Handicapped parking
A recent letter complained about USU’s “liberal hand-out” i.e., increased handicapped parking and ramps planned in the construction projects on campus. Though he inappropriately correlated this with the far more complicated issue of issuing benefits to ethnic minorities, I seek only to talk about the handicapped issue. Mr. Mahan complained that handicapped parking is a detriment to society and encourages laziness among those whose physical condition requires them to use the parking. Um…”lazy” is absolutely the last word I would use to describe someone whose life circumstance has denied them the ability to move and function in the easy way that I have most likely taken for granted. Sure, people with handicaps are just as capable of attending school classes, participating in a social life, aquiring a fulfilling job, playing sports, and essentially living the same quality of life as anyone else, but these tasks are inherently more DIFFICULT and demand more effort than if one was without these handicapps. I’m not calling for superficial sympathy, I’m just saying that handicapped parking and ramps are an appropriate way to ease this difficulty. The truth remains that being “handicapped” is literally having a physical ailment that ensures a more difficult life than one without, and for Mr. Mahan to deny this simple fact is childish denial. He wants them to leave their wheelchairs and “crawl and drag [themselves] to freedom”? Well, I think Mr. Mahan deserves some liberal hand-outs himself. Someone should beat his kneecaps to a pulp with a metal bat, and then see if he’d feel the same way about crawling.
797-5795Christopher Brockbank