David Roepke’s Dec. 3 Opinion article is disgusting. It annoys me that this worthless and offensive piece could make it into the Daily to waste the readers’ time.

“People you think are gay usually end up being gay.” Roepke asserts this as obvious, but it seems to me he’s just “honestly” restating his stereotype, not proving it is true. My experience has been largely the opposite.

“Look around the room at your next upper-level math class. Seeing lots of model types? You sure aren’t, because they’re not there.” How many upper-level math classes do journalism majors have to take? I think that it takes significant intelligence to make it to 400 level engineering courses, and I share these with many women. Roepke is wrong, and I doubt that he’s even taken a higher-level math class.

“African Americans are going to be any more involved in criminal activity … actually does have some actual backing in truth because blacks are incarcerated at a much higher rate than whites.” Is Roepke saying that this stereotype is based mainly on his “fact” about incarceration rates? And is he trying to be conciliatory by explaining “more blacks come from urban backgrounds that foster and promote illegal acts?” Roepke is not black, and he offers no evidence that he has done any research on stereotypes of African Americans, but he gives his opinion on this as if it means something.

“Some stereotypes are on the money; some are nowhere near the truth.” This may be true, but we can’t know from Roepke’s article because he only offers his personal experience (which appears to be ridiculously limited for at least two of his three major examples) to reinforce or debunk them.

If Roepke wants to approach stereotypes from an experienced point of view, he can write about how journalism students may not be just a pack of lazy, goateed sleaze who will someday take a low-paying job writing about inane political/sexual garbage, if they get a job at all. Otherwise, I think he should spare us all the time and offense.

Matt Gumm

Senior

Construction engineering