Letters to the Editor

To the Editor:

While griping is something I am not fond of, I feel it is important that students have a full understanding of where our tuition money is going.

In a recent e-mail to the JMU community, Mark Warner, senior vice president of student affairs, told us about our Board of Visitors' recent decision regarding so-called "emergency contraceptive pills."

The decision was two-fold. One, it "reaffirmed the ability of JMU Health Center physicians to prescribe emergency contraceptive pills," and two, it "directed the University Health Center to discontinue the dispensing of emergency contraceptive pills." Emergency contraceptive pills are otherwise known as "morning-after pills."

The controversy surrounding these pills stems from the fact that they are abortive in nature. Morning-after pills prevent a fertilized egg from surviving.

I do not mean to write regarding abortion. What I do hope to convey is how I find it unfortunate that my tuition money is in the least bit tied to any sort of abortive procedure. I do not think it is the role of a physician employed by JMU to prescribe abortive pills.

While the board has moved in the right direction, inasmuch as physicians at the Health Center may no longer merely give these pills away, more needs to be done. Individuals on this campus that feel that life begins at conception must demand that they not be compelled to fund this covert abortive procedure simply because they choose to attend this great university.

It is upsetting to me that my tuition and fees are linked even distantly to destroying a fertilized egg. Such compulsory funding is not necessary.

Physicians at the Health Center should not prescribe these pills. Students attending JMU must not be forced to fund a procedure they find morally unacceptable.

Broderick Bond
senior, SCOM

To the Editor:

I am writing in response to the decision to create the Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay and Transgender Resource Center. You will have to forgive my being politically incorrect, but I adamantly am opposed to such an organization.

I am not opposed to the Resource Center existing, but rather the fact that JMU is funding it. If JMU is funding something, it is largely the students who pay for it.

As a Christian, I consider it unacceptable to have my tuition money support a lifestyle of which I disapprove. I feel that I would be remiss in remaining silent after the Student Government Association made such an important decision based on a petition signed by only 10 percent of the student body. I have spoken to a number of people who also feel that they have not been represented.

In today's world, people act like anything involving homosexuality is not a debatable issue. One simply must keep his or her mouth shut and accept it, or come off as a bigot. It makes no difference to me how anyone chooses to live his or her life. However, once I start financially contributing to one kind of sin, how does that differ from funding an abortion clinic, or buying people drugs or other activities that I have no interest in supporting?

In closing, I would like to state that the intent of this letter is not to put anyone down, though that is how it will be interpreted by some. It is merely to speak for those of us who have a conservative moral point of view. Our voices are drowned out in the constant roar of liberalism that exists on most college campuses, including our own. I urge those who agree with me to make their voices heard on this matter.

Tom Deary
junior, history

To the Editor:

In his editorial in the April 17 edition of The Breeze, David Abbott asks why the United States and our allies went to war against Iraq and how we can explain the decision to the Iraqi people. As he failed to find answers, I should like to propose them.

We went to war in Iraq to destroy an ally of terrorism and to liberate an oppressed people. When 12 years of diplomatic pressure did not force Saddam Hussein to comply with United Nations mandates, and the United Nations refused to assert its power, the United States and Great Britain called on the rest of the world to live up to their obligations and disarm the butcher of Baghdad by force.

Make no mistake — Hussein was a terrorist. Countries develop weapons of mass destruction for two reasons. The first is to use them for deterrence. When a country does this, it makes it known that it has the weapons, otherwise they are not a deterrent.

The other, more sinister reason that a country develops weapons is to use them offensively. When a country plans to use its weapons of mass destruction offensively, it develops its weapons in secret. Clearly, if Hussein had been allowed to continue his weapons development he would have been all too happy to give them to terrorist cells. I know that I sleep more soundly at night knowing that Iraq has been put out of the weapons business.

The second reason that we went to war in Iraq was to liberate an oppressed people. How can anyone who watched the jubilation in the streets of Baghdad April 9 still believe the war was unjustified?

Abbott asks how we can explain our actions to a child who lost her parents. War is a terrible thing, and people die, but, we must look beyond that to the new tomorrow.

I wonder how he can explain to an Iraqi child how she is better off living with the fear of secret police, brutal torture and a murderous dictator who has executed millions of Iraqi people. At least I can tell the child that, even if her parents died in an accident, Americans died so that she can have the same freedom that we take for granted in the United States.

Certainly, there are problems with basic human needs that must be and are being dealt with. As I said before, war is an ugly thing. However, we have overcome such problems before, and I have confidence that we will do it again.

We are at the dawn of a new day in Iraq. There are still shadows lingering from the terror of the night. However, as we overcome those dark patches, we can see that the sun slowly and surely is rising to herald a new and brilliant future for the people of Iraq and the rest of the Middle East.

Mark Ehlers
sophomore, history