This letter is in response to “Reproductive rights week planned to oppose new Okla. legislation,” a news story published Nov. 2.

Dear Daily editor,

I’m writing in response to Natasha Goodell’s article on Reproductive Rights Week, which featured tabling in the Union, an event each night last week and a protest at the state capitol Friday.

As one of those quoted in the article (and a member of the Women’s and Gender Studies Student Association), I have to wonder why this article did not actually talk about the events planned for last week. Monday night there was a screening of “I Had an Abortion” in Beaird Lounge, Tuesday night featured the prominent scholar Dr. Carol Mason and there was a Reproductive Rights Town Hall meeting on Wednesday night.

All these events were carefully targeted on women’s experiences, voices and needs in a direct response to House Bill 1595. Goodell’s article does not elaborate on this legislation, leaving the reader to wonder what all the activists are so upset about.

House Bill 1595 has already passed our state legislature: it would require women to fill out (and doctors to submit) a lengthy questionnaire that includes information such as race, age, education-level, income, number of children, relationship to the father and payment method. This information would then be put on a publicly viewable database - which would cost taxpayers well over $300,000 to create and maintain over the next two years.

Women’s and reproductive rights activists are concerned that this bill is a violation of women’s privacy and is designed to make the abortion process even more trying and time-consuming than it already is in our state.

While Goodell’s article opens with a quote about how this is not necessarily a pro-life/pro-choice issue, she goes on to divide the article into “pro-choice” and “pro-life.” The students’ quotes in the “pro-life” section have little-to-nothing to do with HB 1595 or Reproductive Rights Week, which distracts the reader from the issue at hand.

Furthermore, the article ends with the ominous “Why would anyone take the chance to murder?” - this is an emotionally-loaded, irrelevant statement in this discussion. Giving this quote the significance of the last word when it does not deal with the ostensible topic of the article is a slap in the face to all of us who have worked so hard to create a safe, intelligent and sensitive dialogue about reproductive rights.

Respectfully yours,

Elizabeth Rucker

International and area studies/interdisciplinary perspectives on the environment sophomore

UOSA right in response to Oklahoma Students for a Democratic Society

To the editor:

I am writing today to take issue with the claim that UOSA is attempting to stifle the reform efforts of the Oklahoma Students for a Democratic Society.

This use of the word “stifle” suggests that UOSA is somehow being unreasonable in opposing the reforms suggested by the Oklahoma Students for a Democratic Society.

While I can certainly understand and sympathize with the need to reform UOSA — a body that is pathologically ineffective, unrepresentative and generally incompetent — I cannot understand how anyone can see the efforts of the Oklahoma Students for a Democratic Society as anything but irrational.

If there is a real need for reform, why is the Oklahoma Students for a Democratic Society relying upon legalistic loopholes to push its agenda? After all, if the student body felt as though its Student Congress representatives needed to be recalled en masse, then what would be the prudential reasoning that would drive the Oklahoma Students for a Democratic Society to submit a recall petition with a single name on it or to attempt to recall someone not of their district?

The reason UOSA opposes these reforms is that they cut against the grain of how our student government is structured.

There are appropriate channels through which to push for reform. Instead, they are abusing the system and attempting to get measures on the ballot so that they can rely upon voter apathy and ignorance to push through these ill-advised reforms. This is not democracy, it is demagoguery and imposition of the worst kind.

UOSA is wise and right to be opposing the reforms suggested by the Oklahoma Students for a Democratic Society. And while it may be the only thing they have gotten right in recent years, The Daily is patently in error for attempting to suggest that opposition to the Oklahoma Students for a Democratic Society’s reforms is somehow illegitimate.

Christiaan Mitchell

Educational studies doctoral student

Salute to OU’s hospitality

My wife and I had the pleasure of enjoying the unexpected hospitality of the great citizens of Norman and the students of the University of Oklahoma last Saturday.

We came down to tailgate with friends, tour the campus and root our Wildcats to victory (two out of three ain’t bad).

Whether enjoying the parade, walking through Heisman Park, indulging in tailgate or waiting in line to find our seats, we were greeted and made to feel welcome. I intend to share this OU-style hospitality with visitors to Kansas State University’s football stadium.

Thanks for an almost perfect weekend!

Tom & Stacey Macy

Junction City, Kan.