Change the channel

This is an open letter to whoever controls which news programs are displayed on the Marvin Center big screen televisions: Please quit playing Fox News. I am writing this letter not as a liberal – which I am – but as a concerned student who enjoys quality news with his coffee. The Fox News Channel is little more than right-leaning, editorialized infotainment.

I studied in Marvin Center today for two hours. In those two hours Fox News interviewed Newt Gingrich, ran a headline asking viewers whether the United States should leave the United Nations, interviewed Senator Norm Coleman about why he wants Kofi Annan to resign from the U.N. – with the banner: Cashing in on Daddy – and asked a writer from The New York Post about ‘Big City Liberals.’ Even a cursory glance at Fox News programming reveals less news and something more akin to right-wing editorializing.

Fox News fails its public obligation to provide relevant news when it spends hours reporting the Scott Peterson trial and 30 seconds on the crisis in Sudan. The flashy graphics, monosyllabic banter and endless repetitions of their motto “fair and balanced” clearly caters to an audience with a short attention span. Please change the channel back to CNN. Or, if you are feeling adventurous, try the History Channel, the BBC or PBS. Perhaps you could do away with the televisions in general and play NPR. These options offer un-editorialized news fit for an institution of higher education.

-Matthew Amon, senior

Praise for drivers

As disgruntled freshmen during CI, no one informed us that “MV” on the registration menu stood for Mount Vernon. It was not until we got to school months later that we realized our Tuesdays and Thursdays would be spent attending two different classes on the alienated campus. Upperclassmen told us we were in for a huge inconvenience due to the long and complicated shuttle trip. However, our expectations were proved extremely wrong.

We would like to take this opportunity to applaud the staff of the Mount Vernon shuttle buses. The shuttle bus system is always efficient and trustworthy, and never have we once been inconvenienced or late to class. More importantly, however, the bus drivers are the kindest, friendliest workers on the GW campus. In addition to a guaranteed relaxing and comfortable ride, we have always been guaranteed a warm welcome when boarding the bus. So, in the spirit of the holiday season, we would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to the staff of the Mount Vernon shuttle system.

-Carly Popofsky and, Amelia Skolnick, freshmen

Quite unclear

Not to discredit the accomplishments of former University President Lloyd Elliott, but I’ve been avoiding the Gelman Library this year while my favorite study spot has been sacked entirely to make way for a certain popular Colonial Cash hound. Outside the gravesite on the first floor a sign hangs that reads, “Looking for additional study space? Please consider visiting the Eckles Library on the Mt. Vernon campus.” Although I’ve spent a significant portion of my first two undergraduate years in Eckles, which is everything a library should be, the underlying message of such a notice to students is clear: If you seek a quiet space in which to study, the Gelman Library may not be the place for you.

So I turn the rhetorical question posed by President Trachtenberg in the Nov. 22 issue (Letters to the editor, “Not academic?” p. 5) back to University administrators, including the poser himself: When, indeed, is a library a piece of real estate rather than a center of scholarship? With the likes of Starbucks displacing academically inclined students from our own, the answer to that question around here is far less clear than it ought to be.

-Jesse Kimball, junior