Many children were at risk from sex offenders

People say the University District is a safe place to house sex offenders, mainly child molesters. Within a 20-minute walk in any direction, one could easily access many children. How come nobody is concerned about this?

People talk about the students being afraid. How about the thousands of children in and around the University District? There are about 55,000 students and faculty at the UW alone who bring their children to these childcare facilities.

Please don’t come to conclusions so quickly. This density of sex offenders would never be tolerated in other neighborhoods, including places like Medina, Laurelhurst, Madison Park, Green Lake, Broadview and Kirkland, just to name a few.

According to the 2000 U.S. Census approximately 2259 children under age 9 live in the University District, and about 6729 between ages 10 and 19.

— Brent Reid

Preview Properties, Shoreline

Philip Morris shouldn’t be let on campuses

I am dismayed and outraged at the prominent role that Philip Morris plays in UW Career Center events this week and throughout the year. This inclusion of the largest producer of the world’s most addictive and deadly drug not only undermines the work of our renowned medical center, where tobacco-related diseases are the primary cause of disease and death, but also the very mission of our University.

In light of the strong stand the UW has taken against smoking on campus in the past decade —by banning tobacco use, sales, ads and investments — it seems that we should be able to take the next step and not accept contributions or funding of any kind from this rogue industry, which only exists because they are able to buy their way into the U.S. political and legal infrastructure and undermine public health efforts at the national and global level.

Supporting Philip Morris in this way perpetuates the company’s charade of being a legitimate, socially responsible employer and belies its true identity as a murderer, responsible for the deaths of half a million people in this countrry each year.

— Abigail Halperin, MD, MPH

Dept. of Family Medicine

United States response to Ahmadinejad poor

This letter is in response to “Keep Ahmadinejad talking” (10/1).

What I found ludicrous about Ahmadinejad’s speech at Columbia was that rather than being introduced with an ounce of respect, he was immediately berated with a long list of accusations against him. Bollinger’s introduction made it clear that no one actually cared what he thought or said — they just wanted to put him on trial.

Furthermore, as much as Ahmadinejad might “mean us harm,” the Bush administration has launched wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; the United States has employed detrimental air strikes in the Second Gulf War, supplied Iraq with arms and chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq War, funded the mujahideen in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan and supported the autocratic regime of the Shah of Iran.

While I find Ahmadinejad’s remarks on the Holocaust troubling, at least as they are translated in the mainstream press, he echoes some valid critiques of U. S. policy. In his speech, he asked what the Holocaust has to do with the Palestinians. The Holocaust is often used to legitimize the state of Israel, but the United States, meanwhile, supports Israel in displacing, oppressing and vilifying native Palestinians.

Rather than situating mal-governance and fundamentalism in the Middle East, we need to ask larger, potentially self-incriminating questions.

— Ashley Fent

Senior, geography