State perpetuates bias, bigotry

Editor,

Bill Cosby’s refusal to perform in Cincinnati is welcome, but the basis of the cancellation of his performances, the boycott sponsored by the Coalition for a Just Cincinnati, is too narrowly drawn.

Discrimination against African Americans by the Cincinnati Police Department, and the failure of that city’s authorities to forthrightly address that disparate treatment, are reprehensible, but they’re actually symptomatic of the problem and are not the problem itself.

Cincinnati is in the state that turns a blind eye toward bias and discrimination. Cleveland’s so-called Chief Wahoo and Ohio’s official state motto, a quote from the New Testament, are flagrant examples of officially sanctioned bigotry.

Why should Cincinnati cops believe local leaders’ insistence on egalitarian treatment of minorities when the entire state mocks reform?

– Eliot Kalman
Athens

Government reserves right to regulate distribution of firearms

Editor,

I am appalled by the audacity with which the leadership of the Second Amendment Club has attacked Ohio University's Student Senate.

They do so on the premise that student senate's resolution banning guns on campus somehow limits our "civil liberties." Exactly what version of the Bill of Rights is the Second Amendment Club reading?

Indeed, the Second Amendment, in its entirety, states "A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

Proponents of the Second Amendment, more often than not, seem to abandon the first provision of a "well-regulated militia" altogether for their constant rants of a "right to bear arms." Moreover, the Constitution grants no specific individual right to gun ownership but a collective right of a people to rise up in arms in times of conflict.

For anyone to argue otherwise would be foolish.

Government — be it federal, state, local or campus-wide — has every right to regulate the sale, distribution and ownership of handguns as it is not specifically prohibited from doing so in our Constitution.

Because there was no violation of the Bill of Rights, student senate could not possibly have ignored any of the "civil liberties" the Second Amendment Club claimed it did. Before resorting to petty name calling and making false accusations, the Second Amendment Club should study our Constitution.

The only remedy for ignorance is, after all, education.

– Larry Hayman,
Executive Director,
American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio University
lh392199@ohio.edu