TO THE EDITOR: I take issue with the editorial that appeared in last week’s Phillipian next to my last, much longer, letter. This editorial did not disagree with the content of my letter. It completely ignored what I would have thought to be obvious connotations of my abbreviated explanation of the importance of self-reliance in our culture. The editorial concludes by stating: “If you want liberty, you’ve got to earn it.” That is simply untrue. Self-reliance, liberty (like life and the pursuit of happiness), is a human right. When women and blacks could not vote or be full participants in our society and culture of self-reliance, is that because they had to earn it? As it turns out, due to the now largely rejected beliefs of people we call “racist” and “sexist”, they did have to earn it, but I think most of us can agree that, as humans, they should have been granted these rights upon birth. I agree that trust is an extremely important factor in any academic residential community. That trust, however, is based on a mutual expectation of honesty between teachers and students. In admitting a student to the Academy, the institution agrees upon that mutual expectation, just as a student does by going there, and agreeing to abide by the school’s rules (it should be noted, though this is irrelevant to the general authoritarian nature of the policy, that the breathalyzer policy had not yet been implemented when I entered as a freshman). The Blue Book does explicitly recognize this expectation. When somebody breaks a rule, they breach that trust, but that person is to be treated as an isolated case. Just because one or even fifty students have breached that trust does not license the institution to eliminate it for all others, which is exactly what the drug and alcohol testing policy does. Students are guilty until proven innocent. -Chris Massie TO THE EDITOR: The College Counseling Office would like to respond to the comment about “set-asides” in the college admission process that Mr. Spike Lee made during his MLK, Jr. Day presentation. Colleges and universities do not designate specific seats in their incoming freshman classes for students of color. None of us in the CCO has encountered such an admission practice. Colleges may have institutional priorities to recruit students from a variety of backgrounds, talents and communities, but they do not have racial “set-asides” or quotas. -John Anderson and Anne Ferguson, on behalf of the CCO
