To the Editor:
In a recent article, "Students Adopt Five Children, Remain Abroad," (June 30) the adopters of five underprivileged children are lauded for their efforts in making the orphan children's lives better... for three months.
As an undergrad and participant of the Templeton READS program, where Dartmouth students acted as mentors to underprivelaged children, I found the D-Plan mentoring to be highly superficial and barely effective. Do the abandoned benefit from temporary care, later to be abandoned again as Dartmouth students forge ahead with D-Plans and pending off-terms? Does this type of care only perpetuate the abandoned to further feel abandoned by a community that truly thinks they've done all they can and more?
In a world where adoption cases are determined with the utmost scrutiny to avoid the aforementioned scenario, I don't believe the most is being done. I recommend psychological services and other childhood psychologists discuss the potential of such programs to harm these children and put them at a further disadvantage. Children are highly adaptable, and changing the constraints (every term) to which they have to adapt, may prove to be more abandonment for supposedly "adopted" children.
