Letters to the Editor | Writer’s view presumptive, skewed

This letter is in response to Royce Drake’s Letter to the Editor “Students should challenge privilege,” 12.05.07.

It’s hard to disagree with someone’s letter admonishing fellow students to recognize their privileged status and show gratitude and humility toward those members of the Vassar community who clean up after them, watch after their safety, etc.

But that’s just it; Drake’s letter assumes that the vast majority of us at Vassar college are beef-witted clodhoppers with little else to do than spit on those who work here. In fact, Drake’s previous letters demonstrate a remarkably negative perspective of the Vassar student body. I recall another letter of his intoning that Vassar was an insensitive, racist community after he observed one student dressed as a Rastafarian on Halloween.

I take no issue with whether Drake’s conclusions are warranted; I only hope he learns a more tactful method of advising the student body.

Just because we are not out on the streets on account of Vassar’s crypto-observance of Columbus Day does not in fact mean we endorse the genocide perpetrated on Native Americans by Europeans. Likewise, just because we are not out kissing the feet of those charged with the upkeep of the campus does not mean we are ungrateful. I thank Drake for his thought-provoking submissions to your paper. However I hope in the future The Miscellany News will be less prone to act as a steady conduit for the opinions of students such as Drake who cannot help but impose their lofty sense of import on their Letters to the Editor.

—James Boyd ’09