Do not interrupt Oren's address
In response to your article "Michael Oren to serve as commencement keynote speaker" (Breaking News, April 21):
I am a student at the University of California at Irvine and Jewish. I was there in the second row when I heard Oren's speech disrupted by hateful hecklers. All your negative comments are fine; however, if you have any decency, you will respect the school's decision to bring in this person as a speaker and let him speak. Do not disrupt him. I promise you will be arrested and embarrassed in front of worldwide media. I warn you to help, as a kind gesture. I promise you, if you even so much as disrupt him for a second, the media will have a field day. As a speaker, Oren has definitely earned his title as ambassador. He has a view of the conflict that everyone should hear. As a pro-Israel advocate on probably the most controversial campus in the nation on these matters, I love hearing the other side's opinion and educating myself on the most unbiased view. Everyone is free to have their own opinion. However, I will say that hating never makes any progress. Where has hate ever gotten someone very far in life? I suggest you respect him while he is speaking and do not be too closeminded on what this very well-educated and influential political figure has to say.
-Lauren GindiEmbrace opportunity to hear Oren
In response to your article "Michael Oren to serve as commencement keynote speaker" (Breaking News, April 21):
Michael Oren is a brilliant public speaker with topical views on a wide variety of subjects that are near and dear to a majority of the attendees at this commencement. He is a great choice. It is too bad that the school has a few small-minded detractors on whom his speech will no doubt be lost.
-Mark Greenblatt
The writer is the parent of Adam
Greenblatt '10.

Granting honor to Oren is wrong
In response to your article "Michael Oren to serve as commencement keynote speaker" (Breaking News, April 21):
This is outrageous! For a school committed to "social justice" to invite as a keynote speaker a man whose job it is to justify the massacre of civilians in Gaza goes beyond chutzpah.
-Jonathan Sussman '11

Ambassador's speech will mar event
In response to your article "Michael Oren to serve as commencement keynote speaker" (Breaking News, April 21):
You've got to be kidding me. While I have no doubt that it's possible that Michael Oren is a strong orator and academic, I think graduation is a time to encourage about-to-be-graduates to think outside of the box and take a different perspective. Certainly there are people, myself included, for whom Michael Oren will present a perspective different from my own, but the press release's focus on his role as an Israeli Defense Forces spokesman implies that not only is his expertise on a subject for which it is hard to avoid a wide variety of perspectives while being a student at Brandeis but that this person was paid to support a particular perspective to the public. Regardless of which side Oren defends, I'm disappointed that Brandeis would select someone to speak to us whose role in the international community is to defend one group's interests no matter what. To me, that is counterintuitive to one of the core principles of Brandeis: that we should investigate ideas based on their merits, not based on who it is that espouses them. Especially in light of the controversy about inviting Dore Gold to the Justice Goldstone event, I look at this choice as a slap in the face to students at Brandeis that don't support Israel no matter what. Can't we have just one major event in which we don't have to have a spokesman for Israel? I didn't require someone who agrees with me. In fact, I'd prefer that they don't. I just wish it was someone for whom it was possible to have an unbiased perspective on their area of primary expertise.
-Jackie Saffir '10

Different honoree should speak
In response to your article "Michael Oren to serve as commencement keynote speaker" (Breaking News, April 21):
Michael Oren as keynote speaker is a divisive and polarizing choice. The graduating class should not be sent off with words from an apologist for war. Why not hear from one of the other honorary degree recipients, such as Paul Farmer or Judge Kaye, whose experiences can surely provide students with more inspirational, constructive and useful advice.
-Ricky Weiss '78

Politicization of ceremony is wrong
In response to your article "Michael Oren to serve as commencement keynote speaker" (Breaking News, April 21):
Commencement is supposed to be a time to celebrate the achievements we have made together. Why invite such a divisive speaker to mark this date? I, for one, am quite angry that my commencement is being turned into a political statement. Regardless of your thoughts on Oren's opinions, you should recognize that he is the wrong choice.
-Allison Morse '10

Sustainability amendment is flawed
In response to your article "Rework 'green fee' amendment" (Forum, April 20):
To the editorial board, thank you for this fair assessment of the flaws of the Sustainability Fund as it was proposed. I had a hard time believing what I was reading when I first saw the points contained within the proposal. The mandatory fee was compared to the technology fee in the sense that both would be required add-ons to tuition in order to provide funding for the intended services. Furthermore, there seem to be central issues concerning the importance and role of this fund and of its timing in relation to the other constitutional actions of this year.
If the Sustainability Board is truly comparable to the Technology Fee, quite simply, it should not be administered by students. We each pay some fixed amount to the University that gets put aside for use by Library and Technology Services for network maintenance, storage and assistance. These elements of our University are equally shared by everyone-by professors making international calls for research; by anyone streaming WBRS wirelessly from campus; by staff and facilities members keeping accounts and making orders; and of course by you, all the time, even when you should be sleeping. These are absolutely essential functions of the University, and as the primary group of people who are paying to be involved here, we end up footing the technology fee.
The Sustainability Board, on the other hand, is in no way similar. It is essentially a club, conceived and presumably run by those who are also members of Students for Environmental Action. Nothing it says it would do would be an essential service to the entire University community. A "green-themed" dance party? I presume that means the glowsticks would be LEDs instead of nasty chemicals. Bravo-but let's be serious here, and I'm not going to bother spelling out why that is absurd.
If this is a University function that demands an addition to our tuition paid to the University, it should be run by the University in the way that LTS is. Qualified, paid professionals should be making decisions, and I believe they are-the Office of Capital Projects makes decisions and no doubt consults with other professionals, including environmentally oriented ones, before embarking on new construction. If the Sustainability Board would duplicate that, it would be unnecessary, and if it would be different, it's hard to see how it would serve the University in general.
Finally, we come to the issue of timing and club definitions. It is awfully suspicious that we're hearing about a Sustainability Board getting "secured" only a few weeks after the student body voted down SEA's proposal to be given that same recognition. As the editorial board pointed out, "labeling [the Board] as 'fundamental to the mission of the university'" is premature given that it does not and has not existed. I believe it took Student Sexuality Information Service nearly 40 years from its inception to be listed as "secured." I may be wrong, but it sure looks like this was an alternate plan to be proposed in the event that SEA was not "secured." The Board wouldn't even be a club, as I understand it, so marking it as "secured" would not make sense. On the other hand, if it is a club, then why is it getting its own pipeline of funding rather than taking out of the Student Activities Fee, and how does it contend with questions of duality of purpose with SEA? Students should not face a mandatory fee to provide $50,000 per year to a student club that has never existed before and has not yet satisfactorily answered significant questions about its formation and identity.
-Gideon Kilonsky '11