CALIFORNIA: DREAM DEFERRED

Peter Schrag asks if California's dysfunctional system is what the voters want. Perhaps a more useful question might be: Why weren't realistic and better alternatives available? Greater use of the initiative process and Prop. 13 in particular were, in large measure, desperate voter responses to irrational policymaking and unaccountable government.

Bill Howden '59

RETHINKING DIVERSITY

I am delighted that, finally, someone has addressed the question of why Asian Americans excel in becoming outstanding students and faculty members in spite of the fact that they are a small, discriminated-against minority group, whereas the much larger minority groups consisting of Blacks and Hispanic Americans continue to falter. However, I feel Professor Hollinger sells Asian Americans short when he only attributes their success to educational "skill sets" brought to this country by their parents or grandparents. Many successful Asian Americans can trace their heritage back to relatives who were much like the "agricultural laborers from Chihuahua," Mexico, referred to in the article. The success of Asian-American descendants did not come from any "affirmative action" programs, but from work ethics instilled in them by their parents (both highly educated and undereducated). I recall that when I attended Boalt in the mid-1960s, I was struck by the industrious Asian-American students in the undergraduate program. While other minority student groups were demonstrating and demanding equal rights, the Asian-American students, fueled by solid family/community values, were quietly grinding it out on their way to the top of the class and postgraduation success.

David Curnow, J.D. '67

As a Black/African-American alumnus, I wanted to take a moment to commend your article, "Rethinking diversity." "Thoughtful, insightful, fair and balanced" are just a few of the words that come to mind while reading the article. I hope that many will read the article, appreciate it, and begin to rethink diversity.

Osborn Curry '05

RETHINKING TUITION

The articles by Peter Schrag and David Hollinger both discuss the problems of public education in California with regard to Hispanic and Black minority students. One important item that neither writer mentions is that we accept into our schools many people who are not legal residents. If students come from Nevada, they are charged nonresident tuition, but if they come from Mexico they pay neither tuition in K-12 schools nor out-of-state tuition at our universities and community colleges. The large numbers of illegal aliens in our schools greatly increase the cost to run the schools.

I have been a volunteer tutor in East Palo Alto for more than a decade. About 60 percent of the students in a middle school where I have helped are Hispanic. About 30 percent are Black, and some are Pacific islanders. Hispanic parents are often poorly educated and many Black moms are single parents with several kids, so the students do not get much help with homework or encouragement to get a good education to improve their future lives.

Since the United States does not provide the K-12 education of such students, it is not responsible for this problem. Schrag's and Hollinger's solution is more money for education. I think it is more realistic to improve families and charge illegal aliens nonresident tuition or send them home.

Charlie Larson '53

PRESCHOOL POLITICS

An otherwise excellent issue is downgraded by Professor Block's pseudoscience on liberals and conservatives (Praxis: "Preschool politics"). Are there only two kinds of humans? What about the majority of us, the moderates? I suspect other moderates are like me, conservative on some issues, liberal on others, and changing our views over time. Thank goodness for human diversity; life would be boring if we were as simple-minded and unchanging as Block asserts we are.

Jeffrey P. Schaffer '65, M.A. '69

FACULTY CLUB MURALS

Thank you very much for Harvey Helfand's article on the Faculty Club murals. In addition to the artistic influences mentioned in the piece, I noticed similarities with the work of artists associated with the Ballets Russes. The subjects of nymphs and satyrs were most vividly depicted in the work of Leon Bakst for Vaslav Nijinsky's ballet L'Apres-midi d'un Faune (1912). Other Bakst works for the Ballets Russes employed similar Greek-inspired settings, such as Narcisse (1911) and Daphnis and Chloe (1912). Nahl's murals of 1914 were therefore part of a wider aesthetic movement in the theatrical arts, as well as those mentioned by Helfand.

Sandra Hollimon '83

WE ACCEPT THE PRIZE

Your July/August issue is the best issue of Cal's alumni magazine that I have ever read, by a very large margin (and I am the Class of '42)! I especially enjoyed Sandip Roy's article, the interview by Pranab Bardhan, Pueng Vong's "Red hot China," Peter Schrag's excellent piece on why California public education is as it is, and last but not least, David Hollinger's commonsense article as to why the university alone cannot be expected to materially affect the racial diversity of the campus. Indeed, Schrag's and Hollinger's pieces dovetail as to the failure of K-12 education to prepare minorities for university study.

I do not discern in any of these articles the special pleading and "political correctness" that so often marred the magazine's articles in the past. Each of them is of the quality that might well be publishable in any first-rate magazine. Each of the writers has his or her own voice, and personality as well as intelligence shine through.

Richard Jencks

I get about 15 magazines a month at home -- everything from National Geographic and Newsweek to Architectural Digest and Vanity Fair and Esquire -- and I love my California magazine the best. Your article choice is wonderful and of course the people who write them are fabulous.

Kerry Rose '77

WOLVERINE SIGHTINGS

While backpacking in the High Sierra on July 13, 1996, Joey Newlander '93 and I encountered a wolverine. The grown animal that we saw was unquestionably of the same species as the wolverine in Grinnell's photograph reproduced on the Web site.

The animal in Grinnell's photo ("Disturbing Yosemite," May/June 2006) has more fur on it than the one we saw, and is probably younger, but is without doubt the same species. And ours had three pups 10 years ago, so perhaps all is not lost for the Sierra wolverine in the third millennium.

Jim Powell, M.A. '81

CAN WE KNOW EVERYTHING?

It is exciting to know that we would be able to access information that is current and reliable anytime, anywhere (re: March/April issue), but what is the point of knowing everything when we are unable to exist in harmony with one another and our environment? What is the point of having the knowledge to make weapons that kill or provide medical care the poor cannot afford? It is simply amazing to know that some of the most capable minds, and some not so capable, continuously feed on the apple of knowledge without tending to the garden and people that sustain them.

Al Pao '78

Corrections: (July/August) Due to an editing error, Walter Ratcliff Jr., who founded the Bay Area's oldest architectural firm, was misidentified in one instance as William Ratcliff Jr.

A note from the editors: In our Praxis article, "Carbon clues," in the July/August issue of this year, we published a quote from Professor Todd Dawson, who runs a lab that analyzes isotopes of various products to determine their origin, stating that, based on his lab results, FIJI Water does not come from Fiji. The Fiji Water Company subsequently wrote us to say that the statement is untrue. "FIJI's natural artesian water comes exclusively from an aquifer on the largest island of Fiji, and is bottled at the source in the Yaqara valley on the north side of the island," the company representative wrote. "FIJI Water uses a completely sealed delivery system free of human contact, and also a special manufacturing process in which the bottles for FIJI Water are not made until shortly before they are filled. As a result, it is not even possible for FIJI Water to be bottled in any other location besides Fiji." In a reply, Professor Dawson, while standing by the lab values he derived, acknowledged, "I cannot say where the water actually comes from. I also admit there may be something I do not understand about Fiji and the hydrogeology of its artesian water springs that could help explain why we obtained the isotope values we did." Given Professor Dawson's statement, we cannot stand by the assertion made in the published quotation, and retract it.

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