Getting to the root of CU’s lack of diversity
Re: “CU not alone in scarcity of color,” Feb. 21 news story.
Before diversity advocates do any more hand-wringing about the low number of minorities attending the University of Colorado, a bitter dose of reality is in order. As pointed out in The Post’s article, in 2004 there were a mere 289 black Colorado high school graduates who applied to one of our state’s four-year colleges. That’s the problem!
As dysfunctional as public education is, a more fundamental problem is getting minority kids through high school. The problem has always been too many uninvolved or disinterested parents coupled with poverty and far too many single-parent households. In many Hispanic families, the problems lie with parents who don’t value education as highly as white or Asian families do along with living with one foot in the United States and the other in their country of origin.
Instead of more wasteful meetings of diversity advocates and further proselytizing to the converted, efforts should be directed at assisting programs like I Have a Dream, where meaningful efforts are made to get minority kids interested in education. We need fewer panels and time-wasting summits and more attention to what really matters.
Bob Greenlee, Lafayette
Access to emergency contraceptives
Re: “Morning-after bill advances,” Feb. 21 news story.
I am a 22-year-old college student who is uninsured and can obtain contraception only through a local Planned Parenthood.
Most girls in my generation did not learn about safe sex at all, but instead were taught that the only safe sex is no sex.
During a testimonial from one of the teenage girls in opposition to House Bill 1212, she said that our generation needs to take responsibility for our actions. I think she’s right, and young women like myself will be able to be more responsible when emergency contraception is available at pharmacies that are open on the weekends and holidays – when most accidents or incidents of unprotected sex occur. Emergency contraception is a backup plan, a just-in-case that will save many girls from facing the difficult decision of choosing abortion.
Dawn Colwell, Aurora
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Re: “Plan B for Colorado morning-after bill,” Feb. 24 editorial.
Your editorial said that Gov. Bill Owens vetoed an emergency-contraceptive bill last year, saying that it encroached on freedom of religion. Owens joins many other elected officials in not having any problem proposing a particular religious view of abortion and same-sex marriage and imposing those religious views on other. Wouldn’t you think he and others would see the problem in this double standard?
Don Thompson, Alamosa
What about those who can’t breastfeed?
Re: “Encouraging breastfeeding in the workplace,” Feb. 23 Open Forum.
As a mother who was never able to breastfeed her children, I took great offense to the letter from C. Gargano. I’m so sick of women who feel like they are saints because they breastfeed. Well, I didn’t breastfeed, but I did stay home with my kids. My whole life has been a sacrifice. I don’t regret one minute of it. My kids have been healthier because I didn’t plop them down into day care. I’ve had three pediatricians and each one told me that kids get sick from day care. What a fallacy it is to think that only breastfeeding creates happier environments. I don’t believe for one minute that children who are breastfed are automatically healthier. I have two children, ages 13 and 6, and they have hardly been sick their whole lives. I was not breastfed and neither were my siblings. We were hardly ever sick growing up.
I couldn’t care less about Senate Bill 167, which would require companies to provide time and space for working mothers to express breast milk. It doesn’t affect my life. If it helps working mothers, that’s great. But stop sending the message to those mothers who can’t breastfeed that their babies aren’t as healthy or as happy.
M. Hahn, Centennial
Owens’ trip to Iraq
Re: “Owens: Iraq rage a sign of progress,” Feb. 27 news story.
So another Republican Rambo sneaks in and out of Iraq and the “liberal media” trumpet his pronouncement that all those explosions and bodies are really a sign of progress. I guess the insurgency is really, really in its last throes. Or is that because it’s a civil war we have on our hands now? That would really be “freedom on the march.”
Then he returns to Washingtonian “reality” and shows his contempt for union labor, badmouthing the so-called Wal-Mart bill by mimicking the Wal-Mart line about “organized labor’s effort to use the political process.” Well, what do you expect from a Republican big-business puppet? And Republicans wonder why organized labor clings to the Democrats.
Bob Fiesser, Highlands Ranch
American spirit and the national anthem
The Olympics have given me a nostalgic window into the past, when at all sporting events the national anthem was played (live, or on record) by a stirring marching band or symphony orchestra. I remember everybody present at these events joining in and proudly singing together as one unified voice. It made us proud to be Americans.
Today, some wannbe rock star warbles on with his own disjointed version of our national anthem while the audience stands in stony silence, wishing the end would come quicker. Ever watch the players on the floor or field wince when a note goes flat or the warbler takes off in some disconnected direction trying to create his own version of the song?
People managing our sports presentations should take a good, hard look at this problem. In these troubled times, we need to recapture this uniting spirit.
Bill Prymak, Broomfield
Death for rapists, not their unborn children
South Dakota passed a bill to end abortions that doesn’t include an exemption for cases of rape. That bothers some people. Their thinking, as told in an Associated Press article, is that if a rape victim becomes pregnant and bears a child, the rapist could have the same parental rights as the mother.
The idea that, to prevent a living rapist from being a father of a living child, some think it best to let the rapist live and to kill the child, instead of the other way around, is incredibly moronic.
Obviously, one better solution is to add convicted rapists to the list of those eligible for the death penalty. That would forever rid the child and all of society of a rapist in our lives. Another can be addressed by the legislature and/or the courts wherein rapists have no parental rights whatsoever over any child conceived during a rape.
The fact is that we don’t have to think that the only solution is to kill the rapist’s children, whether born or unborn, when other solutions are available.
Robert E. Forman, Lakewood
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