Ingrained Bias

An e-mail from the Dean of Union College to his "Campus Community":

From: leavitts@union.edu <leavitts@union.edu>
Date: May 23, 2005 10:01 AM
Subject: display on the lawn
To: Campus Community <CampusCommunity@mercury.union.edu>

To the Campus Community:

For the next few days, there will be a display on the central campus lawn, sponsored by Campus Action. The purpose of the display is to commemorate the deceased US soldiers in Iraq, and to make the number of deaths more comprehensible by constructing a visual representation that symbolizes every United States military fatality. In this way, they are making the number of soldiers who have made the ultimate sacrfice (sic) in the Iraqi War a more tangible figure for the Union College campus community. It is important to note that the display is not intended to make an overt political statement; rather, it is intended to make people cognizant of the reality overseas and to make their own political judgement (sic) based upon that reality. There are 1622 markers surrounding the paths representing all of the hostile and non-hostile deaths of United States soldiers in the war as of May 21, 2005. For questions or concerns contact Ian Kennedy '07 kennedyi@union.edu

Steve Leavitt
Dean of Students

First of all, what the hell is a campus community? This goes back to my utopia discussion of a few weeks ago: the term is so sweet it makes me sick.

Anyway, you have to love defensive e-mails like this one. Steve is trying his best to sound unbiased and emotionless, but it's hard to be unbiased when you're being, to use his words, overtly so, and it's hard to be emotionless when your every faculty, no pun intended, is consumed by emotion.

For instance, since this a display of death and only death, it is not a representation of "reality" except in a very myopic sense. If one wanted students to truly weight the pros and cons of the war in Iraq, a display representing both the successes and the tragic losses of the war would be truly-- overtly-- unbiased.

The sad part about this display is that the Dean of Union College is so caught up in his own bias that he can't even accurately judge the nature of bias. When schools present such incredibly one-sided political arguments as "unbiased" they are not serving their purpose or their student body. There is a debate to be had about Iraq. Counting bodies is a crayon and construction paper debate, but from each according to his ability, right Mr. Campus Communist?

Here are some other possible displays "not intended to make an overt political statement":

• A marker for each aborted child since Roe vs. Wade
• A marker for each Kurd gassed by Sadaam
• A marker for each murdered Rwandan
• A marker for each murdered Sudanese
  
• A marker for each brain-dead college Dean running his school off the deep end (you'd have at least one at Union College)