Protesters included diverse crowd, not just anarchists and hippies
Anyone who spent more than 30 seconds in Washington on Saturday would know an incredibly diverse crowd turned out to protest the Iraq war.
Why, then, out of all the photos you had at your disposal, did you choose to feature black-clad anarchists as your signature image of the protesters on Monday’s front page? In four hours, I saw maybe 100 of them out of a crowd of thousands.
Rather than focusing on, say, the protesters’ enthusiasm, earnestness, anguish or anger, you instead stuck a second red herring – “the faint scent of marijuana” – in your first sentence.
Should I be questioning your objectivity, your journalistic competence or just your powers of observation? And if you’re looking for historical parallels, instead of Woodstock, try Washington, November 1969.
Philip Jones
Graduate Student
Environmental engineering
Student body includes more than undergrads; Diamondback overlooks graduate student issues
I think it is a bit presumptuous of you to assume Andrew Rose is the public face of the “student body.”
Rose represents about 74 percent of the students at the University of Maryland, College Park, which is not in fact the “student body.”
What the author of this piece seems to have overlooked is the fact that the university is not just undergraduate students, but, in fact, has a large number of graduate students in attendance.
Graduate students are an integral part of this university and The Diamondback and its staff should be careful to make distinctions between undergraduate and graduate issues.
The Diamondback’s staff use of language seems to indicate “students” equals “undergraduates.” This assumption is offensive to graduate students on the campus and writers need to be more careful in their distinction.
Rose only represents part of the “student body” at Maryland. Graduate students do not vote in the SGA elections, as we have our own representative government that is often ignored.
Evviva Weinraub
GSG Director of Operations
Graduate student
Information sciences
Columnist has the right idea; Terp fans should stick to organized creativity
Zach Wahl’s Sept. 26 column, “A plan to make Byrd scary again,” is right on target and should be given more attention. The problem facing Terp fans is not a lack of spirit or motivation; it’s simply that they do not act as one unified student section. Instead of coordinated effective cheers erupting from our fans, usually a sporadic mess of offensive and nonsensical shouts ensues. This is an apathetic travesty for a university with such a proud athletic tradition and something must be done about it. Special K, cheerleaders and the Mighty Sound of Maryland can only do so much.
Wahl’s suggestion of a meeting for all interested fans to coordinate their efforts on game weeks is exceptional and should be seriously discussed. By bringing together those who care the most, we can definitely make significant progress. The ideas that will come out of these meetings could very well transform into traditions. Not to mention, meetings such as those used to be their own university tradition!
We have the spirit, we have the history and we have the athletics – right now what we need is synergy. A puppeteer emcee or scoreboard cheerleading is not the answer. It’s about changing the mindset. Student fans must accept that we are stronger together than we are apart. If we act as one, who knows what kind of new definition we could bring to the concept of home field advantage at Byrd Stadium. Go Terps!
Andrew Heck
Sophomore
Business
