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