Dismayed By Students’ Radical Rhetoric

To the editor:

I am compelled to write because an alarming number of Colgate students seem to have lost perspective on the negotiations taking place during this transitional period in Colgate residential policy. I have read with horror as Colgate students have made grossly insensitive comparisons between the actions of the Colgate administration and the repressive actions of dictators. I challenge these people to speak with one who has witnessed genocide and then to reflect on the perceived lack of freedom at Colgate.

I am deeply worried by the lack of ethos in the arguments of many of those who believe that they are engaged in a noble crusade – that of protecting their constitutional rights. An ill-conceived metaphor used to belittle President Rebecca Chopp hardly qualifies as convincing argument – I would ask Greg La Banca (who wrote “Students Should Fight Tyrannical Administration” in the April 18 edition of the Maroon-News) and others to save their creative impulses for their private notebooks. When I first received a Colgate Review several months ago, I laughingly tossed it aside, believing that the unfounded claims of certain articles in this issue would alienate most of us who are learning to think rationally and to root out inconsistencies in reasoning. Alarmingly, I was mistaken, and I have watched with disbelief as misguided people have taken to spout the senseless jargon of war mobilization. The radical recommendations made by disgruntled members of the Colgate community reveal their departure from reason – among these recommendations (but by no means limited to) is LaBanca’s curious advice: “Fight a guerilla war of protests, harassment and non-compliance to take back the freedoms which…the administration [has taken].” I ask you to reserve these tactics for a cause more fitting.

Victoria Buonanno ’05