Letters to the Editor

Security Response too Harsh

Poughkeepsie police called on youth

At 5:30 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 26, I called Vassar Security after seeing several children, ranging from perhaps six to 11 years old, pulling on bikes outside of Raymond and Strong. My campus patrol training and gut instinct led me to believe they were attempting to steal bikes. I believe my decision to involve Security was appropriate. After I followed the kids to ACDC, Security swooped down on the children, surrounding them. The children complied with their wishes and stayed to talk with the three officers. I offered my testimony, assuming that the punishment for the kids would be a light reprimand. I thought they would merely be banned from campus.

Less than five minutes later, two Poughkeepsie Police cars arrived. I was shocked. The police made the kids get into the back of the cars, where they interrogated them. They were issued “juvenile cards,” which as I understand can add up and result in kids being sent to juvenile detention centers. After about 20 minutes, I was told I could leave, only to realize that the ACDC dinner crowd was swarming over the scene, gawking at the little kids and the cop cars. No attempts were made to protect the privacy of the kids by moving to a more inconspicuous location.

Security congratulated me on my “street smarts” and explained that sometimes gangs in Poughkeepsie send little kids over to steal Vassar bikes. I left feeling satisfied that I may have saved a couple of bikes, but I was also troubled, not for my own personal safety (as my loving friends have kindly remarked that I should watch out for the Poughkeepsie gang members), but rather by the way the situation was handled. I remember as a child doing stupid stuff, and getting yelled at by store owners and neighbors, but never were the cops called (and thank goodness for that, I don’t think the Vassar Admissions Office would have looked kindly on a kid with a criminal record starting at age six.)

Whenever there is an issue with trespassers on campus, police are involved, even in the case of bunch of silly kids who would probably have learned their lessons if their parents were called. Can this possibly be good for campus-town relations? After an incident like this, should it be a shock to us that we are seen as being the most elite and untouchable entity in the Hudson Valley?

I’m writing this while staring at the letter from the Community Works Campaign asking me to contribute to the thousands of dollars that have been raised for organizations in the area. Is donating a lot of money supposed to better our position in the minds of Poughkeepsie residents? Perhaps the community will work better if we change the mentality that Security hold towards off-campus people. Perhaps when we stop calling the cops on misguided Poughkeepsie children, we’ll stop looking like elite, pompous, insecure scaredy-cats.
—Injy Carpenter ’05

Iraq article narrow-minded

I have encountered a lot of narrow-minded, simplistic writing in this newspaper, but up until now, I never thought such pieces of work would include a neo-conservative rant. Now, before the Conservative Coalition on campus gets itself upset, I will admit that I have nothing against a diversity of opinions, as long as the opinions are informed and intelligent. Marvin Campbell’s Opinions piece in last week’s paper, [The War in Iraq:A deepening betrayal], was neither.

The piece is full of widely-dispersed salvos worthy of a Rush Limbaugh or Bill O’Reilly. While the United States has not pursued an appropriate policy with regards to certain states in the Middle East, our efforts hardly amount to a “half-century of abject appeasement in the face of Middle East aggression.” True, we did support Saddam Hussein in the 80s, but that was less appeasement and more propping up another horrible dictator to counter a perceived threat, in this case Iran. Does Campbell refer to Operation Desert Storm when he discusses appeasement? Or maybe he means the crippling UN sanctions, or the intermittent air strikes throughout the 90s?

More troubling is Campbell’s use of our appeasement towards the Middle East to justify the war in Iraq. Is he suggesting that our policy failures in the region justified the invasion? While they have led to the threat posed by Saddam, do these failures in regards to Saddam justify our later war against him? Moreover, the neo-cons’ claim that this war would lead to a reverse domino-effect, causing the states of the Middle East to fall to democracy, was never really based on sound theory and has yet to come true. Also, as should be apparent to everyone (except it seems, our President), Iraq did not have direct links to transnational terrorist groups. This, of course, begs the question – how exactly did Campbell make the connection between so-called “appeasement” towards Middle East “aggression” and this unjust war?

And the O’Reilly factor continues. Campbell then claims that the United States has not fought a “war of unremitting attrition,” instead being “hamstrung with parameters.” What does he mean here? Not indiscriminately bombing houses, not destroying entire villages suspected of anti-US activities, attempting to treat the Iraqis like fellow human beings? Waging a total war against the Iraqi people may beat the country into submission, but Campbell forgets that the purpose of this war (well, maybe the third purpose) was one of liberation, not occupation.

Ultimately, it comes down to a question of success. What we need is stability in Iraq. This could be achieved by Campbell’s “war of unremitting attrition,” or it could come about through an honest search for a just end to this unjust war. Granted, concrete proposals are more effective than ambiguous idealism, but this ill-informed rant merely serves to obfuscate the complex issue beneath neo-conservative oversimplifications.
—Peter S. Henne ’05