Friday, March 29, 2024
HomeOpinionLetters to the Editor

Letters to the Editor

- advertisement -

UCI Gets Enough Recognition from Irvine
Upon reading your latest editorial, I am confused about what you really want out of Irvine.
On the one hand, you imply that the City of Irvine does not give enough back to UC Irvine in the form of late-night entertainment.
Less than 10 minutes from the UCI campus is the Irvine Spectrum, and despite what many people seem to complain about, Anaheim and Orange really aren’t very far away.
From what I understand there are also places of recreation for college-age students in Lake Forest, which is an exit after the Spectrum.
I’m not exactly sure where you are hearing people ‘constantly fuel stereotypes about UCI students being bad drivers or party animals,’ but I was raised in Irvine and have lived here for over 19 years.
On the contrary, I actually find people to be interested in what I am studying at UCI when they see me wear a UCI sweatshirt or show my ID card.
On the other hand, you lament that there is no recognition of UCI accomplishments or activities within the Irvine community. Every Thursday Irvine residents receive the official Irvine newsletter, the Irvine World News, which always has an abundance of articles about UCI research breakthroughs, events, sports matches and otherwise.
In accordance with your request that there should be more ‘major’ media coverage from, say, the Orange County Register or the Los Angeles Times, the Irvine World News is an affiliate of the Orange County Register.
If you would like more UCI coverage from these periodicals, then perhaps it would be better to appeal directly to them than to the city.
A survey of the City of Irvine’s Web site will point you to a calendar of UCI events, and similarly for Irvine’s other colleges, Irvine Valley College and Concordia University. UCI may not seem to be the biggest claim-to-fame for this city, but it’s also not the only focal point of activity, either.
The Irvine that I was raised in and the Irvine that I live in now are not even comparable to one another.
Irvine has made leaps and bounds, and not all for the better, in my opinion, in its economic and demographic growth. Irvine may not be your ideal college town, but it most certainly provides a more than adequate living location.
Ryan Winkleman
second-year
biological sciences

M.J.’s Mental Health is No Excuse

I am highly concerned that Zachary Gale believes that ‘an equally important question is whether Michael Jackson considered the acts in which he engaged to be a crime.’ Since when did ignorance of the law become a defense for a crime, espeically one as heinos as child molestation?
I highly doubt that Mr. Gale would hold these same values if it was his child that was allegedly intoxicated and molested by Mr. Jackson.
It is not nthe courts to decide if achiild was ‘raised correctly or not’ as Mr. Gale believes.
Would he hold that murdering gang members in South Central Los Angeles should go free because their ‘growth as a fully functionaing human being has been stymied’ by their unprivileged life?
Mr. Jackson and the criminals in South Central are alike in being raised at the extremes (albeit opposite extemes) of childhood. They are also alike in that neither should have thier childhood used as a legal defense for their actions.

Sigmund Paczkowski
second-year
biological sciences