To the editor:

After spending four years of effort and tens of thousands of dollars you are about to earn a college degree. However, not only are you in serious debt, but thanks to our avaricious political elite, the economy has been trashed and job prospects are dim. Now to add final insult to injury, you learn that your university has invited (for a $35,000 fee) one of the chief architects of this fiscal disaster to be your graduation speaker. What would you do?

According to Gene Budig and Alan. Heaps (“Liberals must show tolerance,” Journal-World, June 17), you just keep your mouth shut and submit to the inane platitudes of this individual responsible for helping to bankrupt the country in a futile war and abusing the Constitution to justify torture. As prominent advocates of the value of higher education, Messieurs Budig and Heaps suggest that if you want to be a card-carrying member of the academic elite, students must show deference to the wisdom of the “long-held value systems” of the university. Which “values” are they referring to? Apathy? Currying favor?

In the scale of virtues, tolerance may score somewhere near the top, but not before the qualities of courage, honesty and justice. I applaud those Rutgers’ students who had the gumption to protest against honoring Condoleezza Rice as their graduation speaker. Would that more students today were willing to express their indignation against economic injustice, political folly and war crimes!