Put prisoners to work at illegal dump sites

Politicians, city and state, listen up: You have a huge work force at your front door that is ready to work. I'm talking about male and female inmates at our prisons. Turn off their television sets, put away their barbells and put them to work cleaning up the illegal dump sites and littered roadways.

No excuses on this one. It's time the taxpayers of Hawaii get a return on their taxes for a change, a nice return on our investment for housing criminals. Wouldn't you agree?

Bob Barry
Pearl City

UH-West students are Hawaii success stories

All I ever seem to read about the University of Hawaii-West Oahu is negative. There are many positive stories about the West Oahu campus that are both compelling and important but are ignored by every news source.

It's the story of the small liberal arts campus that did. It did grow 20 percent in enrollment during the last five years with more than 800 satisfied students (so satisfied that UHWO has the highest student satisfaction ratings of any unit in the 10-campus UH system). It does offer three fully accredited Bachelor of Arts degrees in 13 subject areas with 20 instructional faculty, six administrators, a handful of staff and about 3 percent -- that's right, a whopping 3 percent -- of the UH budget. (June Jones salary is about one-third of our entire operating budget). It does have about 150 students on four neighbor islands (including Molokai) earning degrees over the Internet and via televised courses. Our students do drive Ewa in the morning and not through the traffic jam in town. Our students are on average 33 years old and working one or more jobs and have kids. Our students do go to school at night and on weekends. Seventy percent of our students are women and about half are first-generation college students. And about 200 of these people do graduate every year and do get jobs and are their own "little" success stories.

Perhaps you could find some space to print one of the many positive stories about UHWO -- and please do so on the front page.

Mark Hanson
Associate professor
Social Science division
University of Hawaii-West Oahu

Anti-Bush letter offered a laugh

I had a good chuckle with "President's visit will be disruptive" by Keith Haugen (Letters, Oct. 23), who wrote, "Knowing the results of the 2000 election, when Bush lost to Al Gore in Hawaii, you'd think they would cancel his visit, simply refuel at Hickam and take him back to Texas." Does this mean had Al Gore won in 2000 he would not be able to go home, since he could not even carry his own state of Tennessee?

Keith Miller
Mililani

Should we not let any dignitaries visit?

Keith Haugen's letter to the editor struck a nerve with me. Does he not realize that traffic jams on Oahu happen despite presidential visits? There was one on H1-H2 Thursday morning, long before President Bush's arrival. Did Haugen write a letter to complain about traffic being tied up during President Clinton's visits? I got stuck on Kamehameha Highway a couple of times in huge tie-ups in the 1990s when the H1 was closed to get the motorcade over to the leeward coast for golf. I also got stuck on the H1 a few months ago when the Philippines' president visited. Should we ban all visits from dignitaries?

Protesters in general reflect a minority opinion. A lot more people here support Bush and his policies than "rich fat cats." Perhaps a poll of the military would demonstrate to Haugen that a majority of the people who actually fight our battles support our president. "Reign of terror?" Hyperbole to this extent only makes the malcontents look ridiculous.

Connie Severin
Waipahu

Market research isn't same as telemarketing

Market research companies should be given more respect from the public. First of all, we are not telemarketers. Market researchers do surveys, and telemarketing is selling. We do not have a "do not call" list; the phone numbers are generated by a computer. This means that the identification of the person called is strictly confidential.

Second, we are asking the public to do a survey, not to purchase anything. There is no need to take the phone call in an offensive manner. The responses that you give us are important; we do not want your money.

Last, we do take "no" for an answer. We will not persistently call you if you don't want to take the survey. It would be pleasant if you just tell us that you are simply not interested. But there is no need for an explanation of how we are "wasting your time." We have feelings, too, and we're just doing our job.

Market research companies should be given respect from the public because we are not telemarketers, we're asking the public to do surveys, and we don't persistently call you if you say that you are not interested.

Lori Sombath
Honolulu