Many students testified about how they registered for classes and then on the first day of class found out there was no professor to teach that class. As they tried to get into other classes, they were not permitted because classes with a limit of 10-25 were already over their limit. In one of my classes, for example, there are not enough desks and the last nine students to arrive to class are forced to sit on the floor.

Students who were unable to register for new classes because some have been canceled have been forced to become part-time students, thus losing all of their scholarship money.

The march was organized by el Movimiento Socialista de Trabajadores, la Unión de la Juventud Socialista, UPR’s Instituto de Relaciones Laborales, and the International Socialist Organization. There is to be another picket August 30 in front of Decano Académico.

Diego Negrao
University of Puerto Rico
 
 
Names policy
For a couple of years now I’ve occasionally browsed the online site of your newspaper and in fact subscribed for a brief period here in New Zealand. While I’ve learned some useful things, even more so from several of the books Pathfinder publishes, and believe they can play a useful educational purpose to those newly familiar with socialist politics, things like calling people by their full Christian name are off-putting even to myself who can overlook it when it occurs.

For those just coming into contact with distributors of the Militant, however, while I don’t know of any concrete cases, it may very well put them off from enquiring any further. No one in the real world for instance calls Bill Clinton William or bothers to say the full name of Bush and Kerry as done in the main article this week. To connect to working people as you maintain you do, it wouldn’t hurt to at least use language that most of the public uses, rather than the sometimes exceedingly formal and off-putting stuff that is occasionally published in your paper.

Niko K.
New Zealand
 
 
Mikey Powell case
September 7 marked the one-year anniversary of the killing of Mikey Powell by the Birmingham, England, police (see “Protesters in England demand prosecution of killer cops” in Dec. 8, 2003, Militant). For an update on this campaign for justice contact www.mikeypowell-campaign.org.uk/caseupdate.

Tippa Naphtali
Chair of Friends of Mikey Powell Campaign for Justice
 
 
The letters column is an open forum for all viewpoints on subjects of interest to working people.

Please keep your letters brief. Where necessary they will be abridged. Please indicate if you prefer that your initials be used rather than your full name.  
 
 
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