparing us to that southeastern peninsula who shall remain nameless, kindly remember one thing: we haven't had our election yet, so wait until the votes are counted before you declare it botched. We don't yet have a governator, and if we ever do, by all means commence the earthquakes and mercifully wipe our sorry selves from the face of the earth. However, not before you burst that Bowdoin Bubble of yours and realize a few things, like politics is a lot more complicated than Potholm's mock elections and a freak earthquake is all fun and games until the next presidential election, when you again start coveting what, in 2004, will be 55 very pissed electoral votes.
Melissa Mansir '01 Los Angeles, California
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