I’m writing in response to the article by Jack Richards.

I praise the administration for finding new revenue streams. If Pepsi is willing to pay the school and give free advertising on cans, go for it. If someone wants to give the school free TV’s and pay NKU to have advertising shown on them, by all means accept the offer.

As for the supposed lack of consumer choices, I don’t seem to remember being able to get Pepsi and Mountain Dew out of the vending machines when the University was Coca-Cola only.

Since Harvard has been around since 1639, I figured they had a little more money than NKU so I did some checking. According to the Harvard University Factbook, the base tuition is $23,457. This is the base only, Tuition is more for the specialized schools, such as Law, Medical, Dental, Government, Public Health, Business, Education and Continuing Eucation. The only Harvard school that costs less is the Divinity School which is still $16,400 per year. Harvard University has endowments totaling $18,712,553,000 and an annual budget of 2,228,151,000. I could be wrong but I don’t think that Northern Kentucky University comes close on any of these numbers.

It is offers like these that help keep our tuition down. Since Mr. Richards doesn’t seem to mind high tuition, I suggest he go to Harvard University where they probably don’t need to advertise on Mountain Dew cans. However, this is not a guarantee since I’ve never known any university to pass up free advertising.

Since Mr. Richards also says “Putting these electronic advertisement devices where students congregate is only going to further alienate and isolate students by encouraging them to focus not on each other but on the flashing images on the wall.”

I know that when someone is talking to me, I focus on them, not the television. Mr. Richards, if you have a hard time focusing, go into the library itself instead of hanging out in the lobby near the television, or better yet just try turning your back to it, it really isn’t that hard.

Darrell Snodgrass