I read your article on MySpace in the March 16 Sundial and I was looking to provide a rebuttal to it.

Indeed this website is becoming more and more popular among today’s youth, but in the process it has become a medium of fraud, deception and identity theft. The news channels have certainly exposed the legal problems and consequences of the site and it must be known that those incidents are true while MySpace users are living a lie. Kids who have not even hit their teenage years are displaying sexual alter egos of themselves which, at this point, is way past venting, meeting people and staying in touch. Some even go as far as to form profiles of celebrities and other icons of today’s society. What is with that?

With regards to parents knowing what their kids are doing, MySpace is shutting off communication between kids and their parents. Looking out for their child or children’s well-being, parents grow curious about what is taking their kids away from them. When the parents find they have lost their kids to a semi-pornographic website, you can understand why they react the way they do. When you become a father, you will understand.

At school, a kid is a student in an institute of education. Visiting vulgar websites cannot be tolerated and MySpace is no exception. If students are mainly the ones that are using it, shouldn’t school be coming first? So it would not be ridiculous to ban one from having a profile. If anything, those that make the choice not to have one, like myself, are the smartest of all. They are the ones exercising the real responsibility.

People should terminate their use of MySpace at once. After all, they have better things to do?or do they?

Here is a list of just some of the things we can do besides go to MySpace:

Balance your checkbook

Read a book

Study for a test

Have a party

Go on a date

Go to a movie or a theater

Go to a concert

Go to a sporting event

Go out to eat

Go dancing

Call or talk to your family

Play a board game

Play sports

Take you dog for a walk

Get a job

Exercise

Find a hobby

Pay bills

Do the dishes

Do the laundry

Mow the lawn

Cook dinner

Clean your room

Clean out your closet

Visit your grandparents

In a nutshell, carpe diem (seize the day). Nobody can if they are stuck on MySpace all the time.

-Tom Iland,

Accounting major

On March 9, 2006, the Daily Sundial printed a picture called “In Appreciation.” The organization named Hermanos Unidos (United Brothers) was celebrating Women’s Appreciation Day by passing flowers out to female students on campus. The irony in the picture is that a member of Hermanos Unidos, Jose Delgado, is wearing a T-shirt from a local Hooters restaurant. This restaurant, as we all know, exploits women in a sexual manner to increase clientele and profits. Does Jose Delgado and the organization he represents appreciate women and respect women as individuals or do they lack the respect for women and only appreciate them as sexual objects to be exploited? This is a slap in the face by a school-sanctioned organization that made a mockery of Women’s Appreciation Day. Your readers, including women, will likely find this letter to be unnecessary but it’s being written because several female students noticed the irony of the picture.

We live in a male-dominated patriarchal society that allows this type of foolishness to occur and to be overlooked. By promoting Hooters while ‘celebrating’ Women’s Appreciation Day, Jose Delgado and the Hermanos Unidos have contradicted themselves. This act undermines them as individuals and as an organization.

-Christina Blair,

junior, deaf studies major