Letters to the editor

Duke Dog support appreciated

We would like to thank you for your overwhelming support of Duke Dog during his campaign for Mascot of the Year. You made him the most popular mascot, and for that we congratulate you.

Unfortunately, we did not win the overall competition. The mascot competition is a two-part process: online voting and entry judging. We won the online vote and were named "Most Popular Mascot" by Capital One, but we had no involvement in the judging portion of the process. We do not know the results of the judging portion of the contest so that the online voting is not influenced.

We were well aware of the process for determining the winner of the contest before we entered, and signed an agreement before entering to that end. Like you, we are disappointed that we did not win, but we would hope that you as fans and wonderful representatives of JMU would take great pride in the fact that the portion you could influence was won by your constant and overwhelming support. We will be working hard this year to develop a great presentation to make the team again next year, and to try again to make Duke Dog the Mascot of the Year.

We look for your positive support during this process, and your overwhelming support again if we make the team next year. Thank you for your support, and for making Duke Dog the most popular mascot in the nation. You should be very proud.

Brad Edmondson
Director of Athletic Marketing

Police, JMU should provide crime facts

The article titled "Winter break-ins preventable" in the Jan. 24 edition reiterates the obvious by telling students to lock their doors and windows if they don’t want to be robbed. It is nice for us to all be reminded of that fact, but shouldn’t we all also be able to take a proactive role in catching this person?
WHSV, local news channel 3, reported that there have been 93 robberies in the Harrisonburg area since November, and that over 90 percent of those have taken place in the JMU community. We, as a community, not only should be concerned with locking our doors but we also should be concerned with catching this person so we can stop living in fear.

A robbery took place last week in my own apartment building and I was notified of this by a passerby — not by the police to warn me or to ask me questions about seeing anything suspicious. I know another person who was robbed in another complex who gave the police a clear description of the assailant which matched many of the other victims’ descriptions. Why aren’t we informed of this description so that we can be more aware and help in the search?

I think the police and the JMU community should be doing a much better job of getting the information out there. Give us descriptions, sketches, times and places; ask us questions, we might have the answer.

Meredith West
junior, dietetics

Demonstration poorly supported

On Friday, the face of anti-abortion took the form of four males, all dressed as the Grim Reaper, standing silently on the commons holding massive signs that contained undocumented anti-abortion statistics.

Students have the right to know where the statistics came from. When I asked one man where he got his statistics, he refused to reply.

I asked them, "Do you know anyone who has ever been faced with the decision of whether to have an abortion?" "How has having an abortion affected your life?" No replies. Apparently being male and contemplating an abortion had left them speechless.

This brings me to my second reason to oppose the protest. Was the protest tasteful, successful or appropriate in representing the belief of anti-abortionists? The answer was an overwhelming "no" by anti-abortion males and females alike. Although their use of visual rhetoric was alarming, the protest did little for the anti-abortion cause.

Their choice to remain anonymous and refusal to answer questions consequently failed to persuade me that abortion is about anything other than choice. Being pro-choice is not about the morality of abortion or neglecting life, but rather having faith that women will make responsible decisions. It is about respecting a woman’s right to life and choice. As my grandmother once said, if God had given men a uterus, abortions would never have been challenged. If the Grim Reaper is the face of pro-life, then a compassionate Lady Liberty is the face of pro-choice.

Kate Griendling
freshman, pre-political science