Keep smoking

Though I recently quit smoking, I am appalled at the recent University decision to ban smoking in on-campus rooms next fall. What a joke. My advice is to smoke anyway.

This is just another ridiculous attempt of GW trying to and convince you that you are not, despite the truth to the contrary, paying them for services, and renting rooms at obscene rates but renting them nonetheless. Frankly, the RHA should have known better.

Property damage? Personal safety? Drinking is bad for your liver. Did you know that? The likelihood that I’ll put my fist through a wall goes up in a direct relation to how many drinks I’ve had. But we have wet rooms and dry rooms on campus. That distinction is based on whether or not everyone in a room is 21. Everyone on a college campus is 18 or older. It should be up to those who live in a room (one they pay for) whether smoking should be allowed.

The RHA is supposed to work for us, the students. Instead, they’ve enabled the University to once again barge even further into our private lives. Thanks a lot guys. Just for this, I’m going to smoke one right now, right here, in my chair, in my room. The one I paid for.

-Will Donovan, sophomore

Rational explanations

Zej Mocydlowski’s rewrite (“Closing arguments,” Feb. 3, p. 4) got it almost right this time – except for the title. As he pointed out at the end of his piece, “(President Trachtenberg had) better start communicating a whole lot better.” So don’t let that column be the “closing arguments” or “final words” of this discussion. Instead, let it be the beginning of solving the problem.

Trachtenberg understands what drives this school. He understands that we need revenue from 2000 Penn and Starbucks to pay for new buildings. He understands we all want full-time professors who know what they are talking about. He understands we all have the potential for school spirit, if we are only given something worthy of cheering for. He even understands that Greek-letter life can change the way alumni treat their school forever. Of course he cares about rankings, just look how often the school touts them when they are favorable.

The part he doesn’t seem to understand is that he needs to tell us that. There absolutely is a rational explanation for most everything the GW administration does, but a majority of the students here have no clue. In conversations with people at every level of this school, I have always ended up at my same point. The students are so preoccupied with that $40,000 number that they don’t see where it is going, and the administration simply doesn’t take the time to show them.

I think a weekly column in the opinion section by a GW administrator in The Hatchet would go a very long way in solving this problem. No ridiculous spin like that “By George” thing, and none of the sass in SJT’s (“Letters to the editor,” Jan. 27 p. 5) letter. Instead, have Louis Katz, or Bob Chernak, Jack Siggins or even SJT himself write about what they are working on, and how it will impact the students both today, and in 25 years.

Whether the administration likes it or not, the only publication the students read is The Hatchet. And if they want to attack the problem of ignorance in the student body through honest communication, why not take it straight to the students?

-Tommy Newman, sophomore