Division I student athletes should be treated like employees

Regarding “We need a Bill of Rights to protect college athletes” (Aug. 30): Before a Bill of Rights for jocks, we need a preamble, such as “The term ‘student-athlete’ should be applied only to participants in club sports and intramurals as well as to ‘walk-ons’ in football and basketball. Division I ‘scholarship’ players in ‘revenue sports’ are employees of their institutions and fully deserve workers’ compensation, the right to organize, and access to collective bargaining.”

Division I athletes in football and basketball will have their grievances addressed when they unionize. UNC-CH is a great place for this to happen. North Carolina has a long history of exploitation of workers of all types – “free,” indentured, part-time, underage and enslaved. Surely there is at least one professor at Carolina who can enlighten athletes about basic labor relations.

‘Painful’ reminder

In “Board gives UNC leaders deadline to have ‘lawful and lasting’ plan for Silent Sam” (Aug. 29), Carol Folt, Chancellor of UNC, discusses the possibility of restoring the statue of Silent Sam to “a location on campus to display the monument in a place of prominence, honor, visibility, availability and access” or possibly returning it to its empty pedestal at McCorkle Place.

The statue is a reminder to some of our population of the horrors of slavery. It would be both a kindness and a smart idea to remove Silent Sam to a place such as a museum where his statue and its history can become part of the history of our city.

It was previously revealed that the cost of protecting the statue over the past year came to $390,000. How can Chancellor Folt even defend that kind of expense? If the statue is returned to the campus, then she alone should bear the cost of providing security.

The empty space where Sam once stood can become a peaceful gathering place for students to meet and debate without the looming reminder of a painful past.

‘Appalled’ at trial

I was appalled to read the article “Watchdog group urges Halt to ‘reckless’ clinical trial on sepsis” (Aug. 30). Exactly two years ago, I went to the emergency room with vomiting and excruciating abdominal pain. I had diverticulitis, perforated bowel, and sepsis.

During surgery, I went into septic shock. I was in the cardiac-thoracic ICU for two weeks, the first in a medically-induced coma. After four more days in the regular hospital, I spent six weeks in a residential physical therapy facility, learning to walk again.

Against all odds, I survived because I had a fabulous doctor trained in critical care medicine and outstanding ICU nurses. I cannot imagine having to choose between IVs and pharmaceuticals to save my life.

When you are dying, as I was, you want whatever it takes to give you the best chance of survival.

Restructure church

Regarding “Change should start with bishop selection process” (Aug. 21): Based on the experience of Catholics around the world over the past 70 years with this issue, the profuse apologies by the pope and others in the Catholic hierarchy about the so-called clergy sex-abuse scandal probably should be taken with a large dose of skepticism.

The structure of church authority is at the heart of the problem in the first place. Apologies without a deep restructuring of the rationale and methods with which church authority is exercised are almost certainly going to end up leaving in place an approach that seems more suitable to a medieval kingdom than to a discerning community of pilgrims seeking to bring about the reign of God.

A radical examination of the basis and exercise of church authority may have been what the pope had in mind in a talk to the cardinals shortly before he was elected pope in 2013, when he noted that the way forward with this and other crises that the church has brought upon itself requires a self-emptying by those who typically exercise the levers of authority those in power of power, prestige, and privilege.

Who knows what this might look like? But it probably would involve a group of people exercising authority that look much more like the demographics of the church itself – lay and cleric mutually discerning a way forward not only through crises, but toward a world that matches the vision of the church’s founder.