This is not Cosmo

“Vagina. Vajayjay. Gina. Pussy. Beaver. Bald eagle. Well, now that I’ve caught your attention, I thought everyone on the campus could probably use some muff-diving education.”

How could you let such drivel be printed in a school publication as prestigious and well-known as The Diamondback?

I understand that having a “sex columnist” is interesting and engaging for readers, but I worry about who may read the paper. One must consider potential students, professors and potential donors to the university. If an individual should desire to learn more about “cunnilingus” or other such activities, it might be in his or her best interest to buy a Cosmopolitan magazine or Maxim. Writing such as that by Lindsey Warne should not be allowed in a free publication that reaches a readership as large as the one here at the university.

I am not personally offended by the article, but I am embarrassed that you would let something of that nature be published in our paper. It may be seen as highly degrading to women and possibly even men. Additionally, Ms. Warne’s writing is a liability for The Diamondback.

In the future, you should really think more carefully about what you are allowing to be printed every day in our paper as it is a reflection not only on you and Ms. Warne, but the university as a whole.

Mike HuttonJuniorFinance

A different view

I would like briefly to respond to Adam Fishbein’s “The ethics of you,” (Nov. 13).

The author argues for ethics based on individual assessment of whether a given course of action will lead to greater happiness or satisfaction.

He does so having criticized Nathan Origer’s use of Hitler as an example of reason-based godless ethics (“Human beings less than perfect,” Nov. 1).

I would like the author to notice, however, that Hitler’s conduct was based exactly on the same individualistic, purely reason-centered ethics that Fishbein advocates: Hitler used reason, and reason only, to determine that employing genocidal politics directed against certain groups of people would enable him and his followers to “lead … happy, satisfying lives,” to use the words that Fishbein uses in his argument.

A system of ethics that does not refer to transcendental, suprahuman coordinates stands in great danger of being used to refuse rights, or humanity itself, to any individual or group of people precisely because individual reason may suggest that it will lead to happiness or satisfaction. (For a development of these ideas from a Christian perspective, for instance, see Bosch, Believing in the Future: Toward a Missiology of Western Culture, 1995.)

Janusz KazmierczakVisiting research associate

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