To the Editor:
Coronary heart disease is listed as a contributing cause of death in America on about 1,400,000 of 2,000,000 death certificates. Approximately one in four Americans will die of cancer this year. Worldwide, 28.1 million people have died of AIDS since the beginning of the epidemic. 24,000 people on this planet die of hunger each day. We lose more than an acre of rain forest every second. 72 people have the good fortune of a personal fireworks show underfoot each day when they step on landmines. 31,742,864 people are below the poverty level in the United States -- just imagine the rest of the world. Now why should we add to this list of atrocities by poisoning one another with colored chalk dust?
Regarding the scrawl-about-campus -- does anyone else think it ironic that some members of our community exercise their right to free speech (making an eyesore of the campus) in order to condemn the same right as the smokescreen that others use to defend their own offensive, reprehensible actions? I think we would do well to realize that free speech cannot be made the issue here. If it were, I would wager my copious amount of body hair that there is no one to be found innocent of not "misusing" that right. Likewise, those that wish to restrict the free speech of others are standing on a soapbox and, by their actions, becoming the most vocal advocates of that freedom. No one seems to have a real leg on which to stand when walking down that road. So don't walk it.
Above, I have listed tragedies occurring outside our immediate community. I challenge any of you to declare that the solution to any of them is to be found in angry chalk scrawl and regurgitated rhetoric about the propriety (or lack thereof) of the problematic action or situation. We ought to work to find the real issue and solve it together, constructively and without condemning one another's lifestyle choices. For all the talk that goes on here about dialogue, there certainly doesn't seem to be much of it happening. What we've embarked on is not a constructive, intelligent way to reach a solution; it's a blueprint for poisoning one another to death with fluorescent chalk particles.
