USF should protest human cruelty

In eight days, a man will be able to starve his wife to death. He will be able to do it with the approval of a judge and the state of Florida. He has a fiancé waiting in the wings. He will marry her after his current wife dies. Why won’t he just divorce her, marry his fiancé and raise the children they had together? It all comes down to money. His wife Terri Schiavo was only 26 when she mysteriously collapsed and suffered brain damage. She didn’t have a will. Terri was awarded $750,000 in a settlement for her treatment, which will become her husband’s after her death. It will be a nice nest egg for Michael and the new Mrs. Schiavo.

Many doctors and therapists have sworn affidavits saying that Terri would improve with therapy. One even offered to donate her services to teach Terri how to eat. Mr. Schiavo has fought all attempts to rehabilitate her. He claims that she had said in casual conversation that she would not want to live through artificial means. He is the only witness to these alleged comments by Terri, and conveniently enough, he is the one who benefits if Terri dies. She is not on a respirator or any machine other than a feeding tube. This feeding tube will be removed on October 15th. Terri’s parents are supposed to watch their daughter starve to death while Michael waits for the check to arrive.

Where are the students on this issue? Where is the outrage of the college population? Why is it that they will protest for animals and parking spaces but not for a human being? No one would stand for a dog being starved to death. It is cruel and undignified. Yet, we are allowing a man to kill his wife, benefit monetarily and then marry another woman. Students are involved in many issues. This should be one of them. I urge you to write to the governor and let him know your opinion on Terri’s fate. I urge you to write to your representatives in government to ensure a tragedy like this does not occur in the future. I urge you to pray to the deity of your choice for Terri and for the society that lets her die.

Jaqueline Jones is a graduate student studying business administration.

Leave earlier for start of USF games

How do we know that USF football is in the big time now? When students have to wait upward of 20 minutes in an unorganized mob scene to get into Raymond James Stadium.

We all should have known that last Saturday’s exciting game against Louisville was going to be a high-attendance game (a record crowd of 36,044), but it seems that no one, myself included, took that into consideration when planning to attend the game. USF certainly didn’t open any extra turnstiles at the student gate, and students used to showing up right before kickoff did just that. The result? A mob of students trying to get through the few open turnstiles.

Thankfully, Bulls fans are well behaved and no one was hurt. But the potential was there for a dangerous scene.

Some advice for other games in the future: If students want to get to their seats by kickoff, they should plan ahead and arrive early. The days of just walking up at 6:50 p.m. and getting to your seat in time for kickoff are over –and that’s great news for our team. But USF should also reconsider the amount of turnstiles it has available for student entry.

Students are the cornerstone of USF, and the amount of support they give USF Football will surely grow if they are treated as equitably as any other fan.

Azurede McGinn is a graduate student in the Library and Information Science program.

The Quran has scientific parallels

In an Environmental Ethics class last Thursday, a USF professor performed quite a trick: He managed to put his entire foot in his mouth before the eyes of roughly 100 students. He did so by inferring that the lack of technological advancement in the Middle East was a direct result of “Arabs (being) too busy reading the Quran” (the Holy book of Islam). His statement implied that the Quran was somehow incompatible with science. Not only did he put his foot in his mouth, he seemed to have swallowed it whole.

There is no irreconcilability between the Quran and modern science. I challenge the professor to find inconsistencies between the Quran and observable natural phenomena.

Scientists have yet to out date the information in the Quran, unlike Christianity, where Copernicus and Da Vinci discovered of the arrangement of the heavenly bodies and undermined the authority of the Church. Though revealed in the 7th century A.D., the Quran has numerous examples of scientific accuracies within its pages.

For example, The Big Bang Theory is told of in the Quran: “Have not those who disbelieve known that the heavens and the earth were joined together as one united piece, then We (I) parted them? And We have made from water every living thing.” (21:30)

Also, 23:12-14 in the Quran describe the process of creation of humans: “And indeed we created man from an extract of clay (water and earth). Thereafter We made him as a Nutfah (combined egg and sperm, zygote) in a safe lodging (the womb of a woman). Then we made the Nutfah into a clot (a piece of thick coagulated blood), then We made the clot into a little lump of flesh, and from that lump of flesh We made bones, and then We covered the bones with flesh, and then We brought it forth as another creation. So blessed is Allah, the Best of Creators.”

There are many more scientific evidences in the Quran. The Quran encourages contemplation and investigation of the world. God has not forbidden man to question. In fact, He seems to want us to do so.

Professors should be more responsible with the minds they mold. Adhering to propaganda and perpetuating misconceptions and falsehoods is detrimental to the knowledge base at our university. I think this professor was too busy not reading the Quran to get his facts straight.

Aliyah O’Keefe is a junior majoring in international studies.

Parking problem can be easily solved
Re: “USF parking problem noticed by others,” Oct. 9, 2003

The fact that USF’s parking situation made the front page of the Tampa Tribune should cause alarm in many offices on campus. For years the student body has complained about the absurd lack of parking, the construction of a parking garage that only benefits the administration and the acres of empty parking on the fringe areas of campus. Now, it seems, our voices are finally being heard. Unfortunately, the administration chose to hem, haw and spend money on more parking structures that only promise future relief when relief is needed now.

I have long said that USF should take a page from other schools’ parking resolutions. My favorite solution, and one that is easily and cheaply implemented, is to redesign the permitting plan. If USF would designate parking lots depending on class year, a much more fair and balanced system emerges. The plan is simple; resident parking places should remain the same as should staff parking. The “commuter” (Park ‘n Ride) lots, as they are now known, would become freshman parking. Then, systematically working towards the interior of campus, each lot would be re-designated from sophomore to senior lots.

Of course the freshmen will complain and so will the sophomores, but life is supposed to be based upon merit. The longer you have been a part of this school, the more privileges you should have when it comes to parking.

One need only look to other colleges to see that this plan greatly reduces congestion and discourages the “stalking” for spaces that has become prevalent at USF. The push here is to make freshmen more dependant upon the Bull Runner, which would in turn, make the Bull Runner much more cost effective.

Fiscally, this plan doesn’t lend itself to a great increase in costs, if any, as we would depend upon the same number of spots. This of course assumes that USF has a limited number of passes. If it does not, the implication is that Parking Services is flooding the population with too many passes, a problem that only adds to the chaos. By limiting the number of issued passes to say, 15 percent more than the available parking and combining that with a color-coded, year-level based permit system, USF would see enough relief to make the next few years a bit more tolerable.

Zachary Simms is a junior majoring in history.