Sex offenders deserve harsher punishment

Dear Editor,

I read your editorial concerning sex offenders and their “banishment” to modern-day leper colonies and chuckled.

I chuckled because you obviously are not a parent. Since I am a parent of an 11-year-old girl, I can tell you that your concern for the well-being of sex offenders will drastically change once you bring a child into this world. Once you realize that your child, be it a boy or a girl, is a possible target for these sick bastards, you will do anything — anything — to keep your child safe from predators.

And considering the environment here in California about executing people for heinous crimes — murder, rape, child molestation — the only alternative to taking all child molesters out of the gene pool with a 9mm bullet in the skull is to isolate them in such a way that they will not be “tempted” by school-age children. If that means “leper colonies,” then so be it.

Putting a “Lo Jack” on them should be the least of their concerns and since the so-called “progressives” here in California cannot condone permanently removing these pieces of filth from society via execution, it’s the minimum price they should pay for robbing a child of its innocence.

— Michael May

Earl Warren College senior

Eucalyptus groves deserve more notice

Dear Editor,

I thought the eucalyptus groves had great meaning and symbolism and usage for the university, and that they additionally represented an unused natural resource which could be utilized for bringing a new academic discipline to the campus of UCSD, and also a few other University of California campuses. In case the campus wasn’t aware, I have been operating a survey for the last month to determine the campus awareness of the groves and [their] relation to a multigrants, multidiscipline program and project, in addition to the new agronomy club I am attempting to get off the ground here.

What I have found is that no one on campus actually cares at all what happens to the eucalyptus groves or about a multimillion dollar new curriculum, department, lab facilities and many, many more jobs, or even of having a new campus club to support a new curriculum.

I have found that most who saw the several notices have no awareness of trees at all, much less the eucalyptus environment here at UCSD. Or they see agronomy and they say, “Hey, UCSD doesn’t have any agronomy department or courses. What good will that do me?” But we could have such a department and course of study.

That is what I am trying to stimulate, for the university and maybe for you or someone else. There’s no reason why UCSD can’t have agronomy. The agronomy club community service element was going to be and still can be sound, hands-on training, which was hopefully to blossom into the Internship part of the submitted program, once the California Eucalyptus Program for Scholars got off the ground. Check out CEPS! (http://www.gcmalleeeucalyptusoilfarm.com)

Unless there is a better understanding of our goals and other feedback from those who may be interested, it would appear that something very, very, good — almost essential — for UCSD and its continuing eucalyptus groves will have heard its death knell.

— Georges L. Mener

Administrator, California Eucalyptus Program for Scholars

Bush regime provides costume ideas

Dear Editor,

What are you doing for Halloween? How about dressing up as a dead person — a victim of the Bush regime — one that has already died either in New Orleans, Iraq or crossing the U.S./Mexico border? Or put on an orange jumpsuit and bag over your head and be a torture victim in Abu Ghraib prison.

Or you could be a future victim of the Bush regime: a woman who dies of an illegal abortion, from spousal abuse, or vigilante gangs of white racists like the Minutemen. Or maybe you died under military quarantine from the bird flu, or committed suicide in 2010 because of gay bashing. Or you died in a concentration camp because you disagreed with the Bush regime. Any other ideas? But for this to have an impact, maybe you should wear signs: “victim of the Bush regime, 2006” — “died in a pandemic” — to make it clear what you mean.

— Milton H. Saier, Jr.

Professor of molecular biology, UCSD