Letters to the Editor

Health care staff at the Tang Center and students from the Health Fee Advisory Committee would like to thank Berkeley students for their recent passage of the Safeguard Student Health Care Referendum, which will generate additional revenue for on-campus student health and counseling services.

This referendum has been, from the beginning, a student-driven effort. We were pleased with the referendum process, in which students partnered with a campus department to address a critical student need.

With this vote, UC Berkeley students have adopted a model of community-based health care that benefits everyone. Greater access to student health care means a healthier campus: better quality of life, improved academic success and greater participation by students in the campus community.

The Tang Center will continue its tradition of involving students in the development of on-campus health care, by working with students over the summer to implement services supported by the referendum. Students will begin to see changes at the Tang Center in Fall 2005, including extended hours for urgent care, labs, and x-rays and Saturday hours for the pharmacy. Other improvements, such as online scheduling of appointments, will take more time to implement.

We appreciate your support in building a healthy campus. Together, we are enabling students to thrive, succeed, and take full advantage of their time at UC Berkeley.

This letter has been signed by the Tang Center staff and students from the Health Fee Advisory Committee.

Temina Madon

UC Berkeley alumnus

An Open Letter to

Chancellor Birgeneau

On behalf of the City of Berkeley Native American Continental community, friends, allies and the City of Berkeley Disability Challenged community, I ask for you to promptly rectify a recent gross injustice against the sole American Indian professor in the Ethnic Studies department at UC Berkeley.

We know that Professor Nimachia Hernandez, a Black Feet from Canada, has been voted out of the department on allegations of unproductiveness.

Such infamy is but an excuse used to mask the personal agendas of some self-appointed and so-called "native expert professors," department administrators, and manipulated students who resent her high academic standards.

In the past two years, Dr. Hernandez has suffered two accidents, one a terrible vehicular accident. Since then, she has been dealing with some physical disability restrictions. Doctors prescribed special basic medical equipment to help her perform her teaching obligations, but until now, the prescribed equipment has been denied.

The department's indifference and insensitivity to her medical needs is the sole cause of her alleged unproductiveness and an unjust reason to strip her of her livelihood and academic reputation.

It is a blatant affront, not solely to Dr. Hernandez, but to the concerned Berkeley American Indian and disability challenged community, because healthy, non-American Indian professors have decided the fate of her collegiate teaching career.

If such action was committed against representatives of either of the two other ethnic groups that compose Ethnic Studies Department, Chicano Studies and Asian Studies, their respective communities would be offended.

We ask for a UC Berkeley administrative and an independent investigation of the whole unfair review process of Dr. Nimachia Hernandez by the Ethnic Studies staff.

We ask for the creation of an independent Native Studies Department that would emphasize the United States Native Nations and fully cover the entire native peoples of the rest of the American continent, with investigations that will once and for all dissect the official historical atrocities that have been detrimental to our self-esteem for more than 500 years.

This will be a historical correction and will follow the historical precedent that the city Berkeley has taken since 1992 by dedicating an official city calendar annual holiday for our native continental community, highlighted by an open to the general public annual Pow Wow, instead of the Columbus holiday.

Because UC Berkeley is a public academic institution and we are taxpayers, we demand that our voices not be ignored by Chancellor Robert Birgeneau. We ask for a prompt meeting.

Bernardo S. Lopez

Berkeley resident

Greeks Must Find Strength To Mend Our Mistakes

The week before last was Sexual Assault Awareness Week, and as much as I personally hate days or weeks or months dedicated to various realms of society, my eyes have recently been opened to the extent that portions of our campus perpetuate and condone sexual crimes. More specifically, as a member of the UC Berkeley Greek system, I am privy to the various comments other members make to try and cover up harassment, sexual assault and rape on campus.

There has been ever-increasing external pressure on the Greek system in the past decades at UC Berkeley, and especially since the arrival of our new chancellor. Not to say that Chancellor Robert Birgeneau hates the Greeks, but perhaps the lapse in executive power that occurred during the transitional period has allowed certain anti-Greek vice-chancellors to place greater stress on the system.

The response has been a defensive bubble that now surrounds the Inter-Fraternity Council and Panhellenic sorority houses on campus. It is this defensive aura that is being ingrained into the next generation of Greeks, the force that keeps hazed pledges from pressing charges and the ideology that influences members to demand sexual assault victims remain silent.

There is a common saying in my house that external pressure makes us stronger. I completely agree. However, the Greek community may not know its own strength. Instead of protecting these individuals that degrade our community, we must use our strength to admit we made a mistake allowing such an individual to enter, and promptly expel them. Pi Kappa Phi is on the right track-they expelled the three hazing perpetrators last week. In order to survive and flourish as we once did, the Greek community must use its strength to purge itself of our shallow, date rape, hazing stereotypes and return to our pillars: scholarship, friendship, leadership, and service.

Thomas W. Bell

President of Tau Kappa Epsilon

Let's Look at the Facts

I appreciate this publication's undying desire to show both sides of controversial issues. However, I believe it is equally important for this publication to allow readers to correct fallacies publicized by opinion-editorial writers.

In a May 6 op-ed entitled "Campus Should Hear Both Sides of the Story," by Mustafa Ergen, he presents his one-sided views regarding the Armenian Genocide, but fails to mention a plethora of information so that his claims are not questioned by the impressionable reader. If I may, I'd like to bring your attention and that of your readers to some of these facts.

Ergen notes that "historical studies clearly show that allegations [of an Armenian Genocide are] unfounded." I'm not sure what historical studies he is referring to, but the historical studies done by Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, The Netherlands, Lebanon, Russia, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, Uruguay and Vatican City all led to the national recognition of the Armenian Genocide. Oh, wait, I forgot Poland!

Ergen further notes he is "against the exploitation of this tragic episode of history for political purposes," which is quite paradoxical since the Turkish government does this very same thing. The Turks passed a long-delayed resolution allowing the United States to use a Turkish military base for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan only the day after President Bush failed to use the word "genocide" when commemorating the Armenian Holocaust. I don't know about Ergen, but to me that definitely seems like using the Armenian Genocide for political purposes.

And most importantly, the author has failed to recognize the fact that just last week, the Armenian President invited Turkish and international researchers into his nation's archives so that Turkey will be forced to look at the evidence and admit to carrying out the Armenian Genocide. Upon which they will be allowed to join the European Union, as requested.

You see, Turkey's leaders got a bit scared when France's Jacques Chirac said he would never allow Turkey to join the EU unless they admitted to carrying out the Armenian Genocide. As such, Turkey got a little wobbly in their boots and called for this international appraisal of facts for this very reason. Ergen made it look like Turkey had no reason for doing this other than an insatiable love for the truth, when in fact it was simply for the very intentions he accused Armenians of: "political purposes."

And while Ergen was too busy glossing over the fact his "Prime Minister made a ... declaration [proposing] that Turkish and Armenian historians examine the historical facts," I was busy writing him an e-mail asking him to review his facts and revise articles he knew would be going to print with outdated information. He and his student group seem to have a thing for this kind of fact perpetuation. One just has to look at the poorly composed fliers they littered our beautiful campus with last week to understand my point.

I end this letter personally inviting Ergen to travel to my homeland, stay at the home of my relatives', and spend a summer looking at the archives he so desperately called for that Armenia just released. Maybe then he will be so enlightened as to write an article like many of his Turkish contemporaries calling for his nation's recognition of the Armenian Genocide.

And conversely, for the sake of humanity, I invite all readers to Google the "Armenian Genocide," so that they will not be puppets in the Turks' fight to perpetuate propaganda.

Arin Khodaverdian

Armenian Student Association member

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