Blame game unimportant in Tech tragedy
Please, everyone, stop looking for someone to blame for the tragedy at Virginia Tech.
What happened didn't happen because of the president, the government or our gun laws; I'm sure if a shooter wants badly enough to acquire guns so that he can go on a murderous rampage, he will find a way to get them - whether he follows the laws or not.
I highly doubt any law would have changed anything.
It is not the fault of the school officials or the police officers; we do not truly know the situation they were in at the time, and I'm sure they acted in the best way possible.
If he were that hell-bent on going on a murderous rampage, it would not have made a difference whether the campus was "locked down."
What happened was not also the fault of video games, movies or any other forms of media.
The blame lies solely on one man: Cho Seung-Hui.
Can't we all remember that and just take this time to remember the victims of this horrendous act?
Matt Collins
FRESHMAN
Imus firing unfair
I just want to express my opinion of the Imus thing. I think what he said was inappropriate but not shocking, and I disagree that he should have lost his job because of it.
Everyone knows his on-air personality is rude, arrogant and insensitive, and he's been like that for years. Freedom of speech is still a right, and the more we silence people, despite how offensive or how much we disagree with what's said, the more limited free speech will become.
There have been worse things said on the air, and people haven't lost their jobs because of it, and I think Imus got the shaft.
Amy Wise
SOPHOMORE
Reporting stats in metrics useless
I just read Gina Mizell's story on ASU track team members competing at the Sun Devil and Mt. Sac Relays. From the coverage, I was able to find the fact that ASU athletes had some outstanding performances over the past week and applaud these athletes for their tremendous efforts.
I follow the sports of track and field fairly closely and have attended a number of meets over the past 30 years, including many Olympic Trials meets.
But even I was in the dark attempting to appreciate the significance of the marks that Mizell referred to in her story. All of the field event results were reported in metric distances.
I appreciate that much of the rest of the world uses the metric system and prefers to see results reported as such. But in the U.S. we have never converted over to the metric system, and reporting results in such a manner leaves the reader mystified as to how far athletes threw, jumped or vaulted.
For example, I was very interested to learn what Sarah Steven's new school record was in the shot put, but a mark reported as 18.03 meters is of little help unless I got out my calculator and performed the conversions myself!
I am a scientist by profession and thus know approximately how a metric reading converts to feet - but approximately is of no interest in understanding competitive results.
The frame of reference we use in the U.S. is feet and inches. Would anyone get excited if Aaron Aguayo's near miss at breaking the four-minute barrier in the mile had instead been reported as 0.0667 hours?
Eric Gulve
WEB DEVIL READER
