Letters for 18 Sep

TO THE EDITOR:
Universities should be a marketplace of ideas. I am disappointed in UNC for mandating the evangelist group to leave campus under the threat of trespassing. The Department of Public Safety alleges that the group was creating an atmosphere which was jeopardizing public safety. I have a hard time believing this. The type of inflammatory ideology verbalized by the most recent evangelist group is most certainly not new to campus. We?ve all see the signs, and we even know Gary?s last name. The fact that they can express their extreme views is exactly the point of the First Amendment. If the claim that the group was jeopardizing public safety was in fact true, then to my fellow Carolina students I wish to say this: Grow up! It?s absurd to try and have an intelligent debate with most of these people. Save your energy and emotion for something more worthwhile. Furthermore, I find the proposed smoking ban to be absolutely ridiculous. A rule that requires smokers to be 25 feet from buildings is more than sufficient. For those of you who are so worried about second hand smoke that you relegate practically the entire campus smoke free?I offer you this advice: Don?t walk into plums of cigarette smoke. They are actually very easy to avoid (it?s the white air). And also, perhaps you should address more serious issues such as all of the pollution which is emitted from cars and Lenoir Hall alike. If there ever were one place you should be able to smoke cigarettes while listening to crazy religious rhetoric?it should be at a university on tobacco road, in the Bible belt.

Zack Waterman
Senior
Communication Studies

TO THE EDITOR:
In my 20 years of watching Carolina football, I’ve seen plenty of bad football played. I watched Mack Brown’s first two teams struggle and I saw some abysmally bad football played in the 5 years preceding this year.

However, in the first 25 minutes of Saturday’s game, I saw a lack of energy, a lack of focus and from my perspective, a lack of pride from our football team. It was as bad as I’ve ever seen a Carolina football team play.

If thousands of season-ticket holders are going to basically plan our weekends around Carolina football, we do it with the expectation that the Tar Heels are prepared to play and that they do so with maximum effort.

I’m going to use what most might consider a UVA word or a Duke word when I say that I hope the 1st half of Saturday’s game marked the “nadir” of the 2007 season and of Coach Davis’ tenure at Carolina.

I hope the coaching staff will take this criticism as motivation to ensure that the Tar Heels are ready to play from the opening whistle on Saturday in Tampa and certainly when we’re back in Chapel Hill on October 6th against Miami.

Tar Heel fans deserve as much.

Sincerely,

L. Tanner Crawford ‘97

TO THE EDITOR:
I am having trouble figuring out your feelings towards the Chapel Hill Transit system. At the beginning of the year, you called them out for buying buses to solve “chronic problems,” yet now you say it is one of the “best [systems] in the country, hand down.” This I can deal with. However, to say that people who earn $25,000-$40,000 don’t deserve a monument that costs $420,000 is ridiculous. By this logic, soldiers of the Vietnam War, the Korean War, and World Wars I and II do not deserve any such monument because they did not make enough money to merit such honors. Also, I don’t think art comes to mind when I think of soldiers, either, so do they still not deserve a monument? How dare the edit board be so self-centered as to say that a subsidy on textbook purchases, or even worse, a name change of an academic building after the patron saint of beer would be more important than honoring those who work for our community each and everyday. Last time I checked, being honored was irrelevant to ones salary and occupation, but rather, one’s service towards others.

Adrian Randall
Junior
Chemistry

TO THE EDITOR:
I want to thank The Daily Tar Heel for the recent coverage of the Physicians Payments Sunshine Act as displayed in your “Bill: Disclose gifts to doctors” article on Sept. 12.
I support the proposed bill and agree that proper disclosure can shed light on the relationship that exists between prescribers and drug companies. Having been a nurse for five years, I can tell you that patient and health consumer advocacy must continue to match the mettle of the drug industry’s powerful influence.
Patient rights should include the ability to access gift disclosure records when medications are involved. In addition to federal law, this proposed bill could help promote the integrity of prescriptive authority, while ensuring that the research evidence and effectiveness of a medicine remain the main principles for choosing one drug over another.
However, I am not suggesting in any way that all pharmaceutical-sponsored programs be stopped, especially those aimed at prescriber education. I’ve found that face-to-face conversation with drug representatives is much more informative than a 20 second spot seen on evening television.
In the meantime, hospitals and providers that serve in non-Sunshine policy states such as North Carolina, should be encouraged by their employees and patients to adopt policies like those utilized by UNC Hospitals that prohibit companies from influencing prescription habits.
As $28 billion dollars per year continue to pour into pharmaceutical promotion; it would be good to know that my physician or nurse practitioner as well as my patient’s medical team, continue to be influenced more by best-practice and their education than by external and often hidden forces. I urge your readers to tell our legislators about Sunshine, so that we can make pharmaceutical gift disclosure a right for all citizens of NC.

Dustin Williams
Graduate Student
School of Nursing