UCI Hunger Strike Hard to Digest
* I am a Hispanic single mother who currently attends college and I did not agree with the hunger strike at UC Irvine (“Food for Thought in 15-Day Fast,” Nov. 3 editorial.)
Affirmative action is a program that chooses you solely on your color or sex, not based on your merit. How could this be helpful to our self-esteem as a culture? As Hispanics, we should be working to prove that we can be accepted because we were given brains just like everyone else, without regard to color. And how can we prove it? By gaining entrance just like everyone else, with the grades to prove our abilities.
I don’t want to be admitted because I’m brown or female or because I grew up in Santa Ana and college prep courses weren’t offered to me. Many people had the same background and managed to motivate themselves to succeed. Many of my counterparts went on to integrate into the American culture, the “melting pot,” for isn’t that why our ancestors brought us here? They didn’t bring us here to stand alone as “Mexicans,” they brought us here to be Americans, proud of our Mexican heritage.
I have never considered being Hispanic a disadvantage. Let us show some dignity in not asking for “handouts,” because that is in reality what affirmative action is. Only we, as a culture, can give ourselves a “hand up” by promoting education within our own families because ultimately, education is the key to equality, but we must earn it, not expect it.
ANGIE ZANUDO
Santa Ana
* I don’t happen to agree with the four hunger strikers regarding affirmative action, but I respect the stand they took. Democracy is reinforced by people such as these--people who will confront, engage and challenge our elected and appointed officials. I love it!
GARY M. WARNECKE
Yorba Linda
* Have noted with regret the public tantrum thrown by several students at UCI in the last two weeks. It is astounding how they characterize as a matter of “social justice” their blatantly racist demands for the system of racial preferences frequently referred to by the Orwellian euphemism “affirmative action.” The days-long indulgence of their displays speaks poorly of an evidently flaccid leadership at the university. It should be understood, though, that the attitudes bred in these young people owe in great measure to the pernicious Balkanizing influences of the ethnic studies programs found throughout the University of California system. The group-rights ideologies which are part and parcel to these programs are profoundly un-American, socially divisive, and should be attended to.
RAND MILLAR
Laguna Niguel
* Now that the UCI hunger strike pantomime is over, one has to wonder whether each of the participating students’ major was not dramatic arts. It certainly could not have been logic.
They cite “health reasons” for abandoning their effort, but surely the whole purpose of engaging in such a form of protest is to gain the desired concessions and to “lay a guilt trip” on the opposition because of the participants’ failing health. If they are not prepared to sacrifice for a cause, they should not indulge in such transparent theatrics!
PAUL S. McCAIG
Dana Point