While I have never had the pleasure of meeting Anthony Marx, he is a widely respected scholar in political science, a prize-winning author and a person whose credentials as an intellectual are outstanding. His work explores cutting-edge issues in the social analysis of race and nation. To have a President of such distinction, who also brings to the College a genuinely cosmopolitan sensibility, is quite exciting.

Austin Sarat

Professor of Jurisprudence & Political Science

NY Times article inspires thought

Thinking about student protests

I am writing to give some context to a quote from me that appeared in a recent New York Times article about anti-war sentiment on college campuses. The forum for my comments was a session, called on short notice, of a group of students with whom Professor Barry O'Connell and I had held some evening conversations with about the war. The students were of varying opinions about the war, and while Professor O'Connell and I made no secret of our anti-war views, we were there to talk in a respectful and friendly manner about the war, pro and con. We were not there to insist on our views and twist arms. Students seemed to enjoy the sessions and found them useful.

At the conversation last week, we spoke at some length about public protest itself. Some students clearly found it laughable, unthinkable or worse as a means of expression. I tried to make the point that protest was one term in a wide civic vocabulary. It is one of the tools that citizens have available to them to register an opinion which run counter to a governmental policy. The Times article quoted me in a statement about the joy of opposition, which came across sounding like some midlife nostalgia for the pleasures of immature and pointless disobedience. Nothing could be farther from what I meant. I invoked the pleasure in being "bad" which I used semi-humorously to mean standing openly against prevailing opinion and hence appearing "bad" to the majority. It was meant to convey the exhilaration I and many others felt when we articulated the moral position in which we believed-and articulated it publicly and sometimes noisily. As a young woman, I was not used to disagreeing with authority, and I learned and grew in the process to continue to try to speak out when I believed that authority was being used unjustly. I felt joy in exercising that precious liberty, and I wish that experience for all citizens.

Martha Saxton

Associate Professor of History & WAGS

Article falsely calls campus conservative

"It's lonely being an anti-war activist," I said. I also said "or being a pro-war activist for that matter." The point that fell so dramatically on its face in The New York Times article entitled "Professors protest while students discuss" (April 5) was that being an activist on campus puts you out for personal scrutiny, public criticism and a lot of dirty spotlight time no one wants. I would not make the claim that Amherst College is conservative, which is, in essence, what the article falsely argued.

For the record, I have no doubt that most of the Amherst campus is opposed to the war. However, that general opposition has in no way translated to political activity. Perhaps it is because people argue the anti-war movement has failed to offer anything more than one-word slogans and small-scale campus protests. But I digress. My comment was not a lament about the "conservative Amherst campus." It was also not a jab at students who shy away from professing political opinions. Being an activist on campus does not leave you with a large organization, huge funds and many friendly voices. On the contrary, it leaves you open to attack. That's the territory.

Sadly, political activism on this campus has at times seemed to distance rather than unify those with concurrent opinions. The anti-war coalition, despite its best attempts, has too often failed to give critics more to analyze than catchy slogans and political fashion statements. It has suffered at the hands of simplification. On this day, a day we knock at Baghdad's door, anti-war no longer means retract the troops. That would be a disaster for both America and Iraq. What should activism be sharing with the public? Finish the war that should never have started? Shamefully, this is the burden we bear.

When it is all said and done, and may it be quick, Iraq should be administrated by the United Nations (U.N.), not the U.S. Furthermore, there should be no American invasions of Syria, North Korea or Iran and there should be no further occupations of the Philippines, Colombia and Afghanistan without the full support of the U.N. I never meant to melodramatically express the hardship of taking an anti-war stance on campus in a national newspaper. I only meant to highlight what Jack Morgan '05 and I have in common. Being vocal and active in a political sense ends casual eye contact.

Beatriz Wallace '04

Concerns about an uncritical student body

Reading the recent article in The New York Times on the generally uncritical response of Amherst's student body to the war in Iraq, I grew deeply concerned about the state of independent thought at my alma mater.

When I was a freshman at Amherst, the most popular freshman seminar class was on the construction of nationalism. It sought to make us look beyond the symbol of the nation to see how nationalism is used to marshal support for a range of dubious programs.

I find it hard to believe that in a few years, the Amherst student body has become so uncritical of nationalist rhetoric as to hand out red, white and blue ribbons at Valentine.

When I return to Amherst for my fifth-year reunion, I will feel like a much older alumnus returning to a campus whose new occupants seem utterly foreign to me.

Sonali Pahwa '98

Providing rides for sick students

I came down with a 102-degree fever on the afternoon of the big snowstorm this past February, and so my roommate escorted me to Amherst Health Services. After trudging through the snow, my congestion increased and I was having trouble breathing by the time I arrived at the Heath Center. The doctor called an ambulance because she wanted me to get X-rayed at Cooley Dickinson Hospital. So I was stuck in a hospital bed in Northampton as the snow continued to pile up. When the hospital finally released me about four hours later, I wondered how my roommate and I were going to get home. The hospital called the College who informed them that they did not provide any service to take me home. They advised that I take a cab or the bus, or that I get a friend to pick me up. By this point in the snowstorm, cab companies and the PVTA had called it quits and as a freshman, I had no friends who were allowed to bring cars onto campus. My only friend with experience driving in snow was sick as well, so my only option was to call some friends and ask them to borrow a car to come pick me up-an option I had been trying to avoid as these friends were from California. In the middle of the biggest snowstorm of the year, a freshman from California who had never driven in the snow made the trek to and from Cooley Dickinson Hospital in a borrowed car. Later, when I had recovered, I realized that because of this adventure, Amherst College could have seen four students put in the hospital instead of just the two who were originally there.

Contrary to popular belief, according to Dean Lieber, the College does have a service that provides students with a ride home from Cooley Dickinson as well as UMass Health Services. However, I have spoken to countless other students, especially freshmen, who have found themselves stranded in Northampton, dependent on borrowed cars or charitable upperclass teammates to bring them home. Does this mysterious provide-a-ride service really exist? I'm beginning to doubt it as Dean Lieber's promise to further inquire into the reason for my being denied a ride that night goes unfulfilled. It has been at least a month since he made this promise and I have received no follow up or explanation.

If indeed Amherst does provide rides home from Cooley Dickenson, especially when it was the College's Health Services that sent the student to the hospital by ambulance in the first place, I would hope that the College would appropriately take advantage of the service. Furthermore, it might be helpful if it were made common knowledge among students that this service exists. However, if indeed Dean Lieber incorrectly informed me and no such service exists on this campus, wouldn't it be a good idea? If the service doesn't exist, I would ask other students who have experienced similar troubles returning from Cooley Dickinson to join together to raise this issue with AAS.

Whether the College does provide rides, and there was just some sort of mix up that prevented me from getting one on that stormy night, or this kind of service just doesn't exist, my safety and that of my friends who dropped everything to help me when I was ill were endangered. Amherst College should do everything they can to prevent situations like this from happening to their students.

Linden Karas '06

Importance of the Daily Jolt

In his letter to The Student of March 26 entitled "Encouraging more discussion," Tal Liron '03 promoted the New Athenian as a venue for the Amherst community to post announcements and engage in discussion. And well he should: he's worked hard to create his site. However, his subsequent attacks on the Daily Jolt, including the hyperbolic equation of the Jolt with the Ku Klux Klan, are superfluous and inaccurate.

Tal claims that because the New Athenian now receives hits from "up to" 1,300 nodes a day, Amherst students have "no need" to visit the "limited" Jolt. He seems unaware of the Daily Jolt's comprehensive Ride Board, Food Guide, Marketplace, Job board and numerous other unique services. These features, along with the helpful main page that first established and popularized the Jolt when Amherst students started it four years ago, contributed to the Jolt's own 2,100 average daily users this past February.

But let's not mire ourselves in simple numbers. Instead, we would like to highlight a major strength of the Jolt which those numbers reflect: our posting policy allows people who are not members of the immediate Amherst College community to join in forum discussions, submit events, buy and sell their stuff, and offer rides. On past occasions, this open policy has raised some issues, and we've worked to address them while still preserving what our users have told us they like. But more importantly, our wider userbase has increased communication with the other four colleges, enabling students to easily attend events, join clubs and share opinions across all five campuses.

With our distinctive features, popularity on campus and five college participation, it seems to us that the Daily Jolt is not "more limited" at all. We express disappointment that Tal could not find a way to extol the Athenian's virtues without reviling the Daily Jolt. Both sites have their distinctive utilities; they can-and should-co-exist. Our mutual competition, which we hope will be a friendly one, can only lead to improvement.

Jason Chang '05E

Andrew Goldberg '03

Amit Gupta '04E

Isaiah Tanenbaum '05

Daily Jolt directors

Opposition to war misdirected

We members of ACRONYM, the leftguard of Amherst College, stand by those who oppose the war in Iraq. However, we are concerned that much of the energy involved in protest is misdirected. It is clear that our government has heard and disregarded the voices of dissent. This battle has been lost.

We should act to avoid the next war. Education for peace is a lifetime process, not just something you do when the government announces war.

Sarang Gopalakrishnan '06

Brooks Paige '06

Tracy Rubin '07E

David Schaich '06

Eliza Temeles '06

Eight other students signed this letter.