Letters to the Editor | Forum on racial tension reveals misinformation, not apathy

In light of last week’s Letter to the Editor entitled “Diversity ‘dialogue’ reveals campus apathy” (2.7.08), I would like to express my opinion on the issue of student indifference to campus incidents as expressed by the author, Luis Trujillo ’09.

As a senior who considers herself up-to-date with everyday campus events and involved in the life of this community, I was shocked to read of the “disturbing incidents of exclusions and cowardly acts of hate” mentioned by Trujillo, specifically the appearance of two nooses in Rockefeller Hall and “KKK” written in the basement of Strong House. This was the first time that I had ever heard of or read about either incident, which left me appalled as well as confused.

When exactly these did events happen? Why hadn’t I ever been told? The only other similar incident I could remember had happened in Jewett House where a cord had been fashioned as a noose, an event which students were made aware of in an e-mail from President Catharine Bond Hill on Oct. 26. Regarding these last two incidents, no such action was taken, creating a situation of misinformation and speculation within the community.

I am grateful for Trujillo’s letter, because without his contribution it is likely that I would have remained oblivious to these disturbing and important events.

Indeed, in response to the frustration evident in Trujillo’s words primarily directed at students who “don’t care” about issues that affect their peers, I would like to argue that theirs may be not a display of apathy as much as a consequence of misinformation. From my experience, it is not that students don’t care about what’s going on at Vassar (although to be fair, some may not), but many students are simply not aware some of the problems that Trujillo considers “all too prevalent on campus.”

For example, Trujillo largely draws his conclusions from the poor attendance at the community forum on Wednesday, Jan. 30. Although I sympathize with the helplessness felt by the few students who did make time to participate in the discussion, I am hesitant to attribute the low turnout to a student disinterest in the gravity of the acts that have allegedly occurred.

Rather, I suggest it has to do with the extremely vague nature of the forum itself, described to us in two e-mails from Hill and Dean of the College Judy Jackson as “serious discussion about campus concerns, campus climate, and strategies and resources for building a stronger community” (Jan. 24 and Jan. 30, respectively).

To me and to others I have discussed this with, this is a long string of ambiguous words that fail to describe the issues at hand as well as convey their severity. An e-mail with a tentative agenda and list of topics to be discussed would have been a much more straightforward and efficient way to draw student attention.

Poor communication between administrators and students is a problem that surfaces often at Vassar, and in fact the degree of discretion with which the administration reacts to campus issues is fairly inconsistent. On the morning of Dec. 9, students received an e-mail from Jackson informing us of the measures taken by Security officers at the Town Houses following suspicious activity at Vassar Lake.

Given that the incident turned out to be a false alarm, I questioned the need to send such an alarmist e-mail to the entire community when only a small area of campus had been disturbed. Furthermore, it made me wonder why the incidents of hate mentioned in Trujillo’s letter, which pose an ongoing threat to every member that takes part in the Vassar community, were not communicated to us in the same way.

In light of this discrepancy, I am forced to ask myself why certain things are kept quiet and others are not. More importantly, who decides what students are entitled to be informed about? And how much do we actually know about what goes on in our community?

Trujillo’s observation that a great number of students present at the community forum on Jan. 30 were student leaders is also particularly telling. In my one-year stint as dorm vice-president, I was amazed to discover just how much better-informed members of house teams are of what goes on at Vassar. Having regular, direct contact with the Vassar Student Association meant being closer to the administration and being informed about issues that were otherwise kept quiet to the greater student body.

Once my year as part of a house team was over and I went back to being the averagely active member of the community, I noticed how erratically and incompletely students are included in the unfolding of certain issues. The unfortunate result of such a divide between the student body and the administration is, as Trujillo said, “meaningless, poorly attended forums” where no concrete action is decided upon.

—Claudia Martinuzzi ’08