Hart House is the student centre
Re: Student centre plan struggling, Mar. 17.
The current campaign for a student centre marks the third serious attempt in ten years by student leaders to build a new facility on the St. George campus. As someone who has been involved in this matter for a number of years, I find both the desire and need for such a facility baffling.
First, during previous campaigns-and, it seems, this one as well-there was little wide-spread student support for a student centre. Second, U of T already has a student centre-it’s called Hart House.
True, Hart House is not a typical student centre, but that is a good thing! Many would argue Hart House is superior, on many levels, to standard North American student centres. It offers a wide range of opportunities for students to get involved by planning and running services and programming for students. U of T students should consider themselves lucky to have such a unique student centre. In 1999, the Task Force on Student Activity Space recommended that Hart House play a central role in students’ lives outside of the classroom (www.sa.utoronto.ca/documents/spacetaskforce). In keeping with the Task Force’s findings, student leaders should be working to enhance programming and opportunities at Hart House, not wasting time and effort attempting to gain support for an unnecessary student centre.
Jonathan Gouveia
If you can’t stand the heat….
Re: “The Ebert of pop legal theory strikes again,” Letters, Mar. 17.
I would like to introduce Mr. Peter Riad to something that he may be unfamiliar with: the concept of holding someone to an unfair higher standard. It is not Alan Dershowitz’s job to explain away each and every one of Israel’s mistakes, in the same way that it would be unfair to expect Arab Canadians to issue public apologies every time a suicide bombing takes place.
Just because Mr. Riad is an outspoken supporter of a popular cause does not excuse him from dealing with arguments he might not like hearing. The fact is that he and the other students who argued with Mr. Dershowitz on March 14 should have expected a tough reception, and that is exactly what they got.
It should be obvious that no supporter of Israel is going to let Mr. Riad and his contemporaries call Israel an apartheid state without responding accordingly. Alan Dershowitz showed Mr. Riad exactly what to expect when he singles out Israel unfairly. If Mr. Riad can’t deal with that, I suggest he leave the Israeli-Palestinian debate to the professionals.
Josh Lieblein
PR Co-ordinator, Hillel
Cash money
I just wanted to express my frustration with SAC. Like most students at this university money is pretty tight for me, and I was wondering what gives the SAC the nerve to hold on to my opt-out cheque for an extra month. I don’t know about them, but I need to budget the little cash I have, and not having the extra money from the opt-out cheque hurts, there have already been a couple of mornings where I had to walk to school from Scarborough, to save my tokens and money. I am sick of waiting.
Mike Cordingley
