Letters to the Editor 2/25/10

To the Editor:

Ever seen a RIDDIM show and thought that you could come up with a better theme idea? Well, this is your chance. The Campus is soliciting theme ideas for the RIDDIM show for all students to vote on in next week’s poll. Whoever comes up with the winning theme idea will win two tickets to the spring RIDDIM show to get a chance to see your theme in action. Thanks to The Campus for letting us run this poll, and thank you for submitting ideas!

Sincerely,
Kelly Bennion ’10

To the Editor:

By Nick Alexander ’10’s logic in his Feb. 18 op-ed (“A reality check for the Office of Health and Wellness”), because my most vivid memory of freshman year does not entail vomiting on a Public Safety officer or drunkenly urinating on the walls of Stewart Hall, I do not have a social life. If Nick’s analysis of “the basic facts of human social interaction” is to be believed, however, an outcast status might be for the best. I remain unconvinced that it is the current legal drinking age that forces “pre-gaming” students “to consume as much as they can, as fast as they can, out of the public eye and in the shadows of their dormitories.” Such actions are fueled instead by free will, individual irresponsibility and the encouragement of a vocal contingent of students who equate alcohol consumption with sociability, without regard for the actual diversity of social experiences available at Middlebury. Thus, the Office of Health & Wellness Education should not heed the “reality check” last week’s op-ed seeks to deliver, but instead continue to sponsor speakers and events that challenge a campus culture Nick wrongly portrays as intractable.

Sincerely,
Kelly Janis ’10


To the Editor:

If one wants to disagree with my opinion, as expressed in my Feb. 11 cartoon, by all means. But one should be careful glibly throwing around accusations that I “haven’t done my research,” as was stated in the Feb. 18 response to my cartoon.
The U.S. has pledged $100 million in relief money (the number in last week’s response, $644 million, is the amount donated by private citizens — which was clearly not the subject of my cartoon). Despite the fact that $100 million is a minute fraction of what has been poured into our lovely engagement in Iraq, it is indeed a good thing that the government was willing to give following the earthquake. However, it still remains to be seen — and this is the issue I sought to address in my cartoon — whether the U.S. actually intends to help Haiti, or whether our engagement will be limited to some emergency relief money, and a bunch of troops stationed in Haiti for a while, enabling us to proclaim, “We have done our part! Now, bootstraps, guys, bootstraps.”
If we want to understand the problems in Haiti and America’s hand in these problems, we must look back a bit farther than January. We must look back to 1804 when the Haitians successfully revolted against their European colonial masters and gained independence. This story — of a people rising up against a brutal European overseer and gaining independence — sounded strikingly familiar to the only other independent nation in the Western Hemisphere, and as a result the United States embraced Haiti with open arms. Wait, wait... No... it wasn’t exactly a policy of open arms with which the U.S. responded. I think it’d be better characterized as a policy of “you’re black; you don’t deserve independence,” enforced with almost 60 years of scorn and embargo, topped with a demand that the Haitians pay reparations to their wronged French former-masters. Strange, huh, that the Haitian political system started off a bit off?
Fast forward to 1915, when the United States hopped on over to occupy Haiti to, as Mark Danner put it, “enforce continued debt repayment.” The Americans decided to build up Haiti’s infrastructure, benevolently bestowing the backwards Haitians with infrastructure, roads, and bridges (which oddly didn’t seem to hold up so well this past month, despite the fact that there are known infrastructure reinforcement mechanisms that we could have easily funded, had we cared to do so — and Haiti is, after all, no stranger to natural disasters).
So, then the U.S. pulls out in 1934, leaving political chaos in its wake, which eventually led to the takeover by the murderous dictator, Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier, who the U.S. tolerated quite nicely, since he was, after all, not a Communist. And so on. Mostly, though, after pulling out, we paid very little attention to a country which we had a large hand in screwing up — although our inattentiveness was, of course, interspersed with military incursions every now and then.
I do not have a detailed prescription as to how the U.S. government should continue its engagement with Haiti. What I intended with my cartoon — and yes, maybe it was not the clearest message —was to assert that the U.S. has an obligation not to limit its assistance to emergency relief, and thereby allow Haiti to slip once again into squalor and chaos. If you disagree with that, that is your prerogative, and I would be interested to hear why. However, in the future I ask that people try to refrain from haughty accusations of “pathetic ignorance.”

Peace,
Mori Rothman ’12