UCSC raises white flag
To the Editor,
It was sickening to read that UCSC had completely capitulated to all the demands of the African Student Alliance. How many of these students pay full tuition?
The action was even more humiliating as the Chancellor had to come to them — not they to him to issue their demands. And then the Chancellor had to meet them at a neutral location because he feared for his safety if he went to Kerr Hall, a university building on university grounds. The only symbol missing was the Chancellor carrying a white flag.
One of their demands which will be implemented is that all incoming freshmen must take a diversity class. So the students get it both ways. They practice polarization but demand diversity from everyone else.
It’s official. The inmates are running the asylum.
Amelia Koenig
Watsonville
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Police killings in US point to something wrong
To the Editor,
I wish to commend the Pajaronian staff, Todd Guild in particular, for the coverage of the District Attorney’s decision not to bring charges against the officer who shot 15-year-old Lucas Smith to death with a rifle (Pajaronian, April 22). Lucas was armed with a pocket knife and the several officers on the scene could not figure a way to subdue him without killing him.
Sometime before this incident, a mentally challenged man armed with a garden rake was shot and killed in Santa Cruz. Several officers at that scene also failed to figure a way short of death to subdue the subject.
Before writing this, I learned of police shooting two more unarmed black people to death (not here). One, a 15-year-old in a car leaving a party, hit in the head with a rifle bullet. Cops claimed the car was headed toward them at a high speed in reverse, but a body camera showed the car fleeing the scene.
The other killing was seen on television thanks to a witness with a camera. The man was face-down with officers on his back when another pulled out his pistol and shot him twice in the back.
I went to the library and googled “Police killings in the United States in 2017.” Up popped the number 333. Cops have killed that many in four months, well on the way to the 1,000 per year (give or take a few) that police have been killing in this country in recent years. Police in other developed countries seldom get into double digits: Britain one or two, and Germany zero usually.
There is something obviously wrong in this country when our cops kill a thousand of us per year and there is no public outcry over it. The Black Lives Matter may be a beginning.
Oh yeah, Attorney General Jeff Sessions will not prosecute a cop who shot a black man with a rifle, but he sent a woman to jail for a year for laughing at him. I heard this on Free Speech TV and listened for it on evening TV news … nothing.
Thomas Stumbaugh
Aptos
