As a member of the AAS, I voted to deny Interterm funding to the ski team last Monday night and I'd like to take this opportunity to explain why. 

I bear no grudge against the ski team. I was not present for last year's debate on this issue, and I believe the ski team has been reasonably honest and open and has worked hard to accommodate the AAS's demands. 

The team requested funding for $6,030 to cover its training and racing fees over Interterm. So far, the debate has been centered around whether the ski team really needs to fund a full team of 20 racers in order to be competitive. I believe they do. If the AAS could reasonably fund the ski team as much as they need, I would enthusiastically vote yes.

In order to fund a club sport, the AAS should require that it be truly feasible for a student on full financial aid to enter the sport competitively. As it stands now, the ski team fails that standard, and I will not vote to fund it until that standard is met. Unfortunately, I do not foresee such a change.

I love to ski, but I am forced to do so on a limited budget. I buy all my equipment used, and none of it is fit for even the weakest competition. Still, my equipment ran me about $400, and that doesn't include a helmet or any of the expensive clothing required for the sport. Putting together a quick estimate, it seems that a new set of half-decent racing equipment would cost about $1,220. Even if you could find this equipment used, odds are it would be prohibitively expensive.

Anyone can join the ski team, and it charges its members $300 in dues each year, garnering a grand total of around $6,000. To its credit, the ski team has done what it can to mitigate the extraordinary expense of competitive skiing: some of the dues goes to a "scholarship fund" to help make skiing accessible to students who can't pay. They have started an equipment pool for members who need racing gear. Unfortunately, ski equipment is highly tailored to the individual skier, and what fits one person rarely fits another. Poorly fitting equipment makes it very hard to ski well, even outside of competition. Even taking into account the "scholarship fund," I see no way for the ski team to meet the actual financial need of every student who wants to race.

As it stands now, the AAS has voted to subsidize a sport that de facto excludes a large portion of Amherst students. Until I am convinced otherwise, I will continue to vote against funding.

Rob Cobbs '06

Anti-marriage is not anti-gay

Kate Stayman-London '05's recent article ("Democrats and Republicans should unite for social progress") professes tolerance but is, in my view, viciously intolerant of those Republicans who do not share her views on homosexuality.

Quoting her characterizations of those Republicans who oppose gay marriage will demonstrate my point amply enough: the Republican party platform is "terrifyingly anti-gay," the Republican party "preaches hate," leaders of the religious right are "bigots" and Republicans want to "pervert our Constitution" on the basis of "Karl Rove's sickening strategies." Missing entirely is any acknowledgement that Republicans, or indeed anyone who opposes gay marriage, might do so for some reason other than perversion or spite.

Contrary to Stayman-London's strict (dare I say canonical?) view of gay rights as equivalent to "civil rights," there are a great many people in this country who hold that the privileges-not rights, incidentally-associated with civil marriage ought only to be granted to unions consisting of one man and one woman.

Stayman-London's insistence that Abraham Lincoln would have supported gay rights is also questionable. Lincoln, like most Americans of his and our time, had faith in the wisdom of Providence. As he said on National Fasting Day in 1863: "We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!"

I hope I may be forgiven for suggesting that Stayman-London's pride in promoting gay marriage has blinded her to the idea that many Republicans, in the tradition of Lincoln, affirm traditional marriage without viciousness or philosophical incoherence. Let us continue this discussion, as President Lincoln would have had it, "with malice towards none, and charity for all."

Jamie Montana '08