Letters to the editor

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McKee’s fat phobia

We would like to respond to Chelse McKee’s hateful piece entitled “Dying to be . . . Fat?” The assault on all women’s bodies by the mainstream media teaches women to hate their own bodies and police other women’s bodies. By only discussing two extreme body types there is an erasure of all the sizes and shapes in between, encouraging fear of being fat. Fat does not equal unhealthy or unhappy. McKee alluded to scientific research that claims fat is “grossly unhealthy and a drain on national healthcare resources.” Perhaps she should look into who is funding these studies (Jenny Craig) and who benefits from myths about who is “healthy” and what “healthy” is. This article is just another message to women that we should not be taking up space. Rather than using your writing to perpetuate women’s self-loathing, we think you should use your column to challenge negative and harmful ideas.

From two fat loving ladies,
Kim Parry and Sarah Granke

Tuition should increase with inflation

Not too far into Travis Friesen’s article “Tuition, damned lies and statistics,” I realized that math was in fact really “easy” when it is done wrong. How can you justify taking the percentage of increase in funding and subtracting from it the per cent of increased enrolment? Friesen said in his article that 25-30 per cent of education costs are covered by tuition, so shouldn’t the numbers be adjusted then (admitted the government’s contribution would have increased “per student,” not decreased)?

I mean that those 8,000 students are contributing, even if it is just a little. So, Friesen’s numbers are just as misleading as the figures that he is complaining about. Overall however, I do agree that the tuition freeze cannot stay, and I think that tuition should increase at least with inflation.

Pawel Utko

Give the university administration a break!

I would just like to say how sick I am of hearing UMSU attacking the university administration over raising tuition and fees. Why do they find it so easy to make the university look like the bad guy? Excuse me, but these people are running an organization. Period. They have an operation to run and have a shortfall of money, so what are they supposed to do? They deal with so many unions that it would be impossible for them to lower salaries or cut staff, so they are not going to get money there.

I’d like to see UMSU running the university. We would lack teachers since we wouldn’t be able afford them all. Oh yeah, and forget about getting your assignments marked before graduating since there won’t be enough TAs to mark them. Don’t forget the faculties where professors can make more in industry than they can teaching, like business and engineering. What would happen to them?

It takes money to recruit professors in those faculties. It doesn’t take someone with an accounting background to figure out that the university needs more money. Stop wasting your time bothering the university and talk to the feds.

In the real world, most companies having the problems of the university would raise prices or just fold; they don’t have that option. Give them a break; they are doing very well considering the resources they have.

Brigitte Freynet