4-year community degrees needed

4-year community degrees needed

Your analysis of the “experience cost” (‘The cost of a campus experience,” editorial, June 17) tells me it’s time to expand Virginia’s higher education offerings. We need community universities to allow students to complete a four-year degree as close as their community college classrooms or online, or by using the College Level Examination Program or other innovative approaches.

Large schools such as Northern Virginia Community College could support their own community university. Smaller schools could form regional community universities. All community colleges should offer community university classes right there on their campus.

Like the community college, local education would be the emphasis, allowing working students to continue to work and live at home.

Specialized degrees could be offered to make sure all two-year degrees support community university 4-year degrees.

BOB SWEENY
STAUNTON

Racist words bring lasting repercussions

I want to offer some comments on the current uproar on Paula Deen’s use of the N-word sometime in the past. I have no wish to defend her, just to offer some perspective.

Like Deen, I was raised in the South in a period when the N-word was very much a part of our everyday vocabulary. During the summer between my junior and senior years of high school, I worked in construction, and I heard that word used daily and frequently between the black members of our construction crew. It was in very common usage by everyone.

As I entered college and matured I realized how hurtful that word could be and abandoned its usage.

Now Deen has been roundly condemned by the public at large and has lost contracts that she has held for a long time. She has publicly apologized for that usage but still bears the stigma of its use.

I would ask those people who are so critical of her usage to look into their hearts and consider how they would respond if asked under oath if they had ever used that word, especially those executives who cancelled their contracts with her.

HOWARD NOEL
PENHOOK

He regifts plastic newspaper bags

I just finished reading the Pick of the day (“First, the ink; next, plastic?” June 23) in Sunday’s paper about what to do with the plastic sleeves the paper comes in on rainy days.

I “recycle” them by attaching a bagful of them to my paperbox every so often so my carrier can reuse them. Saves them going to the landfill, and allows the carrier to use them again. I also bag the rubber bands and clip them to my paperbox for reuse by my carrier.

WALT BAKER
LEXINGTON

Lessons on sin from the Scripture

Re: “Better to take a stand for love,” Pick of the day, June 22:

Why is it that someone is always “appalled” when a Christian organization, or any organization for that matter, takes an official position for what is right over a position that is morally wrong?

Everyone is quick to cry “judgment” when a biblically correct position is taken. This is not judgment. It is standing for what is biblically right, which means you must also stand opposed to what is biblically wrong.

If the Bible is God’s word, and it is, then it is an unchanging absolute standard that condemns all sin and promotes a righteous lifestyle for all who have received salvation through God’s grace.

According to that same Bible, we are to love God with all of our heart. If we love God the way we should, then we will love his word and abide by its instruction, even if society says otherwise.

Also, the same Jesus who said, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her,” also said to the adulterous woman, “Go, and sin no more.” We must always quote Scripture in its context.

STEPHEN R. LAMB
ROANOKE

U.S. leaders failed to react over Cole

Former Vice President Dick Cheney said the surveillance programs we have today might have prevented 9/11.

If he and the neocons from the Project for the New American Century had publicly pressured President George W. Bush into avenging the deaths of 17 sailors on the USS Cole, Osama bin Laden might have called off 9/11.

Going after bin Laden for the Cole attack would have at least put us on a war footing.

On Oct. 13, 2000, Cheney said, “Any would-be terrorist out there needs to know that if you’re going to attack, you’ll be hit very hard and very quick.”

But in June 2001, an al-Qaida video claiming responsibility for the Cole attack was released, and Bush/Cheney did nothing then. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said the Cole attack was “stale.”

We didn’t need more intelligence; we needed a Decider-in-Chief.

GARY LEE
ROANOKE

Weather Journal

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