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Tech was never “fair”

The apparent controversy over the cost of a Coca-Cola is easily resolved. Get a lightweight, soft sided lunch box or cooler and stash a couple of cold ones in there with a cold pack when you leave the dorm. A 12-pack of cans is still $5.00 or less at the grocery store, which brings the cost\ right down to around 40 to 45 cents.

Fairness to students has always been a touchy subject at Georgia Tech. When I started in 1969, it was the Math department’s job to weed 4,000 of us down to 1,300 within two years . A friend I met later in life was an instructor in the Math department starting around 1975, and he told me the Institute made no bones about the fact that trimming down the freshman class was part of their job.

I made my first ever F in a calculus class at Georgia Tech. It was my first ever grade less than a C in my whole life. The thing is, the world didn’t end. I took it over, passed, and despite a struggle for a few quarters while getting the first two years behind me, I graduated and became an Ensign in the Navy, with orders to Pensacola for flight training.

I can readily state that my degree from Georgia Tech (Bachelor of Engineering Economic Systems from the School of ISyE) got me three nice civilian jobs during my career as an Engineer/Operations Research Analyst, along with admission to earn a Master of Science in OR/SA from the U. S. Naval Postgraduate School. I’m still here because I learned how to overcome adversity, persevere, THINK, and not worry about what was fair.

The value of a Georgia Tech education is in learning how to get things done when it’s not easy, and it’s not fair. If $1.50 for a Coke is deemed unfair, then figuring out how to bring one from home for 1/3 the price is the thing a Tech student should do.

Leave the whining to the Bulldogs. Bring your own cold coke to enjoy after class. Heck, bring two and share one with a girl, and give thanks that it’s not 1969. That was the first year women were admitted on an equal basis with men, and there were only 25 coeds in the freshman class. Cokes were cheap, though. Twenty-five cents. So at least we had that going for us.

Howard Tillison

Graduate, 1974

Atlanta universities need intellectual diversity

The editorial board and Bjorn Cole represent the “Intellectual Diversity in Higher Education Act” (Georgia HB 154) and leftist dominance of academia so incompletely that I hope you will accept an intellectually diverse argument to broaden this discussion about it. It is because I support free speech and intellectual diversity at Institutes of higher learning that I support this act. To illustrate this I only need a few examples, one of which is in our own backyard-literally.

Last October David Horowitz appeared at Emory University to discuss Islamofascism and the tactics of al-Qaeda. I won’t elaborate here on the taunts, catcalls, mockery and verbal intimidation that Horowitz received before he opted to leave the stage; you can view it for yourself on Youtube.

Last year during some overnight hour here at Tech, a group of thieves sought to disrupt a week-long silent campus memorial to the victims of abortion by stealing over 30 crosses from the lawn next to Skiles.

Finally, in 2006, the faculty of the nation’s most well-known university (despite the wishes of most alumni, students and trustees) collectively determined to remove Harvard President Lawrence Summers (a former Clinton cabinet member) because they detested what he said-specifically, that perhaps men and women excelled at unequal rates in math and science because of some innate or physical differences.

Intellectual diversity or free speech is a convenient prop when you agree, but that is not the challenge for Americans. We are challenged to allow speech we don’t like. Bjorn Cole laments resurrecting “the losers in the market of ideas”, the Technique about the forced discussion of minority opinions. (Sounds just like “political correctness” to me.)

Each argument tries hard but does not succeed. Since when was the popularity of ideas a criterion for speaking on campus? Far more people in this country believe al-Qaeda is a threat, than believe that George Bush orchestrated 9/11. While Emory greets Cynthia McKinney warmly, David Horowitz gets mooned.

Soon after the Emory event, an embarrassed President Chace issued a new policy: the university could check ID’s to restrict attendance, and cat-callers will be removed.

We ought to promote intellectual diversity sure, but intimidation, theft and heavy-handed orthodoxy compromise the “free exchange of ideas.” The public paying for these educational ventures has a right to know whether the purveyors of intellectual enlightenment are living up to their own ideals.

Shawn Buckley

4th-year CE

GTENS lacks crucial swift response

This morning (Feb. 6) we all got a “Campus Advisory” regarding a weather alert. Great, it’s nice that we get this. However, the passage that got my attention was this:

“Faculty, staff and students can (and should) sign up for Weather Alerts. To subscribe, send an e-mail to sympa@lists.gatech.edu with a subject of subscribe gtpd-weatheralerts-public. This is a separate system than the Georgia Tech Emergency Notification System (GTENS); it is unlikely that we would have time to send out a GTENS alert during a sudden and threatening weather situation like a tornado.”

GTENS was implemented after the Virginia Tech shooting. It was created to inform the whole campus quickly about an (ongoing) crisis on campus. So how come this system is not able to keep up with a weather alert? Okay, tornados can be fast, but hey, they also are trackable and maybe even predictable.

Maybe I should also sign up with the Homepark neighborhood watch email list, in case a psycho starts shooting over there and then crosses 10th Street...GTENS might not be fast enough for that.

Claus Christmann

Grad AE