Guardian Stoops to the Level of Self-Reporting

Dear Editor:

We all know those magical two weeks in spring when the A.S. buffoons come out to play and bring the Guardian your only enthusiastic audience, when every candidate reads your pages several times to try and spot their name. This year, I joined their ranks for a nostalgic read over morning coffee, to see if the narcoleptic idiocy of this year’s election could even compare with the turmoil of years past.

Imagine my surprise when, of all people, the Guardian news staff offered the crowning achievement of stupidity. The bar of the Brian/Bryan boxing match has been raised, and I simultaneously congratulate and ridicule you.

Thursday’s cover story about Eddie Herrera, “Lone TU! Candidate Brings Strife to Council,” seemed full of promise; what was this capitalized “Strife”? A fistfight in the cloisters? An elaborate political hazing ritual? Unfortunately, I was treated to 700 words reporting the unbelievable feat that politician Eddie doesn’t get along with politician Conrad.

Why is this news? There are students at UCSD who are breaking new ground in technology and engineering while struggling to pay their loans and rent, a UC pay-off scandal has attracted the eyes and scorn of the world, and my beloved former television station is still withering in despondency. With all of this going on, what makes a two-person pissing match in A.S. with no actual news event (say, a change in policy or threat of violence) worth reporting on?

If that wasn’t laughable enough, I actually started reading the article, and found that your entire basis for the story was three comments posted on your own internal message board. This kind of extremely lazy reporting is a page from the same book that earned Hunter S. Thompson some well-deserved scorn when he attempted to revisit the style of his McGovern presidential campaign coverage while staying home and watching Bill Clinton’s presidential run on television.

Self-reporting is one of the most egregious and embarrassing crimes a newspaper can commit on its front page. But the blood of Citizen Hearst runs strong in you all, so I can see next Thursday’s headline: “Two-time A.S. Candidate and Prolific Guardian Poet Dismayed with College Newspaper’s Reporting Practices.”

— Brian Uiga

John Muir College Alumnus

Colleges Lead in the Fight Against Genocide

Dear Editor:

Often in our history, college students have been ahead of governments in recognizing and fighting for important issues. In 1961, students launched a historic journey into the deep south on the Freedom Rides, risking their lives in pursuit of civil rights. Students have stood alongside janitors and cooks from their campuses to fight for fair wages and other rights. Now students from across California are fighting to end the unthinkable genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan.

Sudan’s brutal Khartoum regime has engaged in a campaign of genocide in the country’s Darfur region in a conflict that has claimed over 200,000 lives and displaced over two million people. While humanitarian groups have courageously assisted the millions of displaced in Darfur, international action has been shamefully underwhelming.

In addition to the UC system, Amherst, Brandeis, Brown, Dartmouth, Harvard, Stanford, and Yale universities have each restricted Sudan investments. The states of New Jersey, Oregon, Illinois, and Maine have also passed divestment legislation and are currently implementing these plans.

The fight is far from over — Sudanese government-backed militias continue their assault on innocent men, women and children in Darfur. California’s students have taken notice, and investors should take notice as well.

Members of the UC Sudan Divestment Taskforce have now teamed up with the national Sudan Divestment Task Force to help pass legislation through Providence, R.I., making it the first city in the United States to divest from Sudan. This tag-team effort is now working with the states of Kansas, New York, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Rhode Island as well as dozens of universities across the country to pass similar legislation.

Faced with the first genocide of the 21st century, the students of California are taking the lead in making sure that the suffering stops.

— Phil Angelides

California State Treasurer

— Adam Sterling

and Jason Miller

Co-Chairs of the UC Sudan Divestment Task Force