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Letter from the Editor:

So, it’s the first issue under new leadership. I hope it’s as good as the old.

Any way, we garnered a huge response from the last issue. Keep those letters coming in, we’ll print as many as we have room for. I certainly don’t need to waste any column space writing to you on space reserved for our readers. After all, this is a Forum.

If anyone wants to start writing regularly for us, then send us an e-mail! As Lindsay would say, better to write to us than to talk to your apathetic friend about things.

Try and keep everything in perspective while reading. “Satire” seems to fly over some people’s heads, but I think that’s the point sometimes. Jonathan Swift certainly wasn’t accepted in his society.

Hopefully I hit on everything. Whatever your political and/or religious affiliations are, hopefully you will enjoy this issue of The Clemson Forum.

Bryan Cockfield

Junior, Electrical Engineering

We encourage and welcome any letters expressing your opinions, ideas and comments. All of the content that we receive is edited for grammar, and we do our best to reproduce your letters as accurately as possible.
from www.clemsonforum.com:

In response to Have a Cow and Eat it Too by Bryan Cockfield in the November 2006 issue of the Clemson Forum:

This is one of the most badly written articles I have come across. First of all, just like the author has the right to express his opinion (however poorly researched it might have been), vegetarians/vegans also have a right to educate people about the facts that most Americans are unaware of. The author seems to feel threatened by pamplets distributed legitimately on campus and goes on a meat eating spree. Seems to me more like a ego/self-esteem issue. Regarding the protein deficiency, it is pretty sad that most Americans have no idea that beans and lentils contain a lot of protein and fiber. When so many Americans consume all kinds of supplements ranging from fiber to omega-3 fatty acids, why not be a vegetarian/vegan and take a vitamin B12 supplement? Dont forget that vegetarians get their vitamin B12 from dairy products.

It is understandable why meat eaters justify their eating habits by saying that farm animals are grown for that reason. Thats because once you admit that they are not manufactured things but animals (yes, the same ones you went to pet in a petting zoo as a kid), you will be forced to admit that they have feelings and need to be treated humanely.

It is very sad that Clemson Forum has published this article which has been written in bad taste. A good article is one which can reflect multiple aspects of an incident/story. The author has conveniently forgotten about the hormones and antibiotics given to farm animals. May I also remind you about the Mad Cow Disease which was caused because the cows were fed beef extracts?

I am very dissappointed with your paper because I thought that Clemson Forum publishes more objective articles than the other Clemson papers.

Chaitra Cheluvaraju

Graduate, Bioengineering
from www.clemsonforum.com:

In response to Chaitra Cheluvaraju:

It is a shame you missed the obvious satirical slant of this article. I’m sorry his meat-eating binge upset you, but if you can read past a fourth-grade reading comprehension level you would be able to infer that he did not actually eat that meat and is not actually attacking the practice of vegetarianism.

The point of the article is that the pamphlets accomplish nothing because they are imposing a personal lifestyle choice on people who don’t care. The extended imagery of his carnivorous reaction to the pamphlets references that to a meat-eater, those pamphlets are nothing but an advertisement for meat.

There are arguments both for and against being a vegetarian (i.e. you can take soy supplements or just eat the meat for nutrition) but the choice of being a vegetarian is not one that is worth papering the library bridge in anti-meat paraphernalia. As is clearly stated in the conclusion, the author argues that there are issues far more worthy of our attention than a difference of opinions over eating meat.

Perhaps we could request that the author adjust his writing style for his next article such that it requires less thinking, as follows: “I am reacting to the recent controversy regarding political activists demonstrating on the library bridge. I think it is regrettable that instead of hearing intelligent protests, we are subjected to excessive prodding from vegetarian activists to give up meat with their pamphlets covered, ironically, in pictures of enticing meat products. Perhaps our energy could be more productively directed. So none of you get confused, I do not include in this article a thorough defense of meat-eating versus vegetarianism because I do not think it is a cause worthy of inundating people with facts. If I were arguing that we should eat more meat, then I would have added that there is more than one type of protein, some types which you can only get from meat. I intentionally deleted this excessive information so you the reader could glean from this satire the idea that the energy of protestors is misdirected. Congratulations for managing to read this entire article of drudgery.”

That way we will be able to avoid thinking while reading the newspaper you praise above Clemson’s others!

Erica Morrison

Sophomore, Architecture
The following is from an unknown author on www.theclemsonforum.com responding to Adam Thompson’s FairTax is a Fair Tax from the January 2007 issue of the Clemson Forum:

First, the Fair tax is a straight low percentage tax accross the board. NOT a national sales tax.

Second, currently the “rich” or the top ten percent of wage earners pay 70 percent of all income tax in this country even with the shelters available to them. Please dispense with the notion that they are somehow screwing us over. Third, you talk about a sales tax being fair but then you start deciding what kind of clothes and food will be tax free and which are not…..how is that fair? Open the door for that kind of crap and you wind up right where we are now. Legislators will be promising to lower the tax on Frosted Flakes and raise taxes on Granola because Granola is eaten by the “rich” and therefore is a “luxury.” If you’re going to have a sales tax then it has to be a straight percentage on ALL merchandise and if you’re going to exempt things like food then it has to be for ALL foods.

I offer the system Texas has as an example. Straight sales tax and no income tax. Funny thing is that either plan would greatly increase revenue and take away the government’s big hammer of the IRS.
from www.theclemsonforum.com:

“The FairTax (H.R.25/S.25) is a proposal in the United States Congress for changing tax laws to replace the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and all federal income taxes (including AMT), payroll taxes (including Social Security and Medicare taxes), corporate taxes, capital gains taxes, gift taxes, and estate taxes with a national retail sales tax, to be levied once at the point of purchase on all new goods and services. ”

Also, it’s not placing taxes on food and clothing based on substance, but rather value. In other words, items above X amount of dollars would be taxed.

Adam Thompson

Sophomore, Electrical Engineering Co-op

The Clemson Forum Contributing Writer
In response to The Faith of Reason by Michael Schnibben, The Useful Tragedies in American Politics by Bryan Cockfield, and Waiting for the End of the World by Trevor Seigler, all in the January 2007 issue:

Since the inception of your publication, you have become my favorite campus newspaper, mostly because of the admission that you do not claim to be unbiased. To the contrary, your bias was clearly stated, and I respect that acknowledgement. I can better evaluate your arguments when they are written as perspectives, not a claim to unvarnished truth.

What I cannot abide, however, is what I read in your January publication. Four articles in the issue that directly referenced Christians, and, save for Todd May’s article, I found them all to be utterly inaccurate and insulting to me as a Christian. Because of the breadth of discussion on the matter of our “ignorant” faith – every time Bryan Cockfield mentioned Christians, our name was preceded by that word – it is impossible for me to do what I first intended: answer each in terms of its specific content. But I feel it is more to the heart of the matter, in any case, to simply express the outrage I feel at having my Lord’s Name blasphemed and my brothers in Christ denigrated in the press. If nothing else, you simply must know that we have read your words and abhor them.

What a wonder that you allow your writers to draft articles concerning Christianity when none of the ones who have done so thus far seem to know a thing about Jesus Christ – that goes for you, too, Michael Schnibben. One would think that, since there is apparently such a vast interest in the Truth that you all would start asking more questions instead of handing down your anti-dogma; if you want to know what Christianity really is, you might open your ears wider and stop running your mouths.

Of course, the obvious question in your minds is: What if we just laugh you off as the fanatic that you are, Christian?

If you were expecting threats, you will find none here. Nor do I wish to abridge your freedom of press. What possible good would that do? And, of course, I know we will certainly not get a letter from President Barker expressing disappointment at the “activities [of a local newspaper] that appeared to mock and disparage [Christians].” No, for all to be put to right, we do not long for a temporal recompense, but for the Judgment of the earth to come. Meanwhile, I would ask, though the penalty may, in this age, be only my own fierce indignation, and though that result may merely amuse you, that you leave us out of your musings and tirades until you have come to believe.

Other than that, this is a great newspaper.

D. Aaron Wells

Senior, Architecture
In response to The Faith of Reason by Michael Schnibben and The Useful Tragedies in American Politics by Bryan Cockfield, both in the January 2007 issue:

The more information that we have, the more ignorant some people become. I would love to see the ideal of the founding fathers come true where religion doesn’t play a part in politics, but the fact of the matter is that that is an unattainable ideal as long as people literally translate the Bible (which wasn’t even originally written in English and for most Protestants is missing a few books) or are otherwise generally blind to politics through their religion.

I was appreciative of Michael Schnibben’s historical backround. Sometimes perspective is a good thing. (I would recommend “perspective” or “context” to anyone who interprets the bible as the literal and inerrant Word of God. After all, one of the laws in the Old Testament commands men to not to cut their hair or shave their faces. That’s right about the time God says he hates gay people.)

I also understood that Bryan Cockfield didn’t mean “all Christians are ignorant in their faith” but rather “most fudamentalist Christians are ignorant of American politics.” Sad that these people will not understand his meaning and only close off more of their minds. But for the rest of us, hopefully the reasonable Americans, it was an interesting perspective on a growing problem, at least in the Bible Belt: feel-good American Christianity not only gets in the way of real religion, it gets in the way of a lot of civil liberties and freedoms that are guaranteed to us in the Constitution, such as the free exercise of said religion.

Perhaps your paper should start printing the Constitution for religious fanatics to read. And perhaps point out separation of church and state in Matthew 22:15-22.

Brad Shaw

Junior, Physics
from www.theclemsonforum.com

In response to The Faith of Reason by Michael Schnibben in the January 2007 issue:

Any intellectual history which justifies the Church’s treatment of Galileo is a bit skewed, most importantly because it overlooks the fact that the Church was going through an extremely reactionary stage (the Counter-Reformation) which drove it to absurd -one might say ‘fundamentalist’- extremes. But perhaps the most important lacuna in the re-telling of Western Civ concerns the lacuna, arguably the era in which religion and reason conflicted most. But even Voltaire was not, in principle, opposed to religion. Indeed, it wasn’t religion, but superstition, which he regarded as the bane of reason. Unfortunately, most of the religions popular in America -especially the South!- today are dominated by superstition founded on a gross misreading of Scripture.

But all in all, I enjoyed the article immensely!

Thomas Oberdan

Professor, Science & Technology in Society
from www.theclemsonforum.com:

In response to An Old Solution to a New Problem by Bryan Cockfield in the January 2007 issue of the Clemson Forum: Hmmm….Intresting idea, though I would prefer a Charger to the Trans Am. However, your point isn’t lost on me. As a Chemistry major I can see the need for research into alternative fuels. And this one of the areas I am considering going into once I get my undergraduate degree.

The problem with current alternative fules is that the cheapest ones are still more expensive than fossil fuels, otherwise they would have caught on by now. Using up all the fossil fuels would force the use of alternative energies, but the cost of energy would still go up.

The only solution that currently exists is to increase energy effeincy acroos the board, not just in automobiles. That way once the fossil fuels are gone, effiency will replace sheer volume of resources as the cost determing factor.

Jason R. Galloway

Sophomore, Chemistry
from www.clemsonforum.com:

Commenting on the Gangsta Party held off campus in Clemson: This thing is way over- blown. A few black students get angry and all of a sudden it is world news. Come on. This is nothing important.

I didn’t see any outrage when “White Chicks” was produced and directed by black guys. Can you imagine the outrage if white Americans made a movie about “Black Chicks?” Black comedians joke about white stereotypes all the time. There is never any outrage. If a white American makes any comment whatsoever about a black person, all hell breaks loose.

Shame on the president of Clemson University for apologizing for a party attended by college students. He certainly wasn’t in attendance so he had nothing to ask forgiveness for.

The plans to require students to attend classes on black awareness is offensive and should be forgotten policy before even being initiated. If a class is required for incoming students, it should deal with accepting one’s self. It seems black Americans need to be reminded that it is OK to be black. White Americans do not need to walk on egg shells when it comes to race. Equality has been achieved among the races. Enough is enough.

Martin Luther King had a dream. It is now reality. Lets move on. MLK day is a black holiday but white Americans are forced to acknowledge it every year, even though his dream did nothing positive for white Americans. In other words, seventy percent of our population is forced to celebrate a holiday that has nothing to do with us.

Maybe the gangsta party was just a way for the students to cope with a holiday that holds no meaning for them or their families. It is apparent that black students are able to control the college by merely mentioning racism. Black Americans need to accept their blackness. We already have.

Scott Hines

Freshman, General Engineering

from www.clemsonforum.com:

In response to Scott Hines,

African-Americans have certainly accepted their “blackness”. However, the word “blackness” is a reference ONLY to the color of one’s skin and not to the racial stereotypes engendered by many Americans and particularly Southerners and South Carolinians whose actions frequently exhibit their lack of understanding of the simple fact that we are all PEOPLE.

The party, titled “Living the Dream,” seemingly a blatantly demeaning and disrespectful reference to Dr. King’s ideas about then-necessary social progress, is a prime example of why we have NOT achieved racial equity. This party was not a jovial way to poke fun at meaningless stereotypes, much like “White Chicks.” It was, on the surface, a blatant act of racial prejudice. If you knew your history, you’d understand why blackface is particularly offensive. I think that people like Dave Chappelle and Carlos Mencia, much of whose programs and humor are racially charged (though rarely stink of the outright racism of this particular event), have given many Americans a comfort zone when it comes to racial issues. Where’s the line drawn? Clearly, these students crossed the line.

Not only that, but you don’t even know your facts. “A few black students got angry”? A lot of black students got angry, and not only that, the University had to listen while upset prospective students and their parents announced that their children wouldn’t be attending Clemson. The community had to watch while people around the nation rolled their eyes at South Carolina. In an area of the country where racial prejudice is so prevalent, the last thing Clemson needed was this to happen. White people don’t need to walk on eggshells when it comes to race relations, but many of them need to learn to show some respect and dignity.

Finally, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s holiday is not a “black holiday.” Dr. King was an American hero, not a “black hero.” He was a champion of social progress and racial equity, something that, while clearly not all whites appreciate, everyone should.

Your comments are indicative of your ignorance, and it’s people like you who deny the existence of racism that perpetuate it.

Alex Bushroe

Junior, Mathematical Sciences