Letters
Conservative voice also needed in academia I appreciated the insightful and hilarious piece by Andrew Jones (“Campus suppresses ‘right’ education,” Daily Bruin, Oct. 31). Jones’ thoughts were often mine as I moved through higher education. I recently graduated from Stanford with a master’s degree in education. I hated the atmosphere at the School of Education at Stanford and despised the extreme leftist culture. I swear that if I had expressed any of my conservative views (and not all of my views are conservative) I would have been dragged out and shot; that or have been deemed as an unworthy human being and flunked. The intellectual atmosphere was stifling due to the closed-in, liberal political views. My questions is: how did it become that way? Did universities not used to be where conservatives dwelled and thrived? Even Dartmouth, my alma mater, as a “conservative” school, embraced a highly liberal public atmosphere. Perhaps conservatives grew too comfortable in their silence and got taken over when the liberals were the only ones ranting and seething about everything and anything. When was the last time you saw a group of conservatives gather together and hold a rally? As Jones mentioned, maybe it’s time for conservatives to step out and rant!
Andrea Wang Neuschwander Graduate School of Education and Information Studies School Management Program
Homophobia is ignorant hatred Donte Dollar-Wright’s submission, (“Depiction of homosexuality unnecessary,” Daily Bruin, Viewpoint, Oct. 29) while purporting to be an objection to sexual content, was essentially a poorly argued position claiming the right to be homophobic. His article promotes the idea of homosexuality as “nature’s aberrance” – something to be tolerated but also something to be suppressed, silenced and to be ashamed of. It was his kind of “tolerance” that put gay people in prisons and mental institutions up until the 1970s, simply because of their sexuality. While much of Dollar-Wright’s submission is filled with skewed logic, completely unfounded claims and double standards, he is mainly guilty of two offenses: heterosexism and homophobia – heterosexism being the enforcement of heterosexuality as the norm and homophobia being the irrational fear of homosexuals. While Dollar-Wright sprinkles disclaimers throughout his submission, saying that people shouldn’t hate homosexuals, he in fact tries to justify homophobia. Dollar-Wright alleges that “comparing homophobia to racism is a gargantuan fallacy,” because people of all colors have the potential to procreate while gay people do not. Hating people just because the sexual acts they engage in cannot result in children seems very irrational to me. According to Dollar-Wright’s logic, masturbation, oral sex, all forms of birth control and sex between sterile individuals are wrong and abnormal, because they cannot “perpetuate the circle of life.” Furthermore, I certainly have no idea as to why being able to hide sexuality and not skin color has anything to do with why it’s OK to hate someone. In any case, Dollar-Wright has failed to realize that humans, after a certain degree, are not governed by the laws of evolution. Many aspects of human behavior are “unnatural” – morality is not natural. Love and altruism are not natural. What is right or wrong is not based on the survival of the fittest. Dollar-Wright promotes hate in his column. More importantly, he promotes the internalized hate already felt by many in the gay community. While Dollar-Wright is entitled to his opinions about sexual preferences, he has no right to make anyone feel like an “irrefutable glitch of nature.” Perhaps if Dollar-Wright relied less on media portrayals of gay people and got to know more than the two who lived in his dorm, he would see them as people and individuals rather than a threat to his personal definition of a “normal life.”
Kristie Wang Second-year English
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