COLLEGE DEBT

There are ways for students to avoid debt

The young man Lori Sturdevant wrote about in her Nov. 27 column must have gotten some bad advice ("Student debt loads just may be America's next big crisis.")

My grandson joined the Marine Corps in the fall of 2002. He served for four years. In 2006, he enrolled at Central Lakes Community College in Brainerd, from which he graduated in 2008. Then he attended the University of Minnesota in Crookston and graduated in 2011.

He has no student debt. Everything was covered with the money he received from the Marine Corps. Now he's 28 and is starting a new job in June.

Getting through college without debt is possible. Young people need to spend less time protesting and more time taking responsibility for their lives.

JOAN PAULY, PLYMOUTH

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SUBURBAN LIVING

Not as awful as we may have been led to believe

As someone who has often been sharply critical of the suburban lifestyle, I greatly appreciated Tom Martinson's Nov. 27 commentary ("In defense of the suburbs: Imperfect, yet right for many").

Although I still have no desire to live there, Martinson has reminded us that many people call suburbia home, and that there can truly be no place more precious or welcoming than that.

NICHOLAS KAMINSKY,

NEW PRAGUE, MINN.

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To Martinson's article, I would simply add this: I grew up in the suburbs of St. Louis, Mo., and recall a quietly communicated ethic about it.

We assumed that if you lived in the city, you were either of a different racial ethnic background than we were (white), you had some exotic sexual preferences that you didn't wish to inflict on family-based neighborhoods or that you were crazy.

It was also quietly communicated that if you lived in a small town or in the country, you were just frankly too dim to make it in the suburbs. And so people clung to their existence with a kind of social panic, it seemed. I realize that much of that has changed.

We moved to a small town in Wisconsin 25 years ago because I found work. We discovered not only a remarkable collection of educated, sophisticated people, well-read and well-traveled, but they were rubbing elbows with salt-of-the-earth types, all living and working and governing and serving together.

Plus, I can drive a truck with rust and not have the neighbors complain. It's not right for everyone, but it has been for us.

DAVID BUTLER, RICE LAKE, WIS.

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VIKINGS STADIUM

If not the Metrodome, team and NFL can pay

Why are we even talking about a stadium with any public money? The Metrodome has a new roof and turf.

The updates needed certainly must be more cost-effective than starting with a new building project. Minnesota has one of the best TV markets for football in the nation. Who does that benefit?

Are the Vikings ready to walk away from that? If they insist on a new stadium, the NFL and Vikings can build one with their own money.

CHARLOTTE MEINZ, PRINCETON, MINN.

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SCHOOL BULLYING

Where's due process in student discipline?

I'm bothered by several points made in the editorial about school discipline ("Include due process in school discipline," Nov. 28).

When the transfer of a student to another school is made because of a disciplinary issue, there most certainly should be due process before such a transfer takes place. The fact that this isn't addressed by district policy is a gross oversight.

It's because of this "oversight" that the district was forced to shell out $20,000 in taxpayer money for the defendant's legal fees in the case cited in the editorial.

What occurred on a school-sponsored field trip is reprehensible. Where was the school's chaperone when this assault took place?

LISA E. MCLOUGHLIN, BAYVILLE, MINN.

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EDEN PRAIRIE

Kersten's attack ignored the facts

Katherine Kersten would fit right in with those who opposed school integration in the 1950s ("Eden Prairie had to suffer foolish plan," Nov. 20). She uses everything she can find to denigrate Eden Prairie's efforts to achieve school equity but provides nothing but her words as evidence.

The percentage of free- and reduced-price-lunch students grew by 46 percent in just three years at one elementary school. Former Superintendent Melissa Krull knew she could not allow that to continue.

Of those efforts, Kersten says the district ran "roughshod over the lives of real people" by requiring some to be bused to different schools. Apparently, students of poverty aren't "real people."

Kersten writes that "Krull and her administration railroaded through a plan to bus students."

In fact, 20 people, the majority of whom were district parents, worked on the boundary plan for two years, had several focus groups open to the public while the plan was being formulated, and had seven large, public meetings once the draft maps were set.

Kersten goes on to say that the district is "fully integrated," conveniently ignoring the fact that in 2008, one of the elementary schools had a 22 percent minority population and another had 49 percent.

Kersten states that the "district is down about 300 students from last year," implying that most of that decrease is due to the boundary changes. In fact, the administration estimates that the boundary issue accounts for the loss of only 40 to 50 students.

Kersten would do well to combine some facts with her venom.

MICHAEL M. HOLM, MINNETONKA

The writer is a former Eden Prairie teacher and teachers union president.