Letters to the Editor

The Excalibur opinions section welcomes typed, double-spaced letters (no longer than 300 words). All submissions must be accompanied by the writer’s name, major, year and  telephone number/email address. Submissions longer than 300 words will be sent back to be shortened. All submissions will be edited for clarity, spelling and grammatical errors. All editing is up to the discretion of the editor.
Materials deemed libelous or discriminatory by Excalibur will not be printed. All opinions expressed in the opinions section are those of their authors and are not necessarily those of the Excalibur staff, editorial board or Board of Publishers.
Send submissions to our office at 420 Student Centre, fax to 416-736-5841 or email to letters@excal.on.ca. Please embed submissions in the body of the email.
Front Page
excalibur» march 9, 2011

Going down hill
I have been a keen supporter of Excalibur and many of your published works this year – but it seems like there is a bigger fuck up every week.
Starting with the Valentine’s Day special: whose idea was it to put a massive picture of cleavage on the front cover? I thought this was a student newspaper, and was not supposed to be headlined with banner ads from some pornographic website.
Many other students agree they felt perverted reading the newspaper that week, and as a young man, I know that I got tons of questioning looks from other students, particularly females.
I was embarrassed to even read the paper in public that week. As I was reading something like the sports section, the side of the paper facing passersby was “controversial” to say the least.
I’ve had other issues since then, but what really got me to finally write in was last week’s issue.
I arrived on campus today, decided to pick up a copy of the paper and I couldn’t find it. I was confused by the fact that there were no copies of Excalibur on the stands, just a bunch of weird-looking papers with a yellow mess on the front cover. I don’t even remember how I figured out that this was actually the newspaper that I was looking for.
Who does these layouts? Why would you put the name of your newspaper, in small print, on the bottom of the page? Why would you feature a huge, blank, yellow rectangle? Why would you have the word “FUCKING” in huge letters at the top of your paper? I get that you’re trying to be bold, but its really not working.
This paper is going downhill at record speed.

Lee

“While the old Disney is timeless,
the new is trash”
arts» march 9, 2011

Posturing and irrational
I had to roll my eyes at Barry Germansky’s Disney article. Germansky came off as a posturing and irrational curmudgeon, who I suspect hasn’t even watched a Disney film since he found out about Godard in his first-year film studies class.
The past five years of Pixar films have heralded three incredibly animated and incredibly moving films: Wall-E, Up! and Toy Story 3. Besides the sheer expressive beauty found in the colours and scenes in these films, the actual stories have offered some of the most emotionally resonant moments in recent cinematic history.
The fact Germansky cited Cars as his only example made him come off like an undereducated gasbag struggling to hand in his thesis on time. I didn’t fall for your stuffy, pseudo-intellectual language either, buddy: I counted about eight or nine uses of “post-modern” and its variants without applauding your liberal arts training. If he’d have even seen Up!, maybe he’d see himself in the elderly protagonist Carl Fredricksen, but I doubt he’d be willing to pay that much attention.
P.S. If his baiting opening was just trolling, it worked, but not because his point is “controversial” or any such bullshit – it’s just idiotic.

Ivan Raczycki

“Modicum of respect”
letters» march 16, 2011

Alexander and the pirate
There is some irony that a letter from last week’s Excalibur criticized me and stated I lacked a certain “modicum of respect” in regards to my confrontation with Michael Coren here at York University. I admit I was angry, but one must note the irony in being criticized for apparently showing a lack of respect toward a guest speaker who had made a personal attack on a member of the audience he does not know.
There is some irony in me being criticized for a lack of respect when we have a man openly calling for the destruction of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. Michael Coren was nothing short of inflammatory and disrespectful toward members of the community, calling anyone who considers Israel an apartheid state a “filthy anti-Semite” (this includes people like Desmond Tutu, Jimmy Carter and even Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak), or anyone who thinks that Israel wants anything to do with Gaza a “filthy anti-Semite.”
Why am I demonized for speaking up to a man who once openly called for a nuclear strike against Iran?
Why is it considered so ludicrous to speak up to such a person, particularly after he had made a personal attack on myself and indirectly toward my friends and colleagues, many of whom had family who perished in Gaza, or who have family who are losing their livelihoods for Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank?
The fact that geographical locations are far from York University does not negate his hateful statements. It is ironic once more that these right-wing talking heads constantly call Israeli Apartheid Week, an event focused on universal human rights and anti-racism, a “hate-fest.”
Let’s not forget the story of Alexander the Great and the pirate. When Alexander confronted this pirate, he asked him why he polluted a small sea. The pirate responded, “I pollute this sea so you call me a pirate. You pollute the world so you are called a King.” There is such despicable irony in those who speak against IAW, a series of lectures on human rights, yet host an event like this on campus.
This was the closest thing to a hate-fest I have ever seen in my life and the hypocrisy is making many in this community sick.

Jesse Zimmerman

“York admin forces student club to pay up”
news» march 16, 2011

Policy affects us all
Jewish law dictates that when one reaches a situation completely new to them, they should recite the blessing of shehechiyanu that thanks God for reaching that place in time. Hasbara completely agrees with SAIA that student groups should not bear the security costs of holding events. (Whether or not our agreement warrants a blessing is up to the reader).
Freedom of speech should not have to be paid for at this university.
That being said, I’d like to clear up several issues. Paying for police is still (as much as I disagree with it) the policy of the university. All student groups are subject to the same treatment. For example, Hasbara was forced to pay for a police presence at our showing of Iranium due to security threats (which had the intention of silencing freedom of expression at our event).
One letter writer blamed SAIA’s need for police on the “Israel lobby” (read: Jewish lobby). While, as history dictates, it’s all too common to blame things that one disagrees with on the Jews, I’m hoping the letter writer can introduce me to this “Israel lobby” in order to help out with some of Hasbara’s security costs.

Adir Dishy, president of Hasbara@York
“Charlie Sheen is the master of his own downfall”
features» march 16, 2011

Waste valuable space
Why would Excalibur waste valuable space printing two stories about Charlie Sheen, who at this point seems to be ill? Why was this space not directed to issues about York and the students?

Lewis Chaitov