Letters to the editor

Kudos from a former TSC editor

To the Editor:

I want to offer my crazy-huge congratulations on your three Associated College Press Story of the Year awards -- including two first places. Wow.

I hope your readership -- students, faculty and especially the President's Office -- realizes how remarkable this achievement is, especially given the competition, which includes Ivy League schools, traditional journalism powers and large state schools blessed with much weirder happenings than Santa Clara is.

More important, I hope the university realizes how lucky it is to have a newspaper with the leadership and support -- the paper's editors, adviser Gordon Young and the journalism faculty -- to allow and encourage The Santa Clara to take on ambitious projects and controversial topics as it did in taking home these awards.

My friends, you've earned yourselves a large number of domestic drafts. Be sure to put them on the school's tab.

Joe Tone, '01

2001 Editor in Chief

Stand against cruelty toward hens

To the Editor:

It was wonderful to read about Santa Clara's commitment to sustainability and inclusion in the Nov. 1 story, "Santa Clara ranked in top 25 campus sustainability leaders."

One of the reasons Santa Clara was named among the most sustainable campuses in the country is its movement to switch to cage-free eggs -- eggs produced by humanely treated hens.

Most egg-laying hens are confined in barren, wire cages too small for the birds to even spread their wings.

Confined hens are unable to engage in many of their many important natural behaviors such as dust bathing, perching, laying eggs in a nest, walking and even standing on solid ground.

Each hen is given less space than a single sheet of paper to live for her entire life.

Santa Clara should be proud that it has taken a stand against cruel and inhumane battery cages. Other schools should follow Santa Clara's example.

Josh Balk

Outreach Director,

Factory Farming Campaign

Humane Society of the

United States