Pay attention and drive!

Ask almost anyone if they are a better-than-average driver, and they will say yes. Now ask them if other drivers being distracted by mobile phones are dangerous—again, they will say yes. They may then follow with some kind of excuse about their own phone use and how their own driving skills are, magically, unaffected.

Profiting from addiction

First you lose your house and then your family, which includes the dogs. Then you get out of control and steal money from your church offering, and despite guilty feelings, you can’t stop yourself from “borrowing” money from anywhere and everywhere you can, with no means to pay it back. That is when you’ve really hit rock bottom and can’t get yourself out of this mess.

What do you think?

Marijuana has been making a number of headlines recently across our nation. With the Obama administration announcing that the federal government will hold off on prosecuting marijuana-related offenses in states allowing medical marijuana use, many users of the medicinal plant can take a smoke-filled sigh of relief.

Letters

I transferred to this university two years ago and although I think this is a great place to study, during my first year here I found a newspaper on campus that frustrated me and is called the Vanguard. I have picked this newspaper up numerous times over the past couple of years. Whether I was waiting for time to pass so I could go into a classroom or just to read to see what my university was concerned about or, on a more general basis, what the students were talking about.

Letters

Comment and correction on political advertising, and congratulations to Nathan Hellman on a nicely written piece on the growing importance of the Internet in U.S. politics and elections [“New era of marketing politics,” March 7]. The Web, far more than corporate-controlled television and radio, is attracting young people into political debate and participation in ever-increasing numbers. I would only correct in Hellman’s piece one item for which I was cited. Political advertising is not one-third of the television industry’s income but rather the third-largest source of its revenues (behind retail trade and automobile advertising) during the presidential campaign season.

Letters

While I do not begrudge the Vanguard staff their opinions, such as that expressed in the Jan. 25 editorial “Proposal wrong for OSA,” but it is a disservice to the Vanguard readership to give said opinion before offering a clear explanation of the proposal.