Having a car not a necessity for everyone

I’m responding to Wednesday’s letter written by Ms. Jensen. I am sorry you feel that having a car is a necessity to go to USF. I have to break it to you. It’s not. I lived my first year and a half at college without a car, relying on public transportation and my bike to get me around. I too had an off-campus job, but I never got to work late, even when having classes close to the start of work. I’ve known many students who did the same and never had a problem making it to work. I do believe my living without my car gave me a much greater appreciation when I actually got one.

I am in no way saying that freshmen shouldn’t have cars, it’s just not a necessity. If someone has to commute from a distance, a car is absolutely necessary and should never be taken away from them. But if you live within five minutes of USF, there is no reason to try to park on campus. Thousands of students at hundreds of universities and colleges live like this every year, and they still survive.

Until the university gets its act together and comes up with more parking, or a parking system that works better, all I am saying is that if you don’t need to have your car on campus, don’t bring it here. It is not fair to all of us who drive 45 minutes to campus every day to have to find parking because someone decided to drive instead of taking five more minutes to take their bike. All I am asking is that people be considerate of their fellow student.

Kurt Gustafik is a senior majoring in management informations systems.

Parking too expensive for so many problems

As someone who has lived on campus for the past three years, I think it is time that I speak out against the policies of USF Parking Services. First of all, I am considered a “resident.” I get the worst places to park. Not only are the resident parking lots far from on-campus housing, but there are a limited number of spaces, which I am sure is far less than the number of resident parking tags they sell per year.

What prompted me to finally voice my own dissent toward the parking services staff is that, as I walked out of my building this morning on my way to class, I happened to notice a parking services employee standing by my car. Of course I stopped dead in my tracks and watched as he tore a sheet of paper from his handy-dandy ticket machine and placed it on my car.

I immediately ran over to my car to see what the problem was. It was at this point that I removed not one, but two pieces of beautiful parking services paper. One was a warning, while the other was a $30 ticket. Once again, a lot of good the warning did me. When I asked what the ticket was for, the rather rude gentleman informed me that he could not see my parking pass and then insinuated that yesterday he had been kind enough to give me a warning.

When I pointed out to him that my sunshade had only partly obscured my tag, he ever-so-kindly replied that he couldn’t see it so he had to give me a ticket. You could see enough of my pass to know that it was appropriate for where I was parked, especially since they color-coded all of the parking tags this year.

I could somewhat understand the increase in cost for the parking tags and the increase in the cost of each ticket, if the parking situation appeared to be improving. But since it looks as if the parking ordeal is only getting worse, I am starting to wonder where all of this money is going. It seems that a lot of money is going into parking services, but not a lot of improvement has come out.

Stephanie Anspaugh is a junior majoring in biology.

Creationism not based on logical fact

Mr. Hobbs starts off by telling us that fact and theory are two different things. Here, he is right. Let me just jump into it: Evolution is a fact and a theory. Just like gravity is a fact and a theory. You see, facts are the data themselves. Theory is the story that explains the facts. Thus, natural selection is a theory (or story) that explains the fact of evolution. That is, we know evolution happened.

It’s the mechanism of evolution that is under study. This goes for my example of gravity as well; we know gravity exists because we see its effects. However, the specific details are still unknown or vague.

Remember the idea for evolution was around well before Darwin took center stage. What made Darwin famous was his ability to present a well organized framework for how evolution may proceed. Up until his revelation, scientists were having a hard time explaining these fossils which seemed to change over time within the fossil record.

Thus, through a lifetime of work, Darwin found that his theory of natural selection (used in opposition to artificial selection – which man does with crops and cattle to make better produce) seemed like the only explanation.

Mr. Hobbs also says that the scientific community believed that the world was flat and at the center of the universe. I beg to differ, and I think Mr. Hobbs needs to learn his history again. Anybody who went against the idea of ego-centrism was prosecuted (just like Galileo) by the church. Nobody in their right mind would go against the church in that day and age. Also, not all civilizations thought the world was flat.

Also, creationism is a myth because it goes against all scientific data, from all fields. Are you going to really sit there and tell me that physics, geology, biology, chemistry, astronomy and history are wrong?

There is not one shred of evidence that remotely points to creationism being correct. If, for arguments sake, creationism is true, then which creation story is correct? There are hundreds of creation stories from many of the world’s religions, so which will you choose (or fight over) as the story? You can’t go about this scientifically because religion lies outside the realm of science, regardless of what supposed creation scientists say. If you need proof to justify your religion rather than faith, you need to do a little more soul-searching.

People need to stop believing the pseudo-scientific loons out there and read real science books. This also shows why this great country needs to spend more time and money on science education and critical thinking. It is only with critical thinking tools that one can spot the cons from the real thing.

Michael Robeson isa research assistant in the College of Public Health.