Letters

Offensive employees

NFL owners are learning what real entrepreneurs have always known. Employees who offend customers are fired. Businesses have to keep satisfied customers or go bankrupt. So no matter how talented and competent he/she is, the employee who drives away customers is not helping the business.

Colin Kaepernick should have realized that he was offending football fans by kneeling as the national anthem was being played. Of course, the Constitution gives him the right to free speech, but it doesn't protect him from the consequences of his action. If it does, any employee can freely offend customers with impunity.

Now Kaepernick is looking for a team that will pick him up. Unfortunately, he doesn't realize that he is offending others as he shows how offended he is by the national anthem.

DON CROWSON

Benton

Too many expenses

College is extremely too expensive. Should it be free? Maybe not, but $20,000 to go to college is a bit extreme. Someone could be the smartest person in the world and not be able to go to college because they can't pay for it. In-state tuition to public universities should decrease, and more financial aid must be given to create equal opportunity in higher education.

Students and parents spend hundreds of dollars on books only to not actually need them, but the teachers tell you, "You're going to need this book." Then you go to sell it back and you only get $20 back for the $300 book that you paid for. Getting a higher education shouldn't cost thousands of dollars. Parents look on the list of things they're paying for and see unnecessary charges like activity fee, counseling fee, and gym. Well, if you aren't doing anything, going to counseling, or going to gym, then why are you paying for it? You should only pay for what you use.

Some people have goals in life that they would need to be able to go to college to meet, but if they can't pay for it, then what? Give up? No, if anything, a person should have to pay for housing, but not for the gym or books that they don't use.

College should be affordable for everyone of all incomes; everyone wants a chance to do great things in life, and college is where that starts.

AERYELLE HUNTER

Junction City

Ultimate straw man

To address a recent letter to the editor regarding straws, I would like to point out that without the vacuum effect created by the extraction of a liquid through a tube, life on earth would be difficult.

How would a hummingbird extract the delicious nectar in a flower or the feeder on one's porch without the effect created by a straw? Many hospitalized patients, young and old, are unable to drink fluids without the help of a straw. Those plastic bendy straws are really the best!

I always hear that "nature abhors a vacuum"; the void that is created is the catalyst of many interactions of all organisms. So continue to be a sucker of straws. Nature would have it no other way.

KIRBY SHOFNER

Little Rock

I want Sundays back

What happened to the sport? The entire NFL is using the kneeling protest to show inequality, but that's bringing politics into sports. Sunday used to be the day where families came together after church to watch a bunch of grown men run around and hit each other. Now, people's way of thinking has changed the entire NFL. Football used to be a way to escape, a place to relax, but now, sadly, the players have put their political views into football, thus dividing the players and fans.

Kneeling has divided the nation so much that for the first time a president has responded with his opinion to show his frustration with a sport. It shows how politics are in the NFL more than ever. Some may ask why not have politics in sports. With politics being involved in football, people self-divide into individual groups while football is all about unity and respect toward others.

Change itself isn't bad, but the way the NFL is going is saddening. Seeing the NFL divided up into parties like the government isn't the NFL Arkansans and Americans want to see. If this continues, the NFL may lose a lot of viewers.

Politics are only ruining and dividing the players and fans of our great sport. We as Americans need to stand up and demand that politics and personal sides be taken out of sports. Imagine going back to good old relaxing Sundays.

DALTON COX

Little Rock

Focus on other things

The president is quick to respond to NFL and NBA players kneeling, but hesitates to address more current controversial situations. Recently, NFL players and other athletes are kneeling during the national anthem. The president quickly responded to these athletes by calling them derogatory names and saying they should be fired.

This has been a particularly hard year for many people in the United States. There was hurricane damage in Texas and Florida, there was a hanging of a biracial 8-year-old in New Hampshire, the DACA students (the Dreamers) who worry about their future, police brutality against minorities, all while the president focuses on the athletes instead of finding solutions to these problems so that they don't have a reason to kneel.

I understand those who will say that these athletes are being disrespectful to the flag and those who have served the country. However, it comes down to whether we want to preserve the feelings of patriots, or we want to preserve equality and the lives and livelihoods of everyone in the country.

The president needs to focus on more important things rather than athletes kneeling at football games. The code of conduct of the president in general is obnoxiously shocking, and should not be tolerated.

ISIAH THOMAS

Jacksonville

Editorial on 10/18/2017

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