Editor,

Let's look at the basic meaning of the past few articles on the front page of The Post. First, we're all pouring our hearts out to people who were either too drunk or too stupid to get out of the way when 20 men with guns tell them to "go home." Now, we're all worried about the poor little drunks who won't be able to get back to Athens from Nelsonville if they get arrested over the weekend.

Can I be so brash as to offer a few pieces of wisdom to OU students?

1. Don't break the law. Breaking the law has penalties.

2. Learn the law. That way you have fair warning, and you can quit complaining about it when you get arrested or shot at. Ignorance is no excuse.

3. Don't like the law? Guess what, most of you, as American citizens, have the right to petition your government to have laws changed. Quite a novel idea, isn't it?

Cops aren't there to give you a hard time. Most of them don't want to give you a hard time, because it means more paperwork for them. Cops are just doing their job.

David Wark
531 Richland Ave., Athens 45701

The pit and the Pentagon

Editor,

The Ben and Jerry show introducing us to "Caring Capitalism" was inspiring as well as entertaining. The visual aid graphs were very effective. The amount of national wealth going into weapons of mass destruction and supporting armed forces boggles the mind.

But I think it is a disservice to refer to those expenditures always as "money to the Pentagon." It makes the Pentagon seem like this bottomless pit on the Potomac - too massive to comprehend, too impregnable to attack and too powerful for us powerless voters to curtail its spending. I believe we must accurately identify the Pentagon.

The Pentagon is Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Fairborn, Ohio, which pays the salaries that pay OU tuition for a number of students who were listening to the show Wednesday. The Pentagon is the Uranium Enrichment Plant at Piketon, just one county west of campus, that was saved, even though we supposedly have plenty of atom bombs, by our caring, liberal congressman Ted Strickland, because it provides jobs in his district. The Pentagon is the Batelle Institute in Columbus, which exists because of military contracts for research. The list is endless. The Pentagon is the largest nationwide pork barrel ever to exist in the United States. No congressman is ever going to reduce the amount of money spent on weapons of war if it takes money away from his or her district.

The cold war and now the expansion of NATO are just excuses to subsidize the many so-called "defense contractors" that make up a huge portion of the American economy, and thousands of citizens are now employed by these corporations. We are addicted to the most wasteful non-productive uses of technology and natural resources. How many of us have the strength or the choice to say "I will not take a job (or buy stock) in a corporation that receives contracts from the Pentagon"? An ice cream factory is great, but I don't think it will turn us away from our rush to moral and financial bankruptcy.

Mary M. Morgan
P.O. Box 75, Amesville 45711