There were signs, petitions and protests, newspaper articles and opinion columns all fighting for one thing- a living wage and improved medical benefits for the UNICCO workers at the university.

The student-lead initiatives succeeded. But now, it seems UNICCO is getting paid more to do less.

To start with, I’ll go back to last week in Hecht when over 24 hours passed without anyone refilling the toilet paper in any of the stalls on my floor. My RA was informed of the situation. Two days later, as I was sitting in a classroom in Merrick, I noticed that the trash can was overflowing onto the floor. Candy wrappers, paper, and gum were everywhere. Then my eyes wandered to the ants that were swarming all over the trash and surrounding areas, crawling up the walls, the floor, and the trash can. The food had started to grow mold. That’s nasty.

Even worse, that particular classroom isn’t used by more than 20 or 30 people a day, if that. How long had the trash not been emptied?

Despite the classrooms and residence halls, an even greater lack of maintenance exists in the UC, particularly during the weekends. I’ve worked in the UC for over a year and have never had people complain as much about the lack of toilet paper, soap, and cleanliness in the bathrooms as I have since this semester began. Sometimes I have to take a 15-minute break from work and run across campus to another bathroom for fear of slipping on urine or passing out from the smell in the bathrooms.

Recently, there have been days that I’ve worked from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and not seen a single UNICCO worker. But this weekend after an entire day of referring people to the convenience store or Sbarro’s for toilet paper, I noticed two UNICCO workers by the pool area standing and talking, oblivious to the fact that the trash needed to be emptied, that the bathrooms smelled like a sewer and were out of toilet paper and soap, and that all of the ants in Miami were working very hard to take care of the overflowing trash bins all over campus that they had neglected to empty.

Now don’t get me wrong, most of the UNICCO workers are hardworking, nice people who are very friendly and sociable with students, faculty, employees, and everyone else on campus. And I want to make perfectly clear that I believe it is extremely unfair that the lack of work by some reflects negatively on all. But something needs to be done because overflowing trash contents, feces and urine-ridden bathrooms, lack of toilet paper and liquid soap, and low levels of maintenance translates into an issue of public health.

Leigha Taber is a junior majoring in psychology.

In light of recent events involving three medical students who happened to be of an unfortunately conspicuous nationality, I still agree with it. When I was in eighth grade and we toured the White House, the world was a different place, yet my eighth grade catholic school class was still warned seriously against any dialogue carried on within White House walls. We were told not to even joke about things such as bombs because it was rumored that there were actually secret panels in the walls out of which the secret service would appear and drag the foolish conversationalist off for serious interrogation. It is a well known fact that when you’re in the airport and the guy at the counter asks you all the boiler plate question – “Has anyone had contact with your bags…etc.” you don’t make a joke and say, “well there was that strange man who asked me to carry his package…” although I’m sure we’ve all wished we could – but we don’t. We live in a different world. We tip toe through times when certain humor is no longer acceptable and in the wake of such devastation.

The bottom line is that our unrestricting, free speech, free press, free everything society is partially to blame for the events of last year. Something slipped by. Everyone was so free that we forgot about our enemies. We shunned the very control that could have protected us all.

Stereotyping is natural. Discrimination is acting on a stereotype and that is unacceptable. But what is so wrong about being aware of our surroundings? Don’t we all glance over our shoulder when walking to the car in a deserted parking lot after a late class? Doesn’t our breathing become a bit staggered as our footsteps on the pavement seem to echo ominously, almost in anticipation of a second set, following closely behind? So how is this current situation any different? What so many “activists” fail to comprehend is that this inherited bias has nothing to do with Arabs or Muslims or Middle Easterners or any of the other coffee table terms for the origins of these recent terrorist cells. If the World Trade Center was hit by blond-haired, blue-eyed Swedes, we would catch ourselves glancing a little too long at any blond-haired, blue-eyed person we happened to cross on the street; evaluating their moves, presupposing their motives. These three men may have made a bad joke, fed up with the sideways glances and the quiet whispers, but it was the wrong joke at the wrong time. The chastised shouldn’t lay blame with the Americans who are just genuinely afraid because their security and systems of belief have been threatened. The blame is to be carried by those who inflicted this loss; those who have disgraced their nationality and isolated their race from mankind.

Whitney Friedrich is a senior majoring in Advertising and English.

When the Reverend Martin Niemoller was rescued from German concentration camps, he was asked why even he, a respected and well-known preacher, was targeted by the Nazi government. He answered, “first they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.”

I’ve realized that, too often, I’ve chosen to stay quiet about issues just because they didn’t affect me. When my journalism teacher told us the story of Reverend Niemoller, I began to understand the consequences of silence. Injustice concerns us all, even if sometimes we don’t see how we relate to those being unjustly treated.

For almost a decade now, the gay and lesbian community has accepted transgender people as part of their movement. Although many transgender people are not gay or lesbian, they have suffered the common foes of ignorance and intolerance from those who embrace equality as an exclusive privilege instead of an inherent right. To date, the efforts of what is now known as the GLBT community have yielded amazing results. Two states and 41 counties and cities across the country have added gender identity to their non-discrimination laws, ensuring that everyone is equally treated in the areas of employment, housing, credit and finance.

Gender identity, however, does not only protect transgender people. It applies to anyone who breaks or even bends gender boundaries. This can be as simple as a man wearing an earring or a woman preferring dress pants over skirts.

Although a topic of discussion in many areas of the country, it has gone ignored at the University of Miami. The only group on campus that may even understand this issue, the Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Community (GLBC) is still missing a “T,” while most other campus organizations around the country have already added transgender to their name. Although the GLBC president has assured me that a more appropriate name will be decided upon during this school year, it’s a shame we are to be one of the last to achieve inclusiveness.

UM should broaden the scope of diversity to include gender identity now, before it’s too late, and let the world know the University of Miami truly understands the meaning of equality.

Jean-Paul is a senior majoring in journalism and political science.

I very much enjoyed reading Mr. Travis Atria’s letter to the editor that appeared in Friday’s edition of the paper. While his comments were very eloquently expressed they were nonetheless no more in the right than any other item graced by his exceptional crafting of the written word. In any event I feel it both appropriate and necessary to counter his arguments lest someone get the mistaken impression that he has silenced me with his singular wit.

The conflict we presently find ourselves embroiled in does not fall into neat boundaries like past conflicts. The enemy is not a state or even a well-defined army of Barbary Pirates. This enemy is a loose confederation of terrorist groups and a few national governments that are sympathetic to our destruction. While it is not easy to identify a terrorist, we know that Iraq is one of the national governments that provide logistical support to the hombres malo who carry out murder in the name of God. It is irrelevant whether the aircraft in question were piloted by Mohamed Atta’s group or Saddam Hussein himself; it’s all part of the same element. It is no less appropriate for September 11th to be used to justify attacking Iraq then it was for the sinking of the Lusitania to be used as partial justification for declaring war on Imperial Germany.

Congress is authorizing President Bush to take action in Iraq only as it applies to Iraq itself as well as the immediate theater of operations. He is not being given unrestrained power to invade any nation thought to be developing weapons of mass destruction; that would acquire additional authorization from congress.

Finally, Mr. Atria’s final point is a pacifist’s argument against war in general. While it is indeed a tragic reality that many people will die in this war should it occur, we cannot allow that to deter us from doing what is necessary to protect our nation and its interests. If we had not moved against the Taliban (who I remind you did not fly in those planes either) because of the potential Afghan civilian deaths, we’d still be sitting here debating how best to respond to September 11th.

Scott Wacholtz

This past weekend, at the UM football game against Connecticut, a man fell over 30 feet down into a walkway, critically injuring himself and jeopardizing the safety of other fans at the game.

In preparation for this years FSU game, the biggest and busiest of the year, organizers at the Orange Bowl must closely examine all of the safety hazards to prevent any potential dangers.

Lets walk through some of the problems. First there are those CD packets that are given out before the game that turn into flying projectiles by halftime. Has anybody actually brought one home? They end up either in the trashcan or on the ground.

Once inside the stadium, one has to fight, push and claw his or her way through the crowd, only to arrive at a muddy seat. The mud, of course, comes from the feet of the person that was standing on the seat before you got there.

Last weekend, the staff of the orange bowl decided to try to put an end to students standing on the seats. Unfortunately, they weren’t successful. Then again, they hardly tried. They had one event staff representative threatening a whole section of drunken college kids to sit down and behave or else they would be asked to leave. Half of the student section was asked to leave but nobody really left.

Also, by the end of halftime, the Orange Bowl staff decided that the best way to clear the aisles of the people who were not able to find seats was to shove them into the overcrowded aisles.

The severe overcrowding is a result of the fact that many of the people sitting in the student section aren’t even students. Sure, there are some guests who have passes to sit with the students, but for the most part, the efforts of the Orange Bowl staff to check student ID’s when entering the student section is not enforced after the beginning of the game.

Now, the biggest problem and safety hazard at most of the games is the severe amount of alcohol consumption. There are a couple of sources to this problem.

First of all, although the legal drinking age is 21 and ID’s are said to be required, no one seems to enforce this national law. The beer vendors sell cold beer to anyone with $6 to spend, regardless of their age. The police and security just stand there and watch. This utter disregard for checking ID’s allows inexperienced, irresponsible, and immature individuals to drink and cause more safety concerns.

Some of these people find entertainment in throwing the bottles into the crowd to see whom they can hurt.

Finally, for those who survive the entire four quarters, the next adventure may be the most dangerous: the mass hysteria that is caused by students flocking like cattle towards the shuttles to return them to the metrorail. Students “line” up in clumps as speeding buses approach, desperately trying to keep their balance before being shoved in front of the speeding bus. Then once the bus stops, a sweaty mosh pit ensues, minus the music. People shove, claw, and punch their way to the shuttle in an effort to get to the Metro station a whole minute earlier then the next busload.

So now the issue is what can be done to fix these problems. For starters, half of all the altercations, safety hazards, and dangerous situations can be avoided if the liquor consumption is limited to those who are of legal age. Also, better-trained event staff would help alleviate the issues with crowd control and with fans roaming away from their appropriate sections.

Maybe now that there has been a serious accident, something will be done to remedy some of these safety hazards.