Jaywalking and illegal driving crackdown legal and beneficial, not entrapment

I am glad to see University Police are cracking down on jaywalkers and drivers who don’t stop for pedestrians. However, what the police are doing is not “entrapment,” as Jeremy Arias reported. Entrapment is when police action causes a law-abiding individual to commit a crime, and any ensuring punishment can be dismissed by a court.

By walking in front of cars and catching jaywalkers, the police are not causing anyone to commit a crime. Instead, they are presenting a choice between legal and illegal behavior, and citing those who choose the latter.

Jonathan Steingart

Senior

Criminology and Criminal Justice

Sociology

Consistent Diamondback bias irresponsible and disappointing

This letter is a response to consistent, negative biases displayed in The Diamondback on a daily basis. It has been the modus operandi of this paper to discover an issue it feels strongly about, print a slanted article detailing whatever findings support its viewpoint and print editorials for several days mocking the target of its annoyance.

One thing I learned in the years I spent writing for my high school paper is that news articles should be impartial with all sides adequately represented. Given this university’s highly-esteemed journalism school, it is sad to see such journalistically unethical reporting from the school’s representative newspaper day after day, year after year. It’s embarrassing when even your own university president doesn’t read the school paper (Nov. 21, 2003, “The real Dan Mote”) because it’s too negative.

It’s true that I wrote this letter because The Diamondback not too long ago attacked one of the groups to which I belong: athletes. It’s no secret The Diamondback hates athletes – except in the half of the paper devoted to them – and their “elitist attitude[s]” (Feb. 17, “University cradles athletes’ elitist attitude”).

It hates that athletes receive money, though it neglects to mention that the department raises its own funds and gives back way more to the university than it receives (have you ever seen a varsity athletics fee on your student bill?). It hates that athletes get “tutoring, extracurricular activities, and the campus facilities,” even though every single student has similar opportunities if they pay attention to the hundreds of e-mails, flyers and brochures thrown at them (look up the Learning Assistance Service in Shoemaker Hall, and there are class-specific, free tutoring sessions all the time).

The Diamondback especially hates class-checkers, as if they are a perk to being an athlete. How would you feel if the university penalized you for missing class?

I’ll admit not all athletes are class acts, but then neither are furniture-throwing rioters that burn down the town when we win big games, like the people who rolled the heavy boulders down the hill into the parking lot outside of Commons Building 3 when the women’s basketball team won the championship.

The athletes go to the same school and have to meet tougher standards to stay eligible than other students do to remain enrolled, but nobody remembers those who do well in class as well as on the field, like Sam Hollenbach, who is majoring in mechanical engineering and who had a high school GPA of 3.93. You’re about as likely to be a Gemstone student as you are to be an athlete and, as someone who was both, I urge you to stop using us as scapegoats and practice responsible reporting.

Adam Beytin

Senior

Computer Engineering

Ticketing at the university a business

Parking tickets. They have been a problem I, as well as most students and visitors, have been dealing with since my freshman year.

Among other university expenses, I pay tuition and refuse to support the university’s horrible parking policies. With the current program, students are forced to park far from their living facilities, which is not only an inconvenience, but dangerous as well. If a student is lucky enough to find a spot near his or her dorm, he or she still has a difficult time finding parking because the Department of Transportation Services has issued too many of these same permits.

After one of my first parking fouls, I quickly realized ticketing at this university is a business. From my point of view, DOTS hires people to spend their days deliberately preying on innocent victims. I see the same guy circling the campus every day. I often wonder whether these people get commission for the number of tickets they put out.

The ticketing office is out to make as much money as possible. A student late to class is forced to park in a “forbidden parking lot” knowing his or her money is being stolen and a taxi would have been cheaper. As for the meters? A year ago a quarter was worth 30 minutes, and now it’s 20. Expired meters equal cash to a university that, to me, doesn’t seem to be hurting.

“Fear the Turtle” sculptures? – I know I’ve funded at least one of those bad boys.

Candace Greene

Junior

Broadcast Journalism