To the Editor:
I must express my heartfelt anger and dismay over a letter to the editor which ran in your issue of Monday, January 11. I believe that the author of this letter displayed an appalling lack of taste and judgment in the way he presented his arguments.
The letter was written by Omar Rashid '00, and addressed the recent debacle concerning a supposed 'racist' Miami-themed party involving Sig Ep and Alpha Xi. I personally believe that many students are making more out of this little event than is justified, but that is beside the point. Unfortunately, Mr. Rashid chose to employ overblown language and accusations in making his case, rather than presenting a calm and reasoned argument. He stated that "... now bigots in our community have conspired to commit yet another hate crime in order to discourage potential Hispanic students from applying to our great institution and to intimidate Hispanic students already attending Dartmouth College." Great. So apparently, Mr. Rashid believes that there is some vast conspiracy -- linked, perhaps, to the one which Hillary Clinton identified almost a year ago -- which is committing 'hate crimes' (?) and intends on exterminating the Hispanic presence on this campus. Such an idea is laughable; but furthermore, to equate in any way the events involving Sig Ep and Alpha Xi to hate crimes is an insult to the reader's intelligence.
Furthermore, Mr. Rashid claims that early decision applications from black students dropped 75%, while those for Asian applicants dropped 25%, citing a previous article in this paper as his source. However, Mr. Rashid clearly misread that article: the acceptance rate for black students dropped 75%, from 12 to 3 students; no mention was made of the actual size of the applicant pool. A drop of this size in such a small number of cases hardly lends itself to such fervent and dubious explanation; indeed, from the figures for the classes of 1999 and 2000, there was a 67% drop -- from 9 to 3 students. The numbers for the amount of black students accepted early action for the classes of 1999 through the class of 2003 are as follows, in order: 9, 3, 11, 12, 3. As any sane reader can see, it is impossible to extrapolate any trends from these numbers. But if Mr. Rashid insists on doing so, then I would point out that the number of Latino students accepted rose from 11 to 19, and the number of Native American students accepted went from 10 to 22 -- a 220% increase. Apparently, Mr. Rashid's 'conspiracy against Hispanics' is not very effective. Lastly, Mr. Rashid must have skipped the line in the article which stated that the 'ghetto' party, the event which sparked the protest orgy we are now facing, happened just after the early decision deadline -- so whatever mystery data he is using to draw these conclusions would not have been impacted by these events anyway. Mr. Rashid clearly did not examine the statistics carefully, and his recollection of the data is highly selective. He states that he refuses to "yield to the terror tactics these bigots employ." Perhaps not; but he certainly takes the cake for inflammatory rhetoric and misuse of data.
I sincerely lament that a Dartmouth student could actually write such an inane argument. And it is obvious that the author's political views do not allow him to employ a rational manner of discourse -- instead, he must rely instead on sarcasm and hyperbole. Shame on him for possessing and presenting these views.
