Letters

SALPies suck (student fees)

Student Activities and Leadership Programs (SALP) gave away awards and certificates to student groups and student leaders for various outstanding services at an annual event SALP cleverly dubs “the SALPies.” The groups receiving awards were well-deserving of recognition, this is not the issue.

As an attendee of the SALPie awards Thursday, I was appalled by numerous parts of the event. I was thoroughly disappointed in the disgusting display of excessive spending of our student fees by these paid professionals. This “service” for student groups is spending thousands of dollars of student fee money on awards, too much food, door prizes and decorations.

Also, SALP only recognized a handful of PSU’s student groups when many more worked diligently and successfully all year. SALP, with its padded $700,000 annual budget, spent far too much money on this event. Meanwhile, student groups have been struggling all year with a tiny fraction of the SALP budget to produce the most amazing events, services and programs I have seen at PSU.

SALP continues to get excessively funded with a budget that has more than doubled over the past few years. SALP provides more misinformation, red tape and bureaucratic processes through under-qualified advisers than it does leadership opportunities and programs. They should really give out awards to student leaders who can actually navigate SALP’s bullshit processes.

Anonymous

Underage drinking

Drew Long’s letter [“Prohibition lives,” May 9] presents arguments about the effects of the drinking age but misses the important point that the imposers of that law do not own the victims of it, and therefore have no right to impose it on them.

In a free country, the citizens decide what to drink, because underage drinking, unlike drunk driving, violates nobody’s rights.

Andrew Hopkins and Grace Chamberlain were students at Hiram College in Hiram, Ohio, who never got a chance to drink legally. They died at 18 in a head-on collision in Burton Township, Ohio, on March 2, 2006. The suspect was 47, and had – get this – 11 prior DWIs and 0.26 percent BAC by blood test.

Obviously, the government has no interest in preventing drunk driving. They just start naming other crimes you didn’t commit, as if the point somehow becomes valid that way. The government has no right to punish you for crimes somebody else committed.

One last point, though. It’s your life and you’re not violating anybody’s rights by drinking yourself to death, but you’re also not hurting the enemies of liberty one bit. Stick around and join the campaign for liberty.

Tom Alciere
Webmaster, Underage Drinkers Against Drunk Driving

Hey, a couple of words on eating while drinking: eating while drinking, or before drinking, is a good idea, but beer, whether it is sipped from a pint glass or guzzled from a beer bong, does not make a person fat. The human body metabolizes alcohol at a faster rate than a cheeseburger, but if you combine the two, you’re screwed. Kinda like walking with a pound of gum stuck to your shoe down a sidewalk in Phoenix, by eating a cheeseburger right before you drink, you gum up the whole digestive process. So have a half breast of chicken and a spinach salad with a light vinaigrette if you’re hungry. Yeah, it may not taste as good as a cheeseburger, or slice of pizza, but that’s where you have to decide if you want to have another beer, or that cheeseburger. If you want a cheeseburger with fries, then you should wait about four hours before you drink a beer. Keep your food intake to a minimum while you’re drinking. Eating fruit (not soaked in Everclear) or veggies with a small portion of chicken with your alcohol consumption will not hurt, as long as you drink a lot of water and don’t stuff yourself. Enjoy! And remember, skip the nachos. Have another beer.

Mike Mahns
Missoula, Mont.

Trojan implosion

I’m not a writer but it seems to me that a writer would have to do some research before penning a story [“Tower of power,” May 16]. Trojan is in northwestern Oregon, not Washington. You can see it easily across the river from Washington on I-5 near Woodland. It has nothing to do with Washington nuclear energy at all. It was a PGE project from the beginning. The Washington Public Power Supply System (WPPSS, or whoops, as some kindly referred to it) was a failure. The only two that were built were Hanford, which no longer operates, and Satsop, which never operated and still sits idle south of Highway 12 near Montesano. Trojan was strictly an Oregon endeavor. Just because it can be seen in Washington doesn’t mean it is in Washington. Mt. Hood isn’t in Vancouver is it? Like I said, I’m no writer, but all of this came from my head without any research. Maybe you could do some and get back to me if any of my facts are wrong. It is, after all, what you are supposed to do, isn’t it?

Joseph Ezell
Portland

Reviews are pointless

Brian Smith: Objectification and quantification of art/music is plain silly/immature. Your opinion [Press Play, May 17], I wouldn’t even remotely call it a review, about 10,000 Days is highly subjective, i.e., it’s your perspective (not reality); let’s leave it at that.

Grow up, react to music, and not your insecurities.

PK