To the Editor:

I do not believe that Congress was interested in helping kids or taking Roger Clemens and making an example of baseball players. These politicians were looking for nothing more than camera time and a chance to put a face to their names so that voters remember them the next time they need to be re-elected. If the government was truly interested in protecting today’s youth it wouldn’t drag its feet in regards to the environment and the development of alternate sources of energy, you know, those little things that get ignored because its not as glamorous as the topic of performance enhancing drugs. Half a million kids may be injecting drugs into their body, but as Bill Maher noted in his HBO show, nearly everyone in America is eating the various hormones and pesticides in today’s food.
In regards to the apparent split between Republicans and Democrats, I’m sure you’ve likely heard by now that the Bush family is backing Clemens and many suspect that Clemens will be pardoned before Bush is out of office.
Are steroids, or at this point, human growth hormone and that new drug that likely exists that no one has heard of yet because it can’t be detected yet, problems in sports? Yes. Did it deserve that spectacle on Capitol Hill? Of course not, but these politicians saw that opportunity for a few minutes of television time and just couldn’t resist it.

Joseph Bellear
Class of 2008

To the Editor:

We all feel the pain as our bank account nears depletion after buying too many over-priced textbooks. Fortunately, at the end of the semester we can receive a few bucks back after selling the books to the bookstore (who turns around and sells them for three times what we got).
Unless you’re like me, a student plagued with figuring out what to do with a textbook I was forced to buy that, yes, has no binding!
If you’re not aware of what I’m talking about, it’s a new phenomenon that’s occurring around college campuses. Publishers sell us books that only contain pages, no bindings, in which we have to additionally buy a three-ring notebook to create some sort of faux-book to use for the semester. You’d think they’d charge less for these sub-par books, but they don’t. Mine was $90. And on top of that, I never had to use it! But still received an A in the course, thank you very much.
Here’s my problem. The bookstore refuses to buy back these binding-less books. “But I’ll give you the three-ring binder!” I say, with no luck. I scramble to half.com or amazon, who apparently have joined the dark side and will not recognize the binding-less books as sellable.
In a society obsessed with recycling, they are practically encouraging me to throw away the 476 pages I never had to use!
I realize I have to buy books. Fine. I realize I have to pay ridiculous prices to greedy publishers. Fine. I realize I must buy a stack of papers my professor calls a book. Fine. But the bookstore refusing to buy back a “book” they ordered in the first place for a reason that the publishers, professors, and bookstores created? Not ok.

Alexis M. Guerra
Class of 2010