UW salaries not competitive with national average

I hate to splash cold water on Shannon O'Hara's optimistic May 8 report on faculty salaries ("High salaries keep UW competitive"), but she has painted a false picture. Yes, the top administrators, coaches and star professors do receive high salaries. Overall, however, UW salaries lag substantially behind the national average for peer institutions. The gaps opens over time, leading to the so-called "faithful faculty penalty:" The longer a professor stays at the UW, the less he or she makes in comparison to other schools. The UW does manage to scrape together good recruitment offers, commensurate with peer institutions, but the competitive edge disappears at that point. It is not uncommon for a new professor to be hired at a higher salary than his or her older colleagues. Moreover, Seattle has a higher than average cost of living.

UW faculty salaries are not competitive, and the University is not retaining the best national talent. In fact, the faculty had to bring a class-action suit recently to get withheld back pay. Student readers should know that they are not getting top national faculty. But they do have a good football coach.

Stephen Rumph

Assistant professor, music history

Why's Phillip Morris on a smoke-free campus?

We will leave aside, for the moment, our disdain for the very idea of the Spring Etiquette Dinner held May 9, 2007. However, we would like to voice indignation about the inclusion of Phillip Morris USA as a table sponsor at this dinner.

College students are the youngest legal group for the tobacco industry to prey upon. Young adults are the prime targets of $15 billion worth of tobacco company advertising and promotion because of life changes that make them particularly vulnerable to this addiction. In addition, few prevention programs have been successfully implemented in colleges — where public health steps out, Big Tobacco walks right in.

A 2005 study of college students across the United States reported that more than 70 percent of respondents (including a majority of smokers) supported the prohibition of on-campus tobacco industry marketing or sponsorship of campus social events. The University of Washington is already virtually a smoke-free campus. What a mixed message — a campus smoking ban and Phillip Morris USA sponsorship of student events.

Do Phillip Morris USA and etiquette belong at the same table? We don't think so.

Maia Piccagli

Graduate Student, School of Public Health and Community Medicine

Text messaging an evolution in communication

The same "deteriorated" English Eric Uthus addressed in his May 7th column "Text messages destroying our language" was in full swing in computer-based instant messaging years before cell phones were a common commodity. Delving further back in history, people wrote notes full of abbreviations and slang. To blame slang and colloquialisms, verbal or written, on cell phones is to blame poor driving on the birth of the 2003 Chevy Aveo.

Slang's importance has been vastly overlooked. Even in the article aforementioned, slang words previously adapted into the English language go unnoticed. For example, a "bus" was once only known as an "omnibus;" a "cell phone" was a cellular phone, which was in turn a telephone. Nobody watches a "moving picture," hails a "taximeter cabriolet," or listens to "compact discs." Slang is culture, and what more is language than people communicating with one another?

All forms of writing and spoken language have rules governing grammar and diction. Text messages are no different. One would just as soon submit a senior thesis in "text speak" as they would compose Tolstoian text messages. While the boundaries of appropriate language use are not entirely concrete, other forms of written media are in little danger of being replaced.

Tony Andrus

Junior, Chinese

Cartoon neglects checks and balances

Andrew Brown's March 3 cartoon declared that President Bush vetoed a bill that would have resulted in an end to the Iraq war and a withdrawal of U.S. troops. Next, the cartoon states that Congress was "stymied by one man" and then goes on to say, in a very sarcastic manner, that this is a "fight for democracy indeed."

The part I find particularly offensive is the comment concerning the state of democracy in this country. The cartoon makes the claim that one man controls the policies and direction of our nation.

A veto may be overridden with a two-thirds majority vote in both the House and the Senate. Presidential vetoes and Congressional overrides are part of a system of checks and balances that ensure a reasonable division of power within our democratic government. This process is one of the many that define democracy as we know it, and I would like to remind Brown that, although he may not like the actions taken by Bush, democracy is still alive and well within this country.

Will Gibbons

Senior, chemical engineering