Readers Write: End-of-life options, students’ rights, college access, 2024 campaign

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Thank you to the Star Tribune for the two excellent articles about the late Nancy Uden (”Nancy Uden fought for right to choose when, how to die,” July 28, and “A tumor in her brain is ticking like a time-bomb. Nancy Uden wants the option to die peacefully — before it’s too late.” March 1). She was a courageous spokesperson for HF 1930, the End-of-Life Option Act. As she and her family fought her terminal and losing battle against brain cancer, she bravely advocated for her right to die in a manner she could manage. By telling her story, she has done a great service for the people of Minnesota who may desire the same right. Hopefully, the bill will again be presented during the next legislative session. Her story and her advocacy were compelling.

The end-of-life option is exactly that. It is an option, with stringent requirements, for those of us who wish for the same right. For those of you who resist the concept, option is the descriptive term. You are free to approach a predicted pending death according to your own beliefs. That is exactly what Uden wanted.

Carolyn Grieve, Buffalo, Minn.

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I am frustrated by yet another article in the effort to support assisted suicide in Minnesota.

I have practiced psychiatry for 53 years and over that time, suicide has been my constant enemy. I have helped innumerable patients find ways to deal with despair other than killing themselves.

We now have a movement in Minnesota making the point that everyone has a perfect right to kill themselves. It strikes me as odd that anyone would make an argument that such a right needs to be established. There is no question that we have the power to end our lives anytime we wish. All we have to do is stop eating and taking fluids.

No, this is not a question of individual rights. It is a question of despair and what to do about it. Suicide may become attractive when you have given up all hope — hope to have a little more time with your family to let them know you love them.

We in hospice (I am a hospice volunteer) are devoted to finding that peace. It is entirely possible to rekindle hope with compassionate end-of-life care. Despair is the problem, and dealing with it by ending your life is never the answer.

Dr. Timothy M. Magee, Bloomington

I must respond to Anoka-Hennepin School District’s proposed revisions to its gender policy to protect parental rights (”Anoka-Hennepin rethinks gender policy,” July 28). I write as a parent of grown children and as an LGBTQ+ ally.

Informing my position is a loved one’s account of long-term verbal and physical bullying at the hands of classmates who “figured out [he] was gay before [he] did.” (He’d pray each night that he’d awake straight in the morning.) Another is the story of a youth who enjoyed going to coffee with his dad and dad’s friends at the local restaurant until they started gay bashing (presumably unaware the son was gay).

This brings me to what should be an obvious question: What about a child’s/student’s rights? It seems to me that:

· We humans are seldom as vulnerable as we are in our youth.

· Our youth deserve to feel safe in school — both physically and psychologically.

· Coming out as gay, transgender, etc. is not for the faint of heart (and I suspect seldom/never done lightly).

While I respect parental rights, I’d suggest the rights more in need of protecting are those of the most vulnerable among us.

Cory Gideon Gunderson, Lakeville

At the July 27 GOP rally in St. Cloud, vice presidential candidate JD Vance warmed up the audience by calling Vice President Kamala Harris “a member of the San Francisco lunatic fringe” (”At packed rally, Trump slams Harris,” July 28). When presidential candidate Donald Trump took the stage, he mocked her laugh and her “crazy liberal extremism,” called her the “border czar,” a “radical left lunatic” and “a dangerous person who’s not smart.” He said, if elected, she would kill Social Security and Medicare, and the United States would face “weakness, chaos and probably World War III.”

If anyone is wondering why there is so much divisiveness in the country, I would say these kinds of reckless insults and lies are a considerable contributing factor.

Mark O’Neill, St. Michael, Minn.

I found myself mostly nodding in agreement as I read the commentary, “Where did Minnesota’s top CEOs go to college? Hint: not the Ivy League.” (July 28) Very much in the spirit of Frank Bruni’s study from 2015, “Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be,” in which he interviews countless industry leaders who never reached Ivy League status but have attained success in their respective fields. Bruni implores readers to cool down, by several degrees, over the freneticism that is the college admission process. Evan Mandery, commenting on Bruni’s study in his book, “Poison Ivy,” argues that we as a society need to fret intensely about who the Ivy Leagues continue to accept and not accept, which he argues results in an ever-widening economic and power schism between the haves and have nots. But in Mandery’s zeal to argue that everyone who is qualified to go to Harvard University (his alma mater, twice over) should go to Harvard regardless of economic circumstances, he only unwittingly reinforces this idea that it is Harvard or bust.

I find myself thinking of Stephanie Land’s recent memoir, “Class,” in which she outlines her painfully protracted struggle to fund and finally complete a BA from the University of Montana as a single mother and member of the working poor. Early on, she learns that she would need to pay nonresident tuition after relocating to Missoula from Washington, and that “a full Pell Grant, a scholarship, and a maximum amount of loans wouldn’t come close to covering half the cost of tuition for one semester as a full-time student.”

Rather than obsessing over the name on one’s diploma or assuming the ease of getting a college education anywhere, perhaps the more fruitful question would be to ask how funding a college education could be made easier for everyone who wants one. That surely would offer the greatest payoff to society at large.

Patricia Anderson, St. Louis Park

The writer is a graduate of the University of Minnesota and teaches Chinese at Macalester College.