The facts in the article about the specialty seats petition are one-sided. Rick Cordaro takes the information on the College of Business and the Greek Community from the ISU Fact Book; take the information on special populations from the same source. The total number of international, nontraditional (25 and older), and minority students is 9,722. This places the student to senator ratio for the special seats at 2,430 to 1. The ratios for the Greek Community and College of Business are 746 to 1 and 1,778 to 1 respectively.Rick previously has stated that these seats are by nature racist and discriminatory and are illegal through the Civil Rights Act. That Act also includes the following:”Even though an applicant or recipient has never used discriminatory policies, the services and benefits of the program or activity it administers may not in fact be equally available to some racial or nationality groups. In such circumstances, an applicant or recipient may properly give special consideration to race, color, or national origin to make the benefits of its program more widely available to such groups, not then being adequately served.”I have little understanding of what Rick is doing. Feb. 14, he argued at the GSB meeting for the creation of a nontraditional student organization to be the voice of the nontraditional students. The next week, Rick tried to eliminate the four special population seats in the Senate and gag the voice of the nontraditional students.I hope that the students of Iowa State will look at all the facts and make the right decision when the issue comes to a vote during the GSB elections.Douglas Sick

Junior

Mechanical Engineering