This letter is in response to the back-page article in the January–February 2008 Minnesota magazine (“Do Light Rail Right”). The article was in favor of making the light-rail system tunnel. I could not agree more that we should not disturb the already challenging transportation systems on the roads.

I love the Hiawatha light-rail line, but I could never understand why it has to stop at red lights and disturb traffic. To me that was already a mistake by not going underground or above ground like in Chicago.

I just want to offer my full encouragement to keep on fighting for a tunnel system through the University. I think having an LRT or subway system would be an amazing asset that few other schools in the country could match.

Margaret Carlson makes a number of baseless assertions in her column about light rail through the University. As a professional transportation planner, graduate of the University, and member of the alumni association, I strongly object to using the forum of the alumni association magazine to make these baseless assertions that amount to propaganda. Has a traffic study been done that shows gridlock far beyond the campus? Is safety more of an issue with LRT than Washington Avenue’s current function as a main artery through campus? Since when does the University delay classes due to traffic congestion? Where is the study that says that noise and vibration levels will be disruptive or even significantly different from today?

Perhaps the alumni association should consider some alternative assertions. It is entirely inappropriate for a major traffic artery to run through the middle of campus, which by definition is intended to be a pedestrian oriented environment. Converting Washington to a transit mall would signifi antly improve the pedestrian environment and reconnect the portions of the campus north and south of the avenue, making the University a more desirable place to go to school, work, or visit. LRT running on a transit mall through campus will make the University far more accessible to a much broader segment of the population, consistent with the mission of both the University and the Alumni Association.

I expect the officers of the Alumni Association to take a far more thoughtful, factual, and visionary approach to this significant issue facing the University.

Editor’s note: A Metropolitan Council study of how LRT will affect 48 intersections in 2.9 square miles in and around campus may be viewed at www.centralcorridor.org.

I am writing in reference to your article about illegal immigration (“Immigration Conflagration,” November–December 2007). I would like to know where the author of this article gets her firsthand information. Do you live where illegal immigrants have an impact on your environment, your economic stability, your health and safety, or your freedom? I highly doubt you have any firsthand knowledge about the real problems illegal immigrants are creating in our country.

Just mentioning a few of the freebies our tax dollars are paying for illegal immigrants: free public education, giving us enlarged class sizes; wheelchairs and doctor appointments; printing everything in English and Spanish. In addition, they don’t have legal driver licenses or insurance and they get away with it! All this makes our insurance, including car and health, more expensive. We pay more in taxes. They send the money they earn back to Mexico so it isn’t benefiting our free nation.

People from other countries who actually have a job lined up and are married to an American are having trouble getting into our fine country. It takes many of them a year or more. They are doing it the legal way. Why should people from Mexico have special privilege?

Enjoyed your story of Josephine Tilden, the botanist (“Of Algae and Acrimony,” January–February 2008). I knew her in her latter years at her Golden Bough community just east of Lake Wales, Florida, where I was writing for a newspaper. And, yes, she knew I was a University of Minnesota graduate, and she did let me see the dresser drawers upon dresser drawers of her beloved dried seaweeds. Quite a lady!

The infrastructure of the University of Minnesota’s academic facilities is literally crumbling around us. Soon we will reach a critical point beyond which we will never be able to catch up to our own projections of need, much less keep pace with other competing institutions.

During the 2006 legislative session, Minnesota’s governor and the state legislature slashed the University request for HEAPR (Higher Education Asset Preservation and Replacement) funds from $80 million to $30 million. This year the University is requesting $100 million in HEAPR funds, but the governor’s budget provides only $40 million. The University proposal is dead on arrival because the governor still has sufficient allies in the state senate to sustain a veto of any bonding bill that is substantially different than the bonding bill submitted by the governor.

Even if everyone who attended the Legislative Briefing at the McNamara Alumni Center in January camps out at the state capitol until the end of the session, it will not produce a significant change in the bonding bill. Our legislative strategy is not working, and timing is at least part of the problem. We need to make a convincing case to the governor and to the legislative leaders before the governor submits a budget for operating expenses or a bonding bill. University officials and advocates need to meet and correspond with the governor and the legislative leaders frequently in the months prior to the commencement of the session.

We need to develop a comprehensive legislative strategy regarding our timing, our attitude, and our methods of presenting information, among other factors. Perhaps all of this has been done, but our rather dismal results suggest that we need to try something different.

I should like to relate a curious story about the 1940 football game that was noted in the 2007 September–October issue (“Who Was Bruce Smith?”). My memory of that game is excellent since my brother and I were in the student section that day, holding number 7 for Minnesota and number 6 for Michigan in a $100 jackpot (sufficient to cover a year’s tuition and books). The jackpot paid $10 for the score at the end of each quarter and $60 for the final ($10 was due the manager of the jackpot). The score at the end of the first quarter was 0–0. however, at the end of the half, the score was 7–6. At the end of the third, 7–6. And the final, 7–6. Eighty dollars for my brother and me.

When Minnesota and Bruce Smith et al approached the goal line, we urged Michigan to “HOLD THAT LINE,” and similarly when Michigan and Tommy Harmon approached the goal we urged Minnesota to “HOLD THAT LINE.” Needless to say, fellow students damn near killed us in the former instance!