Stop means stop
Dear Editor,
Why don’t smart Stanford students wear bike helmets, have bike lights and reflectors at night, or obey the traffic laws?
I was almost hit several times in the past few weeks since daylight started fading at 5:30 p.m. I decided to do an informal count on Thursday night at 6:30 p.m. On my way from Meyer Library, along Galvez Mall and Galvez Street to the end of the C-lot near the stadium, I encountered about 50 bikers. Only six had both headlights/reflectors and were wearing a bike helmet (12 percent), three wore a helmet but had no lights (6 percent), four had lights but no helmet (8 percent) and the rest had neither (74 percent).
That’s an accident waiting to happen and can result in injury, permanent disability or death.
Sharing the sidewalk with pedestrians is another problem. They speed, weaving in and out among people walking, not paying attention because they are using communications devices or are otherwise distracted.
Obey the law. A stop sign means stop, especially at a pedestrian cross walk when someone is in the crosswalk!
Be safety-conscious.
Rose Rajeff
University Libraries
Nothing ‘sophist’ about ROTC debate
Dear Editor,
Sam Windley L.L.M. ’11 wrote in this space about the Jan. 11 ROTC forum, claiming that ROTC supporters had offered little but “disgusting” “sophistry” (Letters to the editor, Jan. 18). Mr. Windley’s account does a disservice to both the participants and to the Stanford community, which deserves a fuller record of the proceedings.
As expressed at the event, the primary anti-ROTC position is simple: even after the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the military still does not accept transgendered persons. That type of exclusion is discrimination. Discrimination violates Stanford policy. Ordinary employers who discriminate in that way are barred from campus. Therefore, both because we will not participate in discrimination and because we wish a change in the policy, we should not devote University resources to ROTC or permit the program on campus.
That’s fair, as far as it goes, but it makes two critical assumptions with which many disagree.
First, the military is not an ordinary employer. Our ties to such employers extend no further than to their recruiting presences on our campus and, perhaps, to employment statistics in our admissions brochures. That’s not the case here. Our tax dollars train and equip our warriors, and our elected representatives send them into battle. In the eyes of the world, PFC Lynndie England was more than an individual — she was an American soldier and an agent of U.S. foreign policy. Like it or not, the actions of our armed men and women are, and will remain, our actions, and a boycott would neither sever our ties with nor end our support for the American military.
Further, it’s hard to believe that a boycott is the most effective path to equality in the military. By keeping ROTC off-campus, we turn down opportunities to meet and debate military officers, to introduce the military to the transgendered (and vice versa), and to earn the credibility that comes from having served ourselves. Does anyone believe that a military with more Stanford graduates as flag officers would be less likely to welcome anyone of sound mind and body who wished to serve?
If we short-sightedly banish ROTC, we take ourselves out of the fight. The University’s founders believed that “[t]he public at large, and not alone the comparatively few students who can attend the University, are the chief and ultimate beneficiaries of the [University] foundation.” Where would they fall on the choice between making a statement and making a difference?
We are confronted with incompatible moral goals, necessitating a difficult choice. How great is the injustice done by the policy against transgendered recruits, and how great an injustice would we commit if, in service to country, to civic discourse and, possibly, to equality, we allowed them on campus anyway? Reasonable people disagree on the right answer. But there’s nothing “sophist” about the debate.
Jonathan Margolick J.D. ’13