I would like to clarify my reason for charging the Social Council (SoCo) with discrimination concerning queer students and computer dating TAP. Your article ("Students File Complaint, Call SoCo Survey Discriminatory," Nov. 1) failed to explain that the discrimination still lingering around campus is a subtle thing.
You gave an impression of whiny minorities wrongfully rebuking a gay-friendly school for not being hyper-vigilant. But this isn't so simple. I understand that SoCo was casually ignorant, slighting queer students because such still exist and are tolerated-at Amherst and everywhere else. Our community on campus is small and mostly invisible, so ignoring us is easy. But fortunately for me, the College has policies which, while not explicitly including sexual orientation, do, through the administration's compassionate choice to do so, protect gay, lesbian and bisexual students from discrimination-even if it happens through carelessness.
So I filed a formal charge of discrimination because I was tired of being on the fringe of the consciousness of those who administer this campus. And despite a decision I consider a win, I am still tired of being ignored. The Social Council is the College's ruling social body. It receives an absurd amount of money from both Residential Life and the Student Finance Committee to run social activities for the entire campus. But it does not cater to the campus as a whole.
While queer students were obviously not represented in this specific event, ignoring affinity groups is subtly permitted in SoCo's tradition. Events targeting majority students (I'll clarify that to include wealthy, white, heterosexual kids) are paid for and organized by Social Council (e.g. TAP). Alternatively, events that appeal to queers or students of color are partially paid for by the Social Council but solely organized by a campus affinity group. SoCo subsidizes them-when formally requested to do so by the event's sponsor-but the arrangement of social events that actively include minorities are left to minorities not included in campus government.
This phenomenon is the sad product of minority underrepresentation in organizations like SoCo. Minority groups do not feel a part of this campus because we are kept outside its workings. This ignorance of us pollutes our ruling bodies; this ignorance of us is marginalization.
When students responded to the graffiti art in the Campus Center game room with, "this doesn't represent Amherst," they held the selection of Amherst students whom it does represent outside their consciousness. This ignorance of us affects our peers; this is marginalization; and this is a problem of the marginalized. Just as the queer students voiced their concerns to the deans, marginalized students must request institutional changes that will erase such fringe status. Currently, places like Amherst do not actively discriminate, but residual discrimination remains. There is a still a fight, and some of us will argue for reform until we are included as wholeheartedly as if we never had to fight in the first place.
John Abodeely '01
<b>Next Steps After FACE Forum</b><br>To the Editor:
The recent President's Forum on Class brought to light many latent problems of social class that are dividing this campus. Now that these issues have been voiced, the campus must respond. First and foremost, those students on this campus who enjoy class privilege, myself included, must now work to undo entrenched assumptions about the privilege of their peers.
Even though I may be able to afford to spend the weekend in Boston or a more faraway destination, I cannot assume that my peers can or should be able to do the same. Even though I am sometimes able to go out to dinner every other night of the week, I cannot expect that all of my friends can afford that lifestyle.
More substantially, even though I don't have to worry about dorm damage charges on my tuition bill, I cannot assume that my peers can or should have no problem paying that bill. My ability to afford these charges, as well as extensive book fees, phone bills, and general living and travel costs is a privilege I should actively work to extend to my classmates at an institution that can afford to provide these benefits.
We in the Student Government Organization (SGO) are already working with Financial Aid and Class Equality (FACE) and the administration to resolve many of these disparities, but we need your vocal support if we are to convince the administration that they need to take up this fight despite how difficult it may prove to be. For instance, FACE hopes to open a centralized student employment office on campus to help students who need to find work do so quickly and effectively, especially at the beginning of each semester.
To combat the problem of transportation outside the Five College area, the SGO is lobbying the College to purchase a fleet of vans solely for student use. This way, clubs whose members lack cars or otherwise cannot afford transportation may have adequate access, freeing up Student Finance Committee money for other worthy causes. We must tell the administration how much this matters.
Members of the SGO are trying to persuade the College to change its arrangement with the local telephone company so that students may have free on-campus telephone service. This would be a complex change for the College to make, but if we can prove to the College that there is a real need to alleviate these costs, they will listen.
The current policies surrounding academic books need to be seriously reconsidered as well. As Dean of Financial Aid Joe Paul Case clarified at the Forum, College financial aid packages allow extra scholarship money to be given out for books and supplies if a student's current financial aid package falls short. Still, members of the SGO are seeking to keep academic expenses down by improving the book reserve system. SGO Vice President Michelle Oliveros-Larsen is working on ways get much-needed books and multiliths on reserve, and to expand the length of the reserve period for certain books so that unnecessary overdue charges do not pile up. We need everyone to impress upon the faculty the importance of placing enough books on reserve and to help the library find creative solutions for other reserve problems.
The dorm damage system is yet another area that needs improvement. The current system's flaw is that dorm damage fees fail to deter those who incur the damage, since more often than not the perpetrators never see the bill for those fees, as it goes directly to their parents. We need to work together to improve the system so that those students who struggle to pay their tuition bills are not also forced to pay fees for damage they did not cause.
These issues touch upon just a few of the many concerns raised at the Forum to which there are viable and achievable solutions. If we want to use what we learned at the Forum to undo classism on this campus, we must do more than attend discussions-we must take the next step. We must actively work to undo the assumptions and divisions that pervade this campus, starting by dispelling the assumptions and divisions we each sustain when we take our fortune for granted. Heightened respect for the uncertain fortunes of our peers is a good second step, as is heightened respect for those on this campus who work every day to maintain our privileged lifestyle-the Valentine staff, the custodial staff, the buildings and grounds crew, the administrative staff, the librarians and the Schwemm's staff, to name a few. But a third and no less essential step is to change aspects of College life that further class division, such as those described above. I hope everyone will join FACE and the SGO in taking these next steps.
Steve Ruckman '01<br>SGO President