Dear Editor:
As a former Senior Sports Editor for Student Life, I took particular interest in your staff editorial on moving Bears basketball to D-I (“Let’s go bears: Time to consider basketball going Division I” Nov. 15, 2006). However, the editorial neglected to mention that since the passage of NCAA proposal 65 in 2004 no additional schools (there are currently eight) are allowed to “play up” to D-I for only one sport. As a result, for WU to make the jump both the WU administration and the NCAA would have to drastically change their policies.
-Matthew Goldberg
Class of 2005
Voting difficulties caused by government
Dear Editor:
The Missouri elections system has problems. Some of these are the result of difficult regulations; others, difficult people. However, not all of the difficulties are of the government’s making.
Many students moved between last year and this and, insofar as can be told from the articles in Student Life(“Students face roadlocks at Wydown Polls,” Nov. 8, 2006), did not inform the Board of Election Commissioners or attempt to vote at the correct location. It should not come as a surprise to anyone that, for example, a resident of University City cannot vote for the mayor of the City of Clayton and that someone who moves from one to the other will therefore have a new polling place with a different ballot, nor should it come as a surprise that the government needs to know where people live in order to ensure that they vote only in their own elections; these are essential to democracy.
Ignorance of how to update your address or where to find your polling place is no excuse: that information is readily available online, and every Wash. U. student has access to computers on campus. Simply googling “saint louis elections” brings up the relevant County webpage as the first result and the City’s as the second result; both have information on registration (including changes of address) and polling places highly visible on the front page.
We must be careful to distinguish between fixable systemic problems and inevitable voter error during the necessary period of examination and reform of our elections system in this state.
-M. Alan Thomas II
Class of 2004