To the Editor:
I am curious if anyone knows what motivated the brothers of Sigma Alpha Epsilon to host their "SAIGON" party last Saturday night. I'm even more curious to find out what they intended to communicate by throwing a party named after the setting for one of the darkest moments in American history, and replete with burly men in fatigues and Dartmouth's very own army bunker. Most of all, I'm racking my brain trying to figure out what precisely it is about the Vietnam era and war in general that invigorates these gentlemen with such a festive spirit. Could it be the tens of thousands of American soldiers that lost their lives there, or the bodies that were never found? Perhaps it was the environmental devastation that we left in our wake, or the Vietnamese women and children murdered by American GIs. Maybe it was all an unfortunate mistake, and the social chair just misunderstood when learning that Vietnam was a place where a lot of people "got bombed."
I appreciate the efforts SAE makes to do things a little differently; they seem to have put a great deal of time and planning into this event. And while I cannot imagine that any harm was intended, I question how appropriate it is to party it up over a tragedy which inspired massive and violent student protests at schools across the country, including Dartmouth. I presume that at least some of those in attendance were the daughters and sons of the women and men who fought there, protested here, or fled elsewhere; and while those memories might drive their parents to drink, I doubt that any of them would find reason to get down and boogie.
