Letters to the editor
Recent studies were incomplete
To the editor:
The Klein studies on liberal bias that were described in your Jan. 20 issue appear to be incomplete. Here are two comments.
Economics professor Daniel Klein surveys voting records of two universities in the San Francisco Bay Area and finds that Democrats outnumber Republicans. Is this unexpected? Suppose Klein surveyed voting records at Brigham Young University. Would he find the same results? Klein's study does not include any controls for other factors that could influence his findings.
Klein's other study is more persuasive. However, he focuses on only six areas: anthropology, economics, history, philosophy, political science, and sociology. Again, however, there are no controls in his study for other factors.
For example, the results do not describe the responses by location or whether the respondent was from a private or public institution. Moreover, I wonder if he would find the same results if he surveyed business school and engineering professors.
For example, while I was attending the University of Arizona's doctoral program in accounting, I met students who were investigating conservative hypotheses such as (1) women should be paid less then men because they are more likely to leave the marketplace to raise children, (2) white males are discriminated against in the marketplace, and (3) allowing citizens to openly carry handguns would lower crime.
It did not appear that these conservative scholars were subjected to any intimidating tactics. In fact, these scholars were quite open in pushing their agenda on others. At Arizona and Georgia State, it appeared that the majority of professors that I met in the accounting, finance, and economics departments held Republican views. I could be wrong- it could very well be that conservative scholars are more vocal in their opinions than other scholars. So I would encourage Klein and others to expand their studies to other disciplines and to control for other factors that could explain the results.
Michael Calegari
Associate Professor of Accounting
Multicultural greeks overlooked
To the editor:
I am writing in response to the Jan. 27 greek life article, "Recruitment thrives off campus." Sadly, even after many articles on greek life, and constant mention of the this paper's award winning work and national recognition, I am sad in the fact that year after year, the multicultural greeks are consistently overlooked by the school, the newspaper and even by other greeks themselves (can anyone recall Nu Kappa Alpha?).
The two multicultural fraternities are Nu Alpha Kappa, and Sigma Lambda Beta; and the two multicultural sororities are Lambda Sigma Gamma, and Sigma Lambda Gamma (and no, that is not a misprint).
What is disappointing to myself and the members of these fine organizations is that we have been here long enough not to be overlooked. As often as were are (just because we are smaller), it does not mean we do not exist. In fact, NAK has been here since 1993, LSG since 1994, SLB since 1998, and SLG since 1999, and all the organizations have added a great deal to the campus and the greater community, and still continue to do so. One example out of the many, is that my fraternity, Sigma Lambda Beta International Fraternity Incorporated, actually started the Tijuana Immersion trips, when greeks were recognized by the university.
I just hope that this letter will finally help encourage students and other greeks to recognize and learn more of all greek life here at Santa Clara, and to take more notice of everyone.
Diego Flores
Communication '06