I am writing in response to Monday’s article titled “Delta Sigma Pi presents appeal to use Knapp Center,” and hope to represent the views of a concerned student rather than the CBPA Senator. I believe Miss Schnoebelen did a fantastic job at educating Drake students about the background in this issue. However, there is a lot more to the story that in, my opin­ion, makes it even more unsettling. In addition to Delta Sigma Pi, Colleges Against Cancer has also been attempting to obtain the Knapp Center for their use for Relay for Life, an event that draws an enormous crowd every year and has been proven as successful. As a student, I believe Drake could use more than a little posi­tive publicity after the difficult fall we’ve had so far, and refusing to allow student organizations to use the space that could allow them to raise even more money for charities does not make sense to me at all. I urge you to contact the Athletics Department and ask them to allow us to use these facilities. In my opinion, excuses such as “it costs too much” or “takes too much time” are antithetical to Drake’s mission state­ment. Your support can ensure that we are given fair consideration rather than dismissed as unimportant. More than $9,000 could be raised by one of these events alone, and that is not an insignificant number.

Signed,

Reed Allen