NWA Letters to the Editor

John White will stand

as a great UA chancellor

In the Nov. 7, 2019, edition of Wally Hall's "Like It Is" column, Mr. Hall offers a synopsis of how Razorback football fell to the "lowest point in its history." Part of the blame, he infers, falls on the shoulders of former chancellor John White and what is described as a contentious relationship with then-athletic director Frank Broyles. Concerning Chancellor White, Mr. Hall says, "If White had stayed out of athletics, he might have gone down as one of the great chancellors".

While I do not know much about the historical inner workings of the Razorback football program, I do know this: To define Dr. White's legacy at the University of Arkansas by his actions related to the football program is both naive and short sighted. Under Dr. White's leadership, according to the most recent publication of Arkansas Engineer magazine, the university raised more than $1 billion during the Campaign for the 21st Century. The centerpiece of the campaign was the largest single gift to a public university in the history of American philanthropy: the $300 million gift from the Walton Family Charitable Support Foundation. That gift alone enabled the university to establish an Honors College, create an endowment for the university libraries and establish endowed scholarships and fellowships across the campus.

The university grew and improved by almost every metric. ACT scores, grade-point averages of incoming freshmen, freshmen enrollment and retention rates, and six-year graduation rates all increased dramatically. The number of National Merit scholars nearly doubled, from 90 to 171. Research expenditures increased from $73.3 million to $133.8 million, and the university endowment grew more than sixfold, from $119 million in 1997 to nearly $900 million upon his stepping down as chancellor

In addition to Dr. White' administrative accomplishments, he continued to teach engineering classes and serve as a role model and mentor of great integrity to hundreds of university students, of which my daughter was fortunate to be one!

The bottom line is this: Despite what Wally Hall suggests, Dr. John White stands as one of the greatest chancellors the university has ever known.

Mark Lasater

Pea Ridge

Sports section shouldn't

subdue women's success

The sports editor needs a lesson in gender sensitivity. The front page of the Nov. 11 sports section reflects a terrible masculine bias by having three football and one car racing story while the story about the University of Arkansas women's soccer match for the SEC Tournament Championship was on Page 3. As two of the football stories were about losses of NFL teams of local interest, the UA Women's Soccer team loss was of no less significance.

As the UA women's soccer team and in fact all the UA fall season's women's sports team were the only winning UA teams, women's sports need to more recognized in the Sports Section rather consistently consigned to the inside pages.

Perhaps it is time for the Northwest Arkansas edition and even the statewide edition to consider bumping the gender-biased Wally Hall to the inside pages and reserve that spaces for reporting of women's sports or even a woman sports columnist.

I am tired of overt bias in sports reporting when women's sports all over Arkansas are of such championship quality.

Robert Anderson

Centerton

Stop whining, prep

for second term

When are the liberal "cry babies" going to get over the 2016 election? I notice the Dems who grace your pages with their political wisdom are now attacking our chosen Arkansas senators and representatives. Who are they going to target next? Christianity, I suspect.

I did not vote for President Trump to be my moral authority and certainly not my mentor for my Christian faith.

To the person who likes to quote African proverbs, here's an age-old proverb for you: Don't throw rocks when you live in a glass house. Devout Christians follow the same Bible, the one that promotes love and peace, not hate and divisiveness. That's what I read from left progressive socialists everyday in the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, a reflection of the do-nothing House of Representatives we currently have hanging around our collective necks like an albatross.

Stop all the whining and go vote your conscience in the 2020 election, only please stop crying this time during President Trump's second term.

Lonnie Billington

Springdale

Good news is out there; read the paper

Hip, hip hurrah for Steve Sheely's Nov. 9 column ("Bad news isn't all there is"). My answers to his six "Did you know" questions were all "no."

Ironically there were two items in the "In the News" column that were very uplifting: patrons helping out at a Waffle House, and a teacher of the year recipient using some of his award to help a young man with college tuition.

Indeed to quote Mr. Sheely, good news is out there. Looking forward to reading more about it in my Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Rebecca Hartman

Farmington

Look in mirror

when blaming

Some years ago, I was talking to a friend and bemoaning the fact of our country being in the shape it's in. He asked, "Do you want to know who is really responsible for all of this mess?"

"Yes, tell me," I replied.

"Look in the mirror," he said.

What? Just look in the mirror?

One thing Donald Trump has caused us to do is to look in the mirror. A lot of us do not like what we are seeing.

As Pogo the Possum said years ago, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

Wilson Rowlett

Rogers

American Civil War cause was slavery

In the Nov. 9 letters section, Mike Clifford claimed the Civil War was about taxation and not slavery. I suggest going online and finding the letters of secession and the Confederate Constitution. They make it abundantly clear slavery was the cause.

Clifford also called it "The War of Northern Aggression." False again. The war started when the South fired on Fort Sumter. The turning point of the war was the Battle of Gettysburg. Gettysburg is in Pennsylvania, a northern state. The battle occurred there because the South invaded the North.

One of the truisms of war is that the history of the war is written by the victors. The Civil War is an exception. The histories have largely been whitewashes (no pun intended) written by Confederate apologists. Only in recent years have there been some reexaminations of these "histories."

James B. Sawyer

Fayetteville

Set foolishness

aside for nation

In response to Doug Thompson's column, "He should treat you better, GOP," (Nov. 9), thank you for the come-to-Jesus column. Foolishness and refusal to see what's right in front all of us have no place in the governing of our country.

Ideology, religious or otherwise, and quest for power for oneself and one's party should never take the place of truthfulness and justice tempered with compassion.

Grace Culpepper

Fayetteville

NW News on 11/22/2019

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