Letters: Taxes on menstrual items, clean water efforts, invasive plants, moral questions

Advocate for bill to end tax on all menstrual products

Chris Baker, alongside the Office of Fiscal and Management Analysis, has stated that Indiana would lose $6 million per year if menstrual products were tax exempt. In other words, Hoosier women lose $6 million every year.

This 2024 legislative session of the Indiana General Assembly, Sen. Shelli Yoder authored SB 203: Sales tax exemption for menstrual discharge collection devices. This bill died, but we were then offered hope when an amendment to end the tax was proposed in SB 256: Fiscal Matters. However, this amendment was not approved by our legislators.

What I am asking and encouraging everyone to do is spread awareness and make our legislators hear that we are tired of these basic necessities being taxed. There is no tax in Indiana that only affects men, so why do we have one that only affects women?

It is a must that we advocate for and pass a bill in the 2025 Indiana General Assembly to get rid of the tax on all menstrual products. If not, Indiana will continue to perpetuate a sexist society.

Annabelle Fern, Bloomington

Actions to improve clean water needed

Clean water should be our priority, but it seems to be that it isn't. Water shortages have been occurring all over the world; therefore, action needs to be taken.

For the past couple months, sixth-grade students at University Elementary School have been working on a project that deals with real-world issues. We decided to study water shortages and how they’re affecting people all over the world. While researching our topics, we have read many articles that share heartbreaking statistics, such as that 444,000 kids under the age of 5 die every day from diseases caused by a lack of clean water and sanitation every year. The fact that this number is so high explains why more people should care about this issue.

There are many steps that can be taken to save water in your everyday life. Some examples are: using more low-flow fixtures, turning off water whenever you possibly can, and using more green infrastructure. All of these are simple, yet effective ways to save water. Please try to bring more awareness to this issue because as I said, this issue is becoming more and more apparent. Action will help the lives of many.

Maya Stoffman, Bloomington

Cost of invasive plants is high

The forgotten story is the economic cost of invasive weeds. In passing the 1954 Halogeton Act, Congress allocated more money to exterminate this weed than it gave the Bureau of Land Management to manage its millions of acres of land. Today's BLM budget tops $1.7 billion.

Another billion-dollar invasive weed was Klamath weed, once dubbed in a Cooperative Extension Bulletin "to be the cause of the heaviest financial losses found on pasture and range lands." An Australian beetle Chrysolina quadrigemina was brought to the U.S. in 1946 to control Klamath weed, reducing the infestation to less than 1% of its former range. (Kingsbury: Poisonous Plants of the United States and Canada, p 175).

According to Zavaleta, 2000, the benefits, accruing over the next five decades, of eradicating salt cedar, another illegal-alien invasive, would fall between $3.8 billion and $11.2 billion. Invasives rob the nation's pocketbook, but nobody seems to pay attention!

Bud Hoekstra, Bloomington

How much killing is enough?

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worstAre full of passionate intensity.

— William Yeats, "The Second Coming"

Yeats had it about right. Things are falling apart. Our dear campus, much less our town and country, seems irretrievably split apart.

At core, is the fate of innocent women and children in war-torn Gaza. How to avoid a blood bath and how to secure Israel, how to effectively protest without creating a hostile environment and fanning flames of antisemitism, are entwined in answering the ultimate humanitarian question: how much killing is enough? Violence is never the answer.

The attack by Hamas was reprehensible. The response by Israel, while warranted at first, has gone too far. There is a point when further violence cannot be defended as self-defense.

The students have rightly brought this moral question to our attention. As adults and educators, our response should address the issue and instruct the uninformed. If students want to sleep on the lawn, rather than their dorm, I do not see who is harmed. More dialogue and discussion is needed over there and right here. Dunn Meadow was cleared but not our conscience. We can do better. We must.

Frank Motley, IU retiree, Bloomington