Debate a bipartisan effort:
To The Editor:
College Republicans and Democrats would like to remark on the commentary written by Eileen Arnold that felt our April 26 debate “fell short” of discussing the real issues. I call your attention to four of Ms. Arnold’s critiques. First, you can’t debate one politician’s views. This is untrue; individual politicians like President Bush and Senator Kerry are always debated. We stated the purpose of the debate was to promote our candidate, to do this we felt we had to debate their platform. Second, the debate was poor because it seemed scripted and consisted of “political sound bites.” It may have seemed scripted because we were prepared, but only our initial responses were already written. This is not a valid complaint though, being that every presidential candidate in the past 30 years has entered into debates with prepared statements and with knowledge of the questions to be asked. Furthermore, the audience question period, was totally unscripted. Third, because it was poorly time constructed there was not enough time to debate the issues. We set up a time schedule that would not lag on the debate and that would leave time for the audience to ask questions. Finally, there were too many statistics. The statistics showed our preparation and for that I will not apologize. Ms. Arnold failed to acknowledge the bipartisan efforts of our clubs to help foster political debate on campus. Our organizations have a great relationship. Ms. Arnold undermined our achievements by not giving us proper recognition and focusing on negative aspects of the debate. She also failed to recognize that we did what we said: debate the candidate’s platforms; if she didn’t like the format, fine, but that doesn’t make it wrong. What Ms. Arnold failed to see wasn’t simply that we were successful in our goals, but that the young men and women who were debating took the incentive in bringing educational and political discourse to campus and for that we deserve great respect.
Sincerely,
Chairman Anthony Robert Genovese of College Republicans Chairwoman Kristina Riordan of College Democrats
Hunger Clean-up gives thanks
To The Editor:
The Hunger Cleanup Exec Board would like to thank everyone who helped make the 16th annual Hunger Cleanup on April 3 a success. To date we have raised over $10,000 and there is still money coming in. In particular we’d like to single out, the HAM Channel, WVOF, The Mirror, Jan Buswell, Jim Fitzpatrick, the dean of students office, student activities office, FUSA, Campus Ministry, the IRC, the Improv Group, the Athletic Department and Fairfield Security. Special thanks to all 325 people who volunteered at the work sites on that rainy Saturday morning. Fairfield once again had the most volunteers in the country! We’d also like to thank our very talented and hard working bard. We couldn’t have done it without you. Thanks to everyone who helped by donating to the cause. We look forward to your continued support. Remember next year’s cleanup is April 9. Hope to see you there!
Mo, Meghan, Cristen, Christal and Carolyn
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