Student admission at Sun Belt unfair

For the Sun Belt Conference tournament championship games on Tuesday, my friends and I arrived at Diddle for the women’s game at 2 p.m.

After watching our women’s team win the game, we immediately left and began standing outside for the men’s game.

We were the first ones in front of the door. We waited outside for two hours until the doors opened. When we finally were let in, we ran up the stairs to get front-row seats. To our surprise, there were three girls already sitting on the front row where we wanted to sit.

Were they standing in line outside for two hours? No! They claimed they were in the hospitality room before the game.

This is ridiculous! Everyone should get a fair and equal chance of getting front row seats. The line was wrapped around Diddle Arena. Every other student had to wait in line for their seats, so why didn’t these girls have to? These girls didn’t even stay for the awards ceremony and probably haven’t been to a game all season. I doubt they were even at the women’s game.

If Western wanted to be unbiased about the tournament, they should have been unbiased about whom they let into the game first.

Jacqulyn Lyles

Calvert City sophomore

Students spurred Toppers to victories

As a 1984 alumnus of Western living here in Bowling Green with my wife (also a 1984 grad) and three kids, we love supporting Western sports.

I wish to take this opportunity to thank the thousands of students who came out during the Sun Belt Conference tournament and helped cheer our teams on to victories.

Your loud, relentless and unwavering support of the Toppers made a huge difference in more than one way. The “old people” like myself actually were standing up, screaming, hollering and getting into the game. This is nothing new for me personally, but I have always been frustrated at how many of our regular-season fans spend most of their time sitting silently in their chairs.

When you students started yelling, everybody got up with you. Same way with the Wave, the now infamous (and I hope a tradition) “Sit Down” for the opponent’s fifth foul, the “Start the Bus” key chain rattle, etc.

I even noticed that when non-students didn’t get up, the crowd around them started chastising them for not getting involved.

Thanks, Western students, for your great support. I only have one thing to ask of you. Please support these guys at every game like you did at the tournament.

Your fellow students, who also happen to play ball, need your support!

Rod Hutcheson

Bowling Green alumnus

Diddle should be alive all the time

This was my third basketball season at Western. For me, the atmosphere at Diddle Arena has clearly never been better than it was this past week at the Sun Belt Conference tournament.

There were around 4,000 students at the men’s championship on Tuesday night, and it was a spectacular crowd. I doubt there was a man, woman, child or student who did not enjoy the game.

Sure, we were not playing a Top 25 team, but the atmosphere created by our fans on this occasion made the pure entertainment value just as great.

So, if we all had so much fun, it just doesn’t make any sense why Diddle doesn’t come alive like that for every game. Who cares who our opponent is or if Chris Marcus isn’t playing or what the stakes are?

We create the atmosphere in which our teams play. I applaud the crowd at Diddle this past week, and I challenge each and every one who was there to replicate that same magical atmosphere next season.

Congratulations to the men’s and women’s basketball teams. The Western faithful are proud of you and the competitiveness and intensity with which you lit up Diddle.

Jason Neidell

Head coach,

Women’s soccer

New sidewalk needed at Wetherby

Every day when I walk from my dorm over to the academic side of campus, I use the sidewalk that goes between Wetherby and Florence-Schneider Hall.

Every time I use that sidewalk, a car or service vehicle comes racing down through it or hovers behind me until I jump in the grass. This is probably annoying for both me and the driver, and it seems to occur at all times during the day.

With all of the sidewalk repair that Western did last semester, I wonder if it would be too much to ask for an extra sidewalk for pedestrians that runs next to the Wetherby driveway. This way, students and faculty on foot can navigate between Big Red Way and the top of the Hill without worrying about someone driving through it, and drivers don’t have to wait for someone to walk in the grass or to notice the car behind them.

I’ve been walking that sidewalk at midnight or later and there are still cars coming through from behind the fine arts center or wherever the driveway leads. It’s obviously a common route for vehicles, as well as students, and often at night it’s hard to see if someone is walking there, so a driver might eventually hit someone on that sidewalk.

Instead of making it off-limits to cars or to students, a sidewalk adjoining the driveway for that strip would solve the problem quite easily. And with the seeming raises in tuition, there’s got to be money for it somewhere.

Joshua Woleben

Paducah sophomore

Forensics team deserved more coverage

I do not want to take anything away from the achievements of Western’s athletic teams.

However, it seems a shame that the impressive achievements of Western’s forensics team should be buried in a short two-paragraph mention on the fifth page of the March 13 issue of the Herald.

I know that the forensic program has won so many national titles that it may not seem newsworthy anymore, but the individual students deserve recognition for their hard work and success.

It would have taken very little space to have included the names of the seven Western students who “were also named national champions in individual events.”

Dr. Patricia M. Taylor

Professor of English