If you read Student Life on a regular basis, you will undoubtedly come to one of two conclusions: a) WU is the most racist, bigoted, sexist, heterosexist, misogynistic, and repressive college campus ever, or b) WU students and/or Student Life writers have a love affair with making mountains out of molehills.
It seems like every time I pick up the paper, ABS is segregating itself in Mallinckrodt. No, wait, my mistake-it’s the white population on campus that is forcing the minorities to segregate. Next week I will probably read about the Greek system being the root of all racism, alcoholism, and sexual assault on campus.
I am by no means saying that WU is devoid of negative facets. I am not so na‹ve as to believe that everyone gets along. WU has its fair share of racists; I will not deny the heterosexism, and I will certainly acknowledge the terrible cases of sexual assault. However, I would like to say that things are not as bad as many columnists, op-ed writers, and student groups would have you think. All too often I see exaggeration, faulty logic, and outright lies at the heart of many “arguments” that I either read in the student newspapers or hear coming from the mouths of my fellow students. I recall reading a scalding piece that accused the woman in charge of choosing the questioners during Salman Rushdie’s speech of picking only males and ignoring females. I also remember a noble reader correcting the writer and mentioning the two women who were picked to ask questions.
By the way, I would like to take this time to acknowledge the good ideas and arguments that I have seen and heard. Many of these are found in the form of letters to the editor in response to the less well thought-out pieces that (dis)grace these pages. I would like to count this column among those responses-except, of course, that it will come before many of the columns that it is ‘responding’ to. I’ll call this a preemptive strike. Yes, before you have a chance to write a boring, overstated letter or accuse some innocent group of unethical practices, I am calling you out. I am challenging you to take a step back, take a deep breath, and realize that things are not black and white. Evil organizations and totalitarian administrators do not lurk around every corner. They are not waiting to ambush you as you wait in the Subway line. Before putting pen to paper, please take the time to develop an argument.
Before writing your next column or article about the sexist, alcoholic, racist fraternity members, or the evils of ABS, or an accusatory piece about the hiring practices of the athletic department, please take the time to do a few basic things. First, take down accurate quotes that are reported in context; second, get the facts straight; and third, please, for the sanity of all who read your work, have a coherent essay that makes a logical argument and offers a solution to the problem.
By no means am I advocating a policy of “grin and bear it.” If there is a legitimate problem, then it should be discussed. But many of the columns I have read either restate what someone else said three weeks earlier, or (and in my opinion this is much worse) they inflate a non-issue. In the cases where they have no evidence to support their claim, they write an empty meaningless piece that wastes everybody’s time.
One such article appeared just last Friday on the back page of Student Life. To me it appeared as if the author, Matt Goldberg, was trying to make the Athletic Department appear as if it was using unfair hiring practices. He mentioned the lone minority coach and tried to portray the Athletic Depart-ment in a negative light. Unfortunately for him, all the evidence he presented seemed to defend the hiring practices of this particular establishment. To me, it looked like the half page article said, ‘WU only has one minority coach, but that is about right according to the figures I looked at. So I wrote a big long article about nothing.’
There, I have offered constructive criticism and put my thoughts out there for you to take them as you will. You can begin writing your responses to my audacious narrow viewpoint. now.