DANA AL-QADI
Gargoyle senior editor
Posted Friday, Feb. 9, 2007
Opinions

I DID NOT just read this editorial, I helped write it.

For all of you who patted each other on the back as you formed a Team Anti-Editorial and spewed passionately vicious remarks, shame on you. For all of you who know little about our Uni community and nonetheless thought it fit to demean all of my peers by insinuating our ungratefulness, snobbiness, and mediocrity, shame on you.

Initially, I had no intention of composing a personal response to this whole situation, but I feel that I have been placed in a position where I must. I would like to clarify that I am only responding and answering to the only people I feel matter, my peers. It is to them that I owe my daily thoughtful conversations and laughs. It is to them that I owe an explanation of exactly what this editorial was meant to be and what others perceived it to be.

Although this is only my second year at Uni, due to my junior-year transfer, I felt that this year was riddled with controversies. There was another chapter of the print vs. online Gargoyle debate, the heated battle of whether grinding was appropriate, the intense minority student advocate issue, the question of whether “Class Wars” would really bring class unity, the crisis in whether accepting free burritos from Chipotle was really a crime against migrant workers, and I'm sure you're beginning to get the drift.

Due to the fact that this was the Gargoyle staff's first editorial via the online publication, choosing the right topic was extremely important. While we toyed with expressing our opinions about some of the aforementioned controversies, the majority of the staff decided to focus on a positive topic, tolerance at Uni.

The idea was that while the Uni community has quite a ways to go with regard to a variety of aspects, we are still grateful to be at this school. As with anything that is taken for granted, sometimes only the negative is dwelled on rather than the positive.

This was not a pat on the back, as some have so callously stated. This was not an opportunity to fly our “greater than you and your school” flag at full mast, as so many interpreted. There are plenty of incredible schools besides ours, and there are plenty of inspiring teachers at those schools.

This editorial was an appeal for perhaps five minutes for people to appreciate a school where lockers do not need to be locked, there is no such thing as a bathroom pass, and you are allowed to use the office phone.

Obviously, this appeal fell on deaf ears. Or blind eyes?

If you were looking for an editorial that discounted minorities and boasted of a self-absorbed student body, thanks to phrases that could have been worded better, you found it.

If you were looking for an editorial that celebrated a dimension of our school, considering that was the essence of this piece of writing, you found it.

I was appalled at the sheer number of responses that kept repeating the word “privilege.” While many of us are indeed privileged, many of us have our own situations. Some of us have complicated and painful domestic situations. Some of us are not well-off and do in fact struggle financially. Some of us have identity issues.

While perhaps some of those struggles have less to do with societal-imposed limitations than race, who are you to discount those struggles and generalize them in the same response where you condemn what was interpreted as the belittlement of other specific struggles?

I am a Palestinian and I am a Muslim, both a cultural and a religious minority. After the devastating Southeast Asian tsunami of December 2004, I sat in a classroom and listened to my teacher tell her students, including me, that “I'm sure those Muslims were pleased with the enormous death toll. They don't really respect life. It's so sad.”

Even her repeal of that statement a few days later was not enough to erase the sting. But the sad thing is, that is one story I felt I wanted to share. There are many others that I don't want to parade in this column.

People have been complaining that this column belittled the experiences and struggles of minorities within our community. If you were a member of this community, read this, and felt that I was discounting you and your struggle, I apologize.

But in fact, I was not. I have the utmost respect and empathy for the day-to-day struggles that many people face. Uni is not perfect, but it has consistently permitted students to raise their own objections and questions.

Director/Principal Kathleen Patton and several other Uni faculty could easily have canceled dances and enforced severe rules with respect to the grinding. Instead, they came to Student Council and voiced their concerns. Students were involved in the discussion, came up with alternatives, and shared their opinions.

I will not speak for other minorities, but as one myself, I feel that I have consistently been given a platform to share my experiences. A platform that I was rarely granted at the other schools I attended prior to Uni. Sam Smith has approached me several times about holding discussions about Middle Eastern culture in order to quell particular misconceptions. Various teachers and students have always listened intently when I raise issues I have with particular policies and actions and have never discounted me. This past October, Uni hosted a Ramadan dinner for the entire school and their families to provide insight about the Muslim religion.

There is racism. That must be addressed.

There is injustice. That must be extinguished.

But it will be addressed and will be extinguished with the help of a community and school that has stood by its students in the past and continues to do so.

If that is not tolerance, could somebody please hand me a new dictionary?