Columnist Exaggerated Campus Treatment of Military Recruiters

To the Editor:

Chris Kulawik has done it again. In his latest gem ("Veterans Deserve Better," January 18, 2006), Mr. Kulawik expresses his outrage that the Columbia administration failed to take disciplinary action against three of us who engaged in an argument with military recruiters at Club Day, 2005. While Mr. Kulawik's description of the events of the day is certainly entertaining, like so much that he writes it has absolutely nothing to do with reality. (I mean, "baby killers?" Mr. Kulawik simply ascribed all of his right-wing stereotypes of Vietnam era anti-war activists to us.) As to the absurd and slanderous harassment charge, Mr. Kulawik is obviously unaware that there were about a dozen witnesses to the incident able to verify our account of events. Whoops.

Mr. Kulawik's forced tone of moral outrage isn't serious, it's meant to serve as a distraction. Currently, our government is engaged in a colonial occupation in Iraq, justifying its brutality with 19th century-style "White Man's Burden" arguments about the need for us to impart enlightenment and democracy to the world's benighted masses. This occupation has cost the lives of over 2,000 American soldiers and (according to a late 2004 study in The Lancet), may well be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. As we speak the Bush administration is taking an increasingly aggressive posture towards Iran.

The soldiers recruited to fight on the front lines of our government's wars are not recruited at Columbia. They are recruited in working-class neighborhoods, in communities made up disproportionately of people of color. They are recruited by recruiters who are trained to lie about pay and benefits, job training and the possibility of discharge. They are recruited into a military that is, yes Chris, not only racist but also homophobic and violently misogynistic. Schools like Columbia aren't going to supply the front-line soldiers; they'll supply the officers who send others off to kill and die in combat. It's this reality that led Columbia students to force recruiters off campus in 1968 at a time when our government was engaged in another colonial style occupation, in Vietnam-an endeavor that eventually cost the lives of three million people in Southeast Asia.

Mr. Kulawik is certainly correct to point out the mistreatment of veterans in our society. Not, to be sure, by the three of us, Columbia students and alumni angry that the military is violating school policy by recruiting on campus. Instead they're mistreated by the same government waging the war in Iraq, a government that has spent hundreds of billions of dollars since 2001 invading and occupying Iraq, Afghanistan and Haiti, at a time when one quarter of all homeless adults in the United States are veterans. Over the past two years, increasing numbers of veterans have become active in the anti-war movement, in groups like Iraq Veterans Against the War and Veterans For Peace, and on campuses across the country. These are the sort of facts that you're never going to hear from Mr. Kulawik.

 

Jonah Birch, CC '05

January 19, 2006

 

New Football Coach's Race Should Not Overshadow His Talents

To the Editor:

If anyone's missing the big picture, it's Jon Kamran ("Is Murphy Missing the Big Picture?" Dec. 12). Rather than focusing on the outstanding qualities of Norries Wilson, while at the same time lauding the merit involved in having the Ivy League's first African-American head football coach, Kamran chooses to suggest that "race" may be a handicap, particularly in the eyes of others, and also puts forth the absurd notion that it can actually hurt minority recruiting. Clean up your "kamera obscura," Jon, so you can see that it's only in your view that "all eyes will at least initially be looking only skin deep"-you're way out of focus.

 

Alan Ruskin, CC '64

December 12, 2005