Readers write: Letters to the editor, Feb. 19, 2016

“Hockey is the only sport where the game is stopped to let the players duke it out with bare knuckles,” says artist Michael Conti, whose powerful exhibit Stick and Puck is currently on display at the Anchorage Museum.

Michael Conti’s exhibit uses Derek Boogaard, former National Hockey League player’s “tragic story, along with photographs, sculpture and film, to examine hockey from social, cultural and gender perspectives,” says the Anchorage Museum. Boogaard is one of many NHL players whose cause of death was related to mental illness. Due to the numerous concussions he suffered while playing hockey, Boogard developed chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) and eventually died in 2011 of an accidental overdose of alcohol and Oxycodone, at the young age of 28.

Since Boogard’s death, a number of other players have died, whose deaths were also related to mental illness. After former NHL player Steve Montador’s death, doctors were able to study his brain and determine that he too suffered from CTE, as well an ongoing battle with depression. In response to his death, former NHL player and teammate, Daniel Carcillo stated, “I think if he had gotten the right help he would still be here with us today.”

With the mental health effects of concussions and CTE being brought to light now more than ever, I strongly encourage community members to go see the Anchorage Museum’s Stick and Puck exhibit and become informed about what is happening to athletes at all levels of play. As a society, we cannot be quiet any longer about the mental health issues that surround not only hockey players, but many athletes today.

— Jillian Burrows

The University of Alaska recently published a statement on their position on SB 174, outlining the numerous issues they take with the bill. Their claim it “… would preclude the Board of Regents and university administration from effectively managing student and employee conflicts …” speaks to a shocking incompetence by the Board, as they’re effectively saying they’re incapable of doing their jobs with the same level of proficiency as an outside organization. If conflicts get to the point where you’re worried about people using deadly force were it available, you’re already failing to manage them.

They go on to infer that the University of Alaska having “many of the same sensitivities” as bars, child care facilities, domestic violence/sexual assault shelters, and K-12 schools is justification for the Board of Regents having the ability to restrict weapons. This seems to be a valid claim, assuming you aren’t familiar with existing statutes that restrict weapons in facilities meeting those criteria. Ultimately, the university’s opposition can be summed up as a non-elected body clinging to authority it shouldn’t have been granted in the first place.

— Dan Bellerive

Anchorage

There are two reasons the Alaska Legislature should purchase the Anchorage Legislative Office Building:

1) It would relieve Mark Pfeffer of an unrentable glass “white elephant.” (It would become a twin to the 4th Avenue Theatre);

2) We citizens need a spectacular monument to remind us of the Legislature’s last profligate act.

In the early-60s the state constructed an office building in Fairbanks. When the scaffolding was removed this new state office building proudly displayed large letters above the main entrance: “S. O. B.” That didn’t last long, so they’re available to replace the Taj MaHawker sobriquet and the L.I.O. designation.

— Jon Sharpe

Anchorage

“The Greatest Generation” is a term made popular by journalist Tom Brokaw to describe the generation that grew up in the United States during the deprivation of the Great Depression, and then went on to fight in World War II, as well as those whose productivity within the war’s homefront made a decisive material advancement of global consequence.

Yet Sen. Ted Cruz employs a new applause line since the death of Antonin Scalia that goes something like this:

“... We are one vote on the SCOTUS from losing our freedom.”

By Cruz’s reckoning, then, the court that spanned the Roosevelt and Truman administrations and served the Greatest Generation must have hated “freedom.”

The liberal court of Roosevelt vexed the isolationist and regressive Republican opposition to the New Deal while that court during the Truman era was excoriated by the Republican-led “Do-Nothing” Congress opposed to the Fair Deal.

Yet it was those “liberal” courts that gave us the institutional federalism that allowed the very greatness of that WW II generation, celebrated by Brokaw, to blossom.

The thundering chorus of the far-right opera along with its hysterical librettist, Ted Cruz, serves our nation and our Greatest Generation poorly.

I am ashamed of the tawdry manner by which Cruz and gang cheapen our country in front of the entire world by rendering American “values” into a cartoon of Super-Reagan vs. the Conniving Liberals. It is ridiculous and shameful.

And despite the fog of war ... er ... political campaigning, the constitutional duty of both the president and Congress is clear.

Get on with it.

Fill the vacancy.

— Elstun Lauesen

Anchorage

University of Alaska President Jim Johnsen recently put forward a strategic plan that would involve removing all science programs from the Anchorage campus (UAA) and consolidating them in the Fairbanks (UAF) campus. UAA would become the “social and policy” campus and UAF would become the “science and engineering” campus. While the details of the plan are vague, the goal of removing biology, chemistry, natural science, geology and math as majors at UAA is spelled out clearly. These are highly successful programs at the university that attract some of the most promising Anchorage high school students. The loss of these education opportunities would be a detriment to UAA and Anchorage.

The Biology Department at UAA highlights how successful the sciences have become in recent years. With over 700 students and $2 million in research grant funding from the federal government, the program is not only educating Alaska’s future workforce, but is bringing money into the university and state. As an assistant professor for the WWAMI Medical School at UAA, I have witnessed firsthand the caliber of students who come through the UAA Biology Department. These individuals are making up a high percentage of the graduated doctors, nurses and physician assistants from UAA that our community desperately needs. Removing programs that tie some of our brightest and most motivated students to Alaska and Anchorage is a bad idea.

Forty years ago, UAA was a community college. Slowly over the decades, the secondary education opportunities have expanded and research has grown to the point where scientific collaborations between UAA and the surrounding hospitals are giving students the opportunity to work on cutting-edge projects, including cancer therapies and biomaterial engineering. If we get rid of science at UAA, students will go elsewhere. The proposed restructuring would eliminate decades of progress at our university. For more information on the restructuring see http://www.alaska.edu/pathways.

— Max Kullberg

assistant professor, WWAMI Medical School

Anchorage