Dear Mr Treul;

You noted in your recent editorial, that the American Dream is not real. If this were true, why is it that the US has to limit immigration? Why is it that Mexicans will go to the most extreme lengths to come here illegally? Wouldn’t the word have gotten out by now that the American Dream is dead and that the US is no longer the place to go? Why do so many people want to come here?

Chris Engelsma, graduate student

Dear Editor:

I write today to express my deep concern about the cancelation of a lecture by gay-rights advocate John Corvino.

My Aquinas education equipped me with so many invaluable tools. Chief among them, probably, is a tireless respect and regard for different and often unpopular perspectives. While some opinions are weighted greater with respect to title, power and influence, none ought to play as a trump card at any college that places a high premium on the power of free thought. The quashing of debate affords no gain intellectually or morally. It can, however, awaken passion and critical thought even where it may have appeared dead. Perhaps, then, some good may come of this. I pray it does.

Aquinas missed out on a grand opportunity: To defend against an “attack on Catholic teaching values,” as President Balog referred to it, and, in so doing, surely lead many students to the doctrine to which it so fervently cleaves. Nothing puts a spit shine on time-honored (read: old) testament quite like a modern challenge.

Please do not turn your back to another such opportunity.

Aequam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem.

Humbly,
Aaron Ogg, ‘05

The issue at hand concerns freedom of expression. We have the gift of a safe community in which we can openly express our individuality — opinions, political views, and religious beliefs — without fear of discrimination. Tolerance and acceptance are values which are woven into the fabric or our mission at Aquinas College. Yes, Aquinas is a CATHOLIC COLLEGE; however, it is also DOMINICAN, meaning it has a commitment to inclusivity and openness.

In the fall, I served as the Coordinator of the Lecture Committee of Programming Board. Under my leadership, Dr. John Corvino was scheduled to present at Aquinas. Programming Board shares the commitment of the College to tolerance and compassion. Recalling our Dominican heritage, I quote from the definition of Community, a Dominican charism: [calls for] “…a commitment to building community through hospitality, inclusivity, and dialogue.” On this basis, Dr. Corvino was scheduled to present.
While I am disappointed that the program was cancelled, I feel there is a bigger issue at hand. If a program that promotes tolerance and acceptance, both fundamentally Christian ideals, can cause for such upheaval, what else will catalyze a call for censorship? Consider its broader implications: Could the Diversity Initiatives Dept. receive funding? Could student groups such as the Center for Free Inquiry gather? How many sub-populations will be deprived of their individuality? How many rights will be compromised for the sake of “preserving Catholic tradition”?

If diversity, inclusion, and tolerance are priorities to Aquinas College, then the students need to stand up for their rights now. GENTILE, JEW; WOMAN, MAN; WHITE, BLACK; GAY, OR STRAIGHT; we are all ONE STUDENT BODY.

We the students must defend our right to academic freedom. I, therefore, urge that we as a student body adopt a policy of our own: a policy protecting freedom of expression.

Emily Ferstle, junior

One thing I really enjoyed about AQ is that I felt like we received a liberal, open minded education. It is very disappointing as an alumnus to hear about the college canceling this event. What message does this send to students who are homosexual? Not only is the act offensive, it is unethical. AQ students are not all Catholic, and certainly not all heterosexual. I think that this will deter many students from attending AQ, not to mention alumni neglecting to donate funds to the college. To say the least, it is extremely disappointing. What about homosexual faculty? Certainly this is offensive to them. In fact, it is discrimination.

Being Christian means being accepting, not judging others. There is a great deal of hypocrisy associated with this action not to mention the evident bigotry and hatred. These are certainly not Christian ideals. Furthermore, if some narrow minded students prefer not to attend, let them stay home with their closed minded perspectives. Chances are, they have nothing intelligent to contribute anyhow.

Theresa McMunigal, ‘05

Dear Editor,

As Aquinas develops a policy to address controversial events on campus, I have several hopes. First, I appreciate the support President Balog initially communicated to students during the week of Corvino’s postponement, and I hope that his decisions regarding the future policy reflect continued support for the needs of a diverse student body. Second, I hope that this diverse student body will be represented accurately by the policy development committee and consulted during every step of the process.
I believe that the policy should reflect the following, in keeping with Aquinas’ Mission Statement:

1. “The further development of one’s religious belief, one’s relationship to God and one’s lifelong response to God’s call to know, love, and serve.” Events should offer students the opportunity to explore what it means, as individuals, to live out their Catholic faith. If the college presents the teachings of the Church while neglecting to support students in their journeys of faith and self-discovery, it fails in one of its most important roles.

2. The Catholic perspective, with the understanding that students themselves represent this diverse perspective, and with the confidence in their ability to adequately represent it at any event, equipped with the tools of critical analysis and thoughtful expression provided through an Aquinas education.

3. “The trust, support, and encouragement of trustees, alumni, benefactors, and friends” of Aquinas, but only after all other aspects of the Mission Statement, which primarily addresses the needs of students, have been met.

In addition to the creation of this policy, I believe that the Corvino event reveals the need to solidify Aquinas’ commitment to diversity and inclusion by recognizing the value and rights of its GLBTQ students. I firmly believe that “sexual orientation” should be added to the Aquinas College Diversity Statement.

Kyla Sisson, sophomore

Dr. Balog did a very hard thing when postponing the John Corvino talk. The biggest misconception of his actions was that students think he does not want diverse opinions voiced on campus. From everything I have understand to be true, that is not what Balog wants. Our mission statement clarifies that Aquinas is “inclusive educational community rooted in the Catholic Dominican tradition,” meaning we are both Catholic and open at the same time. John Corvino was acceptable for the campus’ goal of being inclusive, but it was unacceptable for the campus goal to be rooted in Catholic Dominican tradition. As it breaks our declared institutional mission, Balog made action to postpone the talk which was one-sided against Catholic tradition and, therefore, our school mission.

I am in full support of our president’s actions. I pride our school in both its base in Catholicism and its openness to diversity, but to have both of these a line must be drawn. I understand that students like Aquinas because of its liberality, but it is unreasonable to expect a Catholic college to act like a public one. As a friend said to me the other day, for Aquinas to fund John Corvino’s talk would be like having an anti-Nickelback club, then (as a club) hiring Nickelback to perform at one of the meetings. I do not feel that rights are being intruded upon, since America is a free country and that outside of our private institution a one-sided opinion can be funded and publicized. For our institution, however, I fully support Balog’s rejection of funding the speaker in order to uphold what our mission statement clearly states.

Elizabeth Christian, sophomore

Dear Editor:

In response to the cover story “One and Done” (March 18), the headline and story do not accurately portray the season the record-breaking men’s basketball team compiled this year. After finishing 25-9 (school record for wins), the Saints deserve a more respect than a headline emphasizing a loss in the Sweet 16 of National Tournament play. “One and Done” carries a connotation that the team lost in first round action when, in fact, Coach Dave Hammer and the Saints secured the first national tournament win in Aquinas’ history. The 91-66 victory over unseeded Dakota Wesleyan was not an upset. The Saints earned an at-large berth and the #16 seed in the tournament. A check of the national tournament bracket before writing the story would have shown this. In the end, Aquinas lost in the second round by four points to top-seeded Bellevue University, who played for the NAIA National Championship.

Saints season highlights include victories over NCAA Division III Final Four participant Hope College and local rival Calvin College. Undefeated and top-ranked Grand Valley State University is playing in the NCAA Division II Elite Eight. The Saints 3 point loss to the Lakers provided the stiffest competition GVSU has faced. Add to that, a WHAC regular season championship to match last year’s WHAC Tournament Championship.

The Saints have been to the National Tournament three years running now, a great accomplishment, considering the Aquinas’ men’s team had never appeared in a National Tournament before. Coach Hammer continues to bring in student athletes with strong maturity, integrity and passion for winning. May the Saints success continue and the Saint and the Aquinas community begin to recognize that we have our own version of March Madness and a hotbed of small college basketball on our own campus.

Go Saints!

Damon Bouwkamp,
Assistant Director of Admissions

To The Editor:

Regarding the op-ed column in the March 18 Saint, it is true that U of D Mercy nursing students do not participate in the Aquinas Commencement. Let me add, however, that Aquinas has invited their full participation for several years but U of D Mercy has not agreed. Though the nursing students attend some Aquinas classes, they apply to, attend, and graduate from the University of Detroit Mercy, and therefore ought not commence from Aquinas. Their Aquinas friends, of course, are invited to the Pinning ceremony on the evening of Tuesday, April 29.

Glenn Barkan,
Dean, School of Arts & Sciences

I partially agree with you on the issue of intramurals, here are some examples that i found interesting:

1) Student referees tend to favor their friends and are bias, especially during basketball and football games. Just one of the reasons i have decreased my playing these sports over the past two years, and have resorted to tennis and tossing the frisbee around instead.

2) Other students are utterly diguisting when it comes to sportsmanship and the refs dont do anything about it. I can’t stand going to a basketball game and hear the same kids taunting or being cocky the entire night. Maybe it’s not the referee’s job to do anything about it, but its just one of my pet peeves about intramurals in general.

3) I hope someday there can be a soccer or tennis league started. As soccer is a huge draw to AQ, I can only hope there is a huge fan base for it. I know, if I had the chance to play it on a sunday afternoon, I would definitely be out there. And of course we have wilcox park for tennis too, maybe a tournament sonsored by IM to raise some money would be a good idea.

4) I still recall last spring when the softball season was entirely cancelled due to inclement weather (granted the weather was very un-spring like at around 45 degrees). However, this decision was made by a student in charge of the program, not by the IM director.

There was still three weeks left in the school year and the IM staff decided to not play any games at all. basing their decision on costs and their “personal” schedules saying they didnt want to be there to referee the games…therefore, I started a Facebook petition and received support from nearly 50 individuals who said they would play if there was a season. This was still not enough to convince the IM directors to take any action. Hopefully this year and future year student IM directors will respect people’s wishes to play a sport and make it possible to play. As we pay high enough tuition as it is, i think it should be a priority to get intramurals
in order. Being a former high school player , I always look forward to this season because it always lets me have fun and keep in shape with friends. I hope the softball and any other season never has to be canceled again.

This entire rant is not a jab at the current IM staff, but it is just an example of how past intrmural situations have been handled and i hope it doesn’t happen again. I think they are doing a fine job but there is always room for improvement.

Steve Kokx, Senior

Although I appreciate Ms. Snyder’s intent that Aquinas College honor Dr. King, I actually find her opinion article to be highly offensive to the memory of Dr. King. Aquinas College renamed a street in honor of him, and several high schools took the day off. Activities like this are all well and good, but I can’t help but wonder what Dr. King would think. Instead of looking for excuses to cancel classes, we should honor him by actively working for social change, by listening to his message and implementing it into our lives. Especially disturbing is the section of this article that sets Dr. King in competition and opposition to Jesus. Let us not forget that Dr. King was a pastor, and that his message was both religious and social. His work for transforming all aspects of culture occurred within a religious context of Christian reconciliation and radically transformative love. He didn’t merely give an important speech for civil rights, but consistently preached the radical Gospel of Jesus Christ. It was this aspect of his teaching that gave his message of social change power and conviction. It was also what sustained him in the face of persecution. Furthermore, Dr. King was in support of education, I can’t imagine he would be for canceling classes like Activism, Catholic Social Teaching, etc. Ms. Snyder’s well-intentioned but poorly informed article has given me an idea. Perhaps making writings like Dr. King’s “Strength to Love” or “A Testament of Hope” part of the curriculum for I and E or Humanities would be a better way of honoring him.

Also, if we canceled classes, there would be less people present for the MLK blood-drive. This event, which is about giving, is a far more fitting honor than a cancellation of classes.

Ryan Engemann

We composed this letter in response to the SAINT column critical of the intramural program at Aquinas. We hope this clarifies some of the information.

* The intramural program is suspervised by a staff member who uses a student staff exclusively to man open gyms, open weight room hours, and run activites. Student officials are used approximately 99% of the time. We have brought in adult officials for finals of some sports events. We attempt to train these officials and most take sports officiating class offered by the HPE&R department. To use outside officials would be costly as most high school officials earn $65 per game with 3 man crews for basketball. The recent switch of seasons in the State (boys & girls both in winter) has created a severe shortage of certified officials.

* All of the IM information is posted on the athletics link of the Aquinas website under INTRAMURALS

* Captains’ meetings are held before each organized activity. Team captains are mandated to attend. At these meetings rules are discussed and schedules are distributed to each captain or team representative. It is the responsibility of each captain to distribute the schedules to team members. Additional schedules are available in the Fieldhouse.

*Scheduling is at times difficult due to the inadequate facilities. As the Athletics and HPE&R departments have grown over the years, open times have become more restricted. Evenings (7-11pm) and Sundays (7-midnight) have become the standard for the indoor events. Sunday is a staple of the program during the winters because it allows students to work, travel home, and still participate. We realize the AQ campus mass is on Sunday night, but there are numerous services on Saturday evenings and Sunday mornings at St. Thomas and other parishes close to campus. Friday night is the only time with no conflicts, but experiments with using this night have been futile.

We hope this clarifies some of the misinformation. We will select an advisory team to give input on some of these matters; however, the lack of facilities causes severe problems when trying to run the intramural program. Thanks for listening to both sides of the story.

Dave Hammer/Intramural Director
Dave Baldwin/Student Supervisor of IM’s
Terry Bocian/Director of Athletics

I am writing in regards to the Intramurals article written in the Wednesday, February 5th edition on the SAINT. There are many facts stated in the article that are either incorrect or don’t hold very much meaning. For starters, if you look at all other major colleges, their intramural programs are run by students as well. Here at Aquinas we do have a faculty intramurals director, unlike stated in the article, his name is Dave Hammer.

In the beginning of the season there is a captains meeting where all the rules are given to the captains of every team, as well as a schedule. It is not the job of the intramurals staff to make sure every player has a schedule or knows the rules, it is clearly stated at the meeting that the
captains are responsible for this. Every day of the week there are Quad classes so it is hard to find a perfect day to hold games, Wednesdays seem to work the best for everyone, and if you have class then you just can’t play. I feel that this article was poorly written and was not written with the consideration of the Intramurals staffs feelings and is very disrespectful. The intramurals staff works hard to accompany as many students as they can, they can’t please everyone.

Brent Serba, Junior

Dear Editor:

Ms. Snyder’s editorial regarding the observance of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is prompting me to offer the following thoughts.

On April 2, 1968, a dreamy afternoon, I sat under the magnolia which edges the lawn in front of Holmdene and wrote a lyric poem. Two days later, my sensibilities were shattered when word reached us that the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been shot. One of my friends in Regina Hall, a black woman from Mississippi, went missing for days; presumably because her grief and outrage were so deep that she couldn’t bear to look at her white friends’ faces.

In 1983, MLK, Jr. Day became a national holiday. The administration of Aquinas College at that time considered what would be the appropriate way to honor the drum major of the civil rights movement and other martyrs of the era. How would MLK want us to observe his day? Would he want us to discuss his ideals within a classroom setting? Or to hold public gatherings? Or to cancel classes, stay home and watch television, as sometimes happens on other solemn holidays? The decision was made to best honor Dr. King by continuing our educational endeavors on his day.

Should the decision be re-examined from time to time? Perhaps. But, please don’t automatically assume the worst motives.

Sincerely,

Patricia Kozal
Class of 1970

On behalf of all students who attended and enjoyed the Thanksgiving Dinner at Wege Center last Thursday, I wish to publicly thank the entire staff of Creative Dining Services. The quality of the food and the atmosphere for dining and enjoying the meal was excellent, not only for the early crowd, but even for the last three students who walked in at 6:53pm! After witnessing past years when national “service providers” skimped on preparation for this special meal, it was great to see CDS insure that every student who attended this event could fully enjoy it.

- Randy MacGeorge, Director of Residence Life