A recent letter to the Courier suggested that the Oaks will decline to the point that a chain-link fence will be needed to keep out vagrants.

As a scientist by training, I rely on observation and data.

My observation from visiting the Oaks every day is that it is a vibrant center, with a high amount of pedestrian traffic, full of interesting people and shoppers. Look at the parking lot most any time of day and it is filled with the cars of patrons. De Anza College students who attempt to park are chased away or towed away by Oaks security.

Let's consider the data.

The Caltrans website states that there are about 240,000 cars per day on 85 that pass the Oaks. Stevens Creek, which passes directly in front of the Oaks, has about 75,000 cars per day. There are about 25,000 students at De Anza college growing to 30,000. There are events at Flint Center, Memorial Park and the Senior Center which bring many more people into the proximity of the Oaks.

Any center with that much traffic cannot be in decline unless the owners are causing its decline.

Chicago-based Heitman Capital Management wants to cash in on the property at the Oaks with high density housing.

Heitman attempted to convert part of the Stonestown shopping center in San Francisco into high density housing and was defeated in a six-year fight with residents.

Heitman has not invested in upgrading the Oaks and has driven out some tenants by raising rents to convince the city council to allow high density housing.

We must not allow them to succeed. If we don't, any chain-link fence around the Oaks will be for construction of more undesirable high density, up-against-the-street housing.

Robert L. Garten

Cupertino

De Anza is becoming a blob of tar on aesthetics

Hello, De Anza. This is a wake up call. Hello? Hello? Are you listening?

A college is supposed to be an institution of higher learning. Higher learning includes aesthetics. Never heard of it? It should be by the way a college designs and keep its grounds.

De Anza used to be an oasis of beauty before taken over by a shortsighted, and an apparently illiterate administration. Or, as Lily Tomlin would have parodied, "We are omnipotent" until the need for more funds might awaken you—after it is too late—and you are told to go hang!

You are rapidly turning De Anza into an ugly eyesore—a blob of tar on the aesthetics of Cupertino. There was a time when I took out-of-town visitors for a prideful visit and walk around the campus. Now, I'm ashamed to drive them past this botch as we depart for more pleasing pastures elsewhere on the peninsula.

I suppose you will pridefully hang your photos in the administration building after your perpetration of this atrocity is completed—and you have moved on—to perpetrate your philistine view of "higher education" in some other unsuspecting community.

Burt Schmitz

Cupertino

DeCinzo needs more math, forgot some things

In Mr. DeCinzo's cartoon of Jan. 2l, he forgot some very important figures: 5,000 Kurds killed with WMD's, hundreds of thousands buried in mass graves, thousands of rape and torture victims, the more than two dozen countries that are part of the coalition, not to mention the one homicidal tyrant who is now in prison and not in power. Maybe York Wu (Jan. 14 Courier, page 15) could spend a little time tutoring Mr. DeCinzo with his counting!

Lillian Wasson

Cupertino

DeCinzo miscounted WMDs, should be zero

The generally unfunny and politically incorrect DeCinzo is just plain factually incorrect in this week's cartoon depicting MathCounts winner York Wu.

DeCinzo shows him counting things like: "How many countries hate us now?" and "How much money to go to Mars?," which would be enough to illustrate the point.

Unfortunately, Mr. DeCinzo strays by adding "WMDs in Iraq," showing more than 70 tic marks. DeCinzo should be aware that it doesn't take actual counting ability to count the number of WMDs in Iraq, since that number is precisely ZERO.

He further betrays his ignorance, and misleads your readers, by showing more than 30 as the count of "Plutonium bought from Niger," which is completely wrong. Niger doesn't even produce plutonium. It does produce the form of uranium known as "yellowcake," but as everyone except Mr. DeCinzo knows, the amount that Iraq purchased from Niger was also easily countable, since it too was precisely ZERO.

This would all be an amusing error, were it not for the fact that thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis, not to mention assorted Britons, Italians, Spaniards and others are now dead or permanently wounded thanks to the "miscount" of these items by the Bush administration which brought us this illegal and immoral invasion and occupation.

For Mr. DeCinzo to suggest that WMDs have been found in Iraq, or that Iraq did indeed purchase material for nuclear weapons from Niger is to cover-up the tragedy of these needless casualties.

Steven Patt

Cupertino