Reform refugee ruse Dear Editor: Re: Justice delaved. 19 editorial. A group of people I have never seen before climbed over by back fence and insist- ed I take them into my house. They don’t speak my lan- guage nor eat the same food as [ do, but I find thar I Tam obliged to put them up. { have to provide permanent accommodation, with bath- room and toilet facilities. 1 have to hire someone to pre- pare and cook their food. I have to provide medical attention tor them. As if that is not enough, | also find | have to pay for legal assistance so these people can take me to court to make me allow them to come and live in my house. Is this fanciful and more than a bit ridiculous? Well, it is exactly what you are addressiug in your editor- ial: the molly-coddling our Canada is giving these bogus refugees. This farce will continue until we get a Reform party government, since the only voices raised by any parlia- mentarians seem to be those of our two North Shore MPs. If our Liberal representatives in the B.C. house have said anything, I haven’r read about it, but then they may not want to cross the federal mob of pink socialists. Russeli C. Shelton West Vancouver Dee. MAIL Box Equity of opportunity is a key education goal Dear Editor: Re: Hana Mercer’s Now, 19 News column. In this. col- umn, Ms. Mercer gave her reactions to an interview “ith computer — scientist. Dr. Veronica Dahl, shown on the Knowledge Network. Ms. Mercer begins by miis- quoung Dr. Dahl's opening remarks, then embarks on a lengthy attack on radical fem- inism. Ms. Mercer clearly has strong opinions on this topic, for she holds forth on it for the bulk of the article, return- ing to Dr. Dahl only in the closing paragraphs, where she accuses her of “pathological hostility to males” — a ridicu- lous suggestion, for which Dr. Dahl's interview provides not the slightest evidence. It’s tow bad that Ms. Mercer's pre-occupation with radical feminism left her unable to hear what Dr. Dahl actually said. the School of Engineering Science at Simon Fraser University, I have a great interest in education, and Dr. Dahl’s thoughtful comments struck me as right on target. Dr. Dahl's initial point, which Ms. Mercer heard so poorly, was that how hard a child works in school depends on cultural expectations — this is why children of Asian families often perform so well. By the role models it pro- vides, our culture sends a strong message to school chil- dren: if you're female and you As director of want to hold a position of power or a job in the compet- itive fields of computing or engineering, the odds are strongly against yon, so you're going to have to wy twice as hard. At Simon Fraser University, for example, we have a male president, an exclusively male set of vice- presidents, and an exclusively male set of deans — all drawn from a group of faculty in which both genders are equal- ly represented. This scareely fits Ms. Mercer's fantasy of the “wild fire of radical femi- nism (having) pretty much engulfed the academy.” By sending this discourag- ing message to the children, we are depriving our society of 50% of its talent pool. In engineering, we are continual- ly searching for students who can master the knowledge that will keep us competitive in the next century, [1’s hard to find entrants who can meet our demands — yet we know from looking at the applicants that we're missing almost half our potential students: girls who've been told, subdy or explicitly, that they don’t have what it takes too succeed. To get past that requires the kind of determination displayed by Dr. Dahl, who has made foun- dational contributions to a field overwhelmingly domi- nated by males. The missing half of the population can contribute more to professional leader- _ $T. GEORGES MEDICAL CLINIC Family Practice with Obstetrics 1315 St. Georges Avenue North Vancouver (located across from LGH emergency between 13th and 14th Street) ship than simply swelling its numbers. As Dr. Dahl notes, they can bring sensitivity. and humanity © professions that sometimes consricuously lack them. Both sexes would bene- fir by geing beyond Ms. Mercer's stereotype of males being “hard-wired for compe- tigen.” One of our goals in the School of — Enygincering Science is to encaurage our students to work in co-opera- tive groups — not for any ide- ological reason, simply because the person who can't work as a member of a team is of very little use, either as an employee or as a citizen. 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