Casino! 2001 is fast approaching. Unfortunately, the traditional gambling, drinking and dancing for charity will be accompanied by a slight raise in ticket prices this year: $12 in advance and $14 at the door. Hunger Action Committee (HAC), the on-campus organization which runs Casino!, realized that no one will be happy about this increase, and so felt that students were owed an explanation.

The profits earned from Casino! are donated to local food banks, homeless shelters and after-school programs; in past years we have distributed as much as $12,000. Although ticket prices for Casino! have not changed since 1991, the prices of everything essential to running the event have continually risen. For example, we have been paying increasing amounts for food, champagne, security, Valentine workers, decorations and bands. Obviously, this cost escalation has meant that our profits have been steadily falling, and our ability to financially assist local groups is decreasing.

However, the more direct reason for the rise in ticket prices is the Student Finance Committee's (SFC) new policy to not allow admission charges for SFC-funded events. (Some of you may have noticed the abolition of admission prices for FLICS this year.) Although HAC respects the reasons behind this decision, the fact remains that we have suddenly lost a considerable amount of funding which we formerly depended on to partially defray the operating costs of Casino!

The loss of income due to increasing costs combined with the loss of SFC funding has forced HAC to innovate new ways of covering our overhead to continue to host Casino! as a social event for the campus, without disappointing the charities that have come to rely on our donations year after year. While we are reaching out to departments and groups for co-sponsorship and to local businesses for donations, the increase in admission prices is something which became unavoidable this year.

HAC understands that some students will not be able to afford or will not want to purchase tickets at this price. As always, we encourage these students to volunteer to set up, clean up or work as dealers, and we will provide them with free admission for their help. Thank you for being so understanding, and we'll see you at Casino!

Jenn VanLeuvan '03<br>Hunger Action Committee

<b>Campus Speak Was Insensitive</b><br>To the Editor:

In my years at Amherst, I always enjoyed opening The Student and reading the question of the week in Campus Speak. I usually laughed at the witty responses of my friends and classmates to the intentionally open-ended, mundane questions. As my classmates will tell anyone who asks, I liked to have as good a time and joke as much as anyone, and Campus Speak never offended me in the past.

However, concerning the Nov. 15, 2000 issue of The Student, my laughter changed to disappointment. The question, "If you had to lose one of your five senses, which would you choose and why?" was appalling.

How could a paper with such high standards and supposed PC awareness allow such a disrespectful question to be asked, much less print the responses? This question begged the types of responses you received-answers which denigrate and make light of those with the unfortunate disabilities of deafness, blindness, etc.

My mother is deaf. She was deaf in one ear at birth and lost the hearing in her other ear by the time she reached high school. She has since gone on to teach preschool- and kindergarten-aged children who are also deaf. Recently she has switched over to a role as a teacher at the University of Minnesota, instructing students who want to enter the next generation in her profession.

I am glad my mother did not see this issue of The Student. I am hopeful that those at Amherst who might have any of these unfortunate disabilities will not be devastated by their community's lack of concern for their disability.

My mother once told me, "If I had one thing I could change in my life, it wouldn't be to not have to go through the ordeal of having my lung surgically removed for cancer and almost passing away, rather, it would be to regain my hearing. I live with it every day and it isn't fun."

Matt Drawz '99

<b>Conscientious Consumption</b><br>To the Editor:

I recently bought a toy at Wal-Mart, probably the greatest 97 cents I have ever spent. It was a dart gun set with a purple gun and five plastic darts. How can this great boon to mankind cost less than a dollar? A single Fresh Samantha™ at Schwemm's costs $2.50 and that only provides a third of the fun that dart gun does. If Wal-Mart can charge so little for an item of this caliber, imagine the price cuts it makes on larger items like bikes, trains and larger bikes and really big trains.

I am seriously concerned that Wal-Mart's price cutting will eventually lead to the elimination of all its competitors. What then, you ask? The creation of this uber-monopoly would almost certainly be detrimental to the quality of dart gun sets, as well as less important items. Alone Wal-Mart would be free to wallow in its own proverbial crapulence and market a very low quality toy.

I do not wish this to happen, so I am proposing that we, the consumers extraordinaire of Amherst College, make a concerted effort to prevent this. Taking it as a given that Wal-Mart is the cheapest and easiest store to shop at, maybe we could take a little extra effort and drive to a smaller, more expensive store with higher quality and a whole lot more love. Yes, the dart gun sets there may cost $1.89, but I think that extra 92 cents is a small price to pay for the preservation of society. I'm not demanding this of anyone; I simply feel that it is an important issue which needs to be considered by us all. At what price will we sell our souls to the consumerism of society? What's cheaper for us as individuals may be more expensive in the global sense over the long haul. Low wages and poor working conditions in third world countries are, at least in part, due to our cravings for savings.

In this period of a booming economy when we as a country, and certainly we as a college, are better off than ever, the time has come to evaluate how we will use this surplus to shape our future for the better. It all starts at Wal-Mart.

Jacob Foster Schulz '02