Shame on Catanzaro for killings of geese and other letters to the editors

Shame on Catanzaro for killings of geese

I was disheartened to learn the recent news of the geese at Chattanooga State being taken off the property and killed.

As a former student of Chattanooga State, I am very familiar with the geese that have been on the property for as long as I can remember. Yes, it was hard some days driving into the school, waiting for the geese to cross the street, but these geese contributed to the school's personality.

President Jim Catanzaro made the decision to have them removed because they had become a "nuisance" to students and motorists. Catanzaro believed removing the geese was the right thing to do and that euthanasia was a possibility.

Later, when Catanzaro learned of the geese being killed after the USDA Wildlife Agency couldn't find a suitable place to release them, he stated how saddened he was by the news and that his intention was not to have them killed. Sorry, Mr. Catanzaro, but you made contradicting statements and you now are viewed as a hypocrite. If you knew that euthanasia was a possibility, you have no right to be sorry they were killed.

We were the ones who were, technically, invading their territory. Shame on you for having the geese removed! Maybe you are the one who needs to be removed next from campus.

ERIN McKOWN


Confederate laws protected slavery

In reference to a July 9 letter titled "Confederate, Original Constitutions Similar," I submit this:

Perhaps the Confederacy did demonstrate "an awful lot of the spirit [of 1776]" when it was created in 1861. And true, the Confederacy "adopted virtually the same Constitution that created the United States," but one difference was critical.

The Confederate Constitution resembled the U.S. Constitution in the construction and powers of its branches of government. It included a "three-fifths compromise," empowered its Congress to "lay and collect taxes," had an "elastic clause," was to be "supreme law of the land" and more.

Differences included an invocation to "Almighty God," one six-year term for the president, and a less strenuous amendment process.

Yet the most telling difference was its use of the word "slave," where the 1787 U.S. Constitution -- closer to the 1776 "truth" that "all men are created equal" -- compromised on "other persons."

As opposition to slavery was growing, the Confederacy protected it in its states and any territories it might acquire. Its Congress could pass no law that would deny the "right of property in negro slaves." State constitutions emphasized white citizenship, forbade emancipation or did not allow for a free black population.

Similar constitutions? Not at their cores.

Hate or heritage? Either way the Confederate Constitution unreservedly protected and preserved slavery.

GRADY S. BURGNER, Ooltewah


Online college or just more government?

Why did Gov. Haslam choose to create more government? Aren't Republicans supposed to be for smaller government?

Yet here he is handing over a no-bid contract for an out-of- state online university to a private firm that will have a panel of overseers, when a our public state-run college systems could have done it better and cheaper.

And to add insult to injury, he gives them a $5 million gift of our hard-earned tax dollars. Of course that's easy for him to do, as it's not his money in the first place. Now his buddy at Western Governors University can do for Tennesseans what our state college systems never got the opportunity to do: create an online university.

Where is the love Gov. Haslam? Certainly not for public education in Tennessee.

DAVID CLARK, Tullahoma, Tenn.

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