Political bias toward the Tea Party

Reading Monday and Tuesday’s Technician, I was appalled at the ignorance and obvious political bias involved in the continuous allusion to Tea Partiers being “crazy” and hating President Barack Obama, specifically in the “One if by land, two if by tea” and “A revelation: everyone is crazy” articles. For future articles, I advise writers to fact-check beyond the New York Times or random protesters when dealing with information they do not have sufficient background information on. For instance, one need only go as far as the official Web site to see that the platform itself merely supports “fiscal responsibility, free market and a Constitutionally limited government” (Source: Mission Statement from its Web site — teapartypatriots.org/mission). In fact, I don’t see anything about Obama at all on its official Web site, outside of the normal — so I am not misunderstood, “normal” implies saying things such as “Obama’s health care bill” or “Obama is the current president.” The Tea Party should be judged for its radicals no more than the Republicans or Democrats — and believe me, there are some to name from every party. Just because it is the people who are an embarrassment to the party that get interviewed and shown on TV — which, I assure you, is to bump sales and ratings — does not mean everyone who holds the core values of the party is “crazy.” We all ought to know, considering almost every Carolinian interviewed on the news is shown to be buck-toothed and dim-witted. As evidenced by the poll in Monday’s paper, it would be significantly more beneficial to the students and others who read this paper to have an informative, non-biased article on what the Tea Party actually stands for, as opposed to articles calling us crazy and hinting at our lack of intelligence.

Ashley Hincher

freshman, psychology

Columns misrepresent students

This morning I was faithfully reading Technician, as I do most mornings with my coffee and bagel, when I began reading the articles “A revelation: everyone is crazy” and “Do you believe in doomsday?” in the Viewpoint section. Now, I realize the point of a “Viewpoint” section is that writers get to spout their own opinion, but the tone of these articles was not only offensive and overly sarcastic — I feel they misrepresented groups of students that attend N.C. State.

A university newspaper does not have to represent everyone’s beliefs, but it has no right to misrepresent student views. N.C. State has an ideal to uphold diversity, including diversity of religion and political views. The specific area which I found offensive in the “Revelation” article was where the writer said the Tea Party attempted to rise up the military against the federal government. Aside from some select militant activists, the Tea party is a peaceful protest group who has done nothing harmful as a whole. Comparing them to Timothy McVeigh was out of line and factually crazy.

In the “doomsday article”, the writer correctly quotes the Christian bible verse as the main view of the Christian churches, but separates Catholics from this group, although the Catholic Church has the same bible quote. There is no “Catholic prophecy” which says President Barack Obama is the anti-christ and that the current pope is the last pope; I was offended by this accusation. In the future, please uphold the University’s ideals of embracing diverse backgrounds and opinions without misrepresenting facts or obviously putting down some groups. I expect to see improvement in the future.

Ginny Zimmerman

sophomore, biological sciences

Clarifying visitation

The issue of visitation at N.C. State is one that has been an ongoing talk for quite some time. This issue was last presented to the Board of Trustees in 1995, so it has been a great opportunity to finally get it back to the table this year. Monday’s viewpoint did a great job explaining how this policy puts the University behind many other schools in regard to visitation.

But to clear up a few details, the Inter-Residence Council has done extensive research and surveying of students regarding this subject. We are the only school in the ACC to not have an option of 24-hour visitation. However, some schools in the ACC with an option of open visitation still have some halls that are restricted to accommodate all students. In terms of what happens next with our policy, the vote in July at the Board of Trustees meeting will determine if the policy is to stay under the Board or move under the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs. If the move is made downward, a policy is in place for a pilot of 24-hour visitation in three halls to immediately start for the 2010-2011 school year. These halls are: Bragaw, North and Turlington Hall.  Students who want to select these halls for next year have been notified that they could possibly be in a 24-hour visitation living environment, pending the vote.

Kylee Phillips

senior, accounting

president, Inter-Residence Council