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| Letters Featured letters: Wellesley
Grad Says Gay Population on Almost Every Campus Being a Wellesley
Graduate (class of ‘99), I feel I escaped
unscathed by the rampant “reversion to
sexual paganism” that supposedly exists at
Wellesley College. The truth is “sex
sells,” and “sex at Wellesley”
sells even more. How intriguing to the public.
Rolling Stone does an article about the lesbian
life style at conservative Wellesley College and
then you place it on the cover of your newspaper
in hopes that it will grab more people’s
eyes and encourage them to read your paper. You
should be ashamed of yourselves for jumping on
the bandwagon and reporting smut!!! Let me remind you that
you can find a gay population on almost every
campus in the United States. I also believe you
would be hard-pressed to find any drugs at
Wellesley but more than likely students studying
in the library and dorm rooms 40-50 hours per
week. Furthermore, Diana Chapman Walsh is running
a college and not a day care center. Comparing one of the top
colleges for educating woman to a seminar on gay
and lesbian lifestyles is insulting and
disturbing! I am glad to know that Wellesley has
such a stellar reputation that people will
realize the truth. Your newspaper is no better
than those smut magazines hoping to make a quick
buck at someone else’s expense. - Jacqueline Mark Editor’s
Comment: We probably don’t disagree as much
as you believe. You obviously have not had
much time to peruse our paper or you would
realize we are a nonprofit that is not close to
making money. Wellesley
Alum Very Offended I am writing in response
to an article in your publication about the
controversy surrounding the recent Rolling Stone
article about Wellesley College women. As a
resident of Massachusetts and an alumnus of
Wellesley College, I was even more offended by
your article than the original one in Rolling
Stone. I attended Wellesley as
an evangelical Christian from a conservative
background, so I am very well aware of that point
of view. However, you say in your article,
“The morals of all deteriorated to the
conditions that existed before the attempt to
protect children, women and families with our
Judeo/Christian civilization thousands of years
ago. What has become known in recent years as the
sexual “revolution” is not a
“revolution,” but a
“reversion” to sexual paganism.”
I’m not sure where you get that, but
it’s not from the students at Wellesley
College. True, some of them are lesbians.
I’m sorry if that offends you. But
heterosexuals are every bit as responsible, if
not more, for the decline in morals in our
society. There is nothing more offensive about
lesbian promiscuity than there is about
heterosexuals, and I’m sick of religious
conservatives placing more emphasis on
homosexuality than the Bible itself does. And finally, as an
aspiring journalist, I found the lack of research
behind your stories appalling. You took several
stories that could have happened at any school
and blew them way out of proportion. And finally,
you might want to try a little thing called
“spelling and grammar check” if you
hope to have anyone take you seriously in the
future. Disrespectfully, - Kim Priore Editor’s
Comment: We totally agree that Ms. Walsh’s
campus is just as immoral on the heterosexual
side as it is on the homosexual side. I believe
we made that clear in our article. The point
about Fistgate was that they were teaching
explicit sex to teenagers, which in that
particular case happened to be homosexual. We must inform
Ms. Priore that she is not an alumnus of
Wellesley. She is an alumna. Wellesley
Student Says Article Displayed Homophobia After reading the online
version of “Fistgate at Wellesley
College,” I was completely disgusted that
something like this was even considered for
publication, let alone published along with
several other demeaning articles. I find it appalling that
an alum who graduated more than forty years ago
finds it acceptable to characterize the college
atmosphere (“an atmosphere of drugs and
sex”) and students so harshly based on
rumors about the activities of a young woman who,
as she put it, “slowly dropped out of
[their] sight.” As a Wellesley freshman, I
am finding that sexual promiscuity and drug use
are by far the exception rather than the rule.
Yet Mr. and Ms. Pawlick seem to think that there
are few students who escape from Wellesley still
uncorrupted. Students at any college,
including Wellesley, are largely on their own and
accepting a much larger degree of responsibility
for their own lives. No one is babysitting us and
making sure that we get our work done and stay
out of trouble. So why does the article seem to
imply that the administration is solely
responsible for taking care of us and to blame
for the apparent moral destruction of all the
women here? I also found it shocking
that the article noted, with no small amount of
sarcasm, that the terms “homophobe” and
“judgmental” are considered to be
“mortal sins.” Please pass on my
congratulations to the authors for having the
rare courage to express such opinions and risk
such terrible and unfair (and much-deserved)
labels. Their “pity”
for straight women is unnecessary and insulting.
As a straight student, I have absolutely no need
to fear being “bullied” by the tough,
mean women on the rugby team and forced to prefer
women over men. Homosexuality is present to a
certain degree at Wellesley, as it is almost
anywhere else, and it is both acknowledged and
accepted on campus. This article is the most
blatant display of homophobia and
closed-mindedness that I have ever read. In all the attention
Wellesley has received of late, it is strange
that the entire purpose of a solid education has
almost entirely escaped notice. I am proud to be
here because of the apparent dedication and
intelligence of the students and faculty.
Wellesley has consistently ranked among the top
liberal arts institutions in the country, and I
have found that the women here are extremely
focused, intelligent and undeserving of the
stereotypes that these articles inflict. If
writers are so interested to know what goes on at
a women’s college, perhaps they should have
attempted to speak to those who could give an
accurate representation: the current
students, and not a misguided alum. - Liz Storer Excellent
‘Mock Journalism’ I just read the on-line
version of your article, “Fistgate at
Wellesley College.” I must say, I was quite
impressed. Never before have I seen a piece of
mock journalism so well crafted. Why, you managed
to fit in not only the standby homophobia, but
also poor writing, bad research and blatant
misrepresentation of fact! If I didn’t know
any better, I would almost guess that you were a
real poorly run newspaper! But, then again, that
would be silly of me; any establishment which
called itself a newspaper and employed the
methods you do to construct a report of current
events would be so ridiculous that the general
public would probably drive to the recycling
center to get rid of it as soon as it appeared
(unwanted) in their mailboxes. Oh yeah! I forgot ...
that is what they actually do! Silly me. - Sara Sinclair She
Discovers ‘Blessings’ of
‘Womanhood’ One woman sent this
letter to UMass Amherst in response to their
National Women’s Conference on April 28.
“I’m sure my perspective is different
from that of the conference organizers,” she
says, “but I decided to tell them my story
anyway.” Upon graduation from
UMass Amherst in 1975 (MS Geology), I joined The
Carter Oil Company, EXXON’s domestic coal
company at the time, as their first (so I was
told) full-time female geologist. Exxon quickly
put my face and story in an ad promoting
“Women in Energy.” Those were heady days.
But the luster soon wore off for me. I was lonely without a
family, and the moral climate in Houston for
single people was dismal. Needing both the
emotional and moral support of my family, I moved
back home to Los Angeles, where I went to work as
a coal exploration geologist for ARCO
International Oil Co. I met my husband while
working at ARCO. At both EXXON and ARCO
there was plenty of prejudice against women, but
there was also a counterbalancing effort on the
part of many men to change and be more open to
the gifts of women. It’s hindsight that
allows me to see the latter more clearly. At the
time I was working as a geologist, all I could
focus on was the prejudice, and the chips on my
shoulder grew larger and larger until I started
getting regular headaches and stomach aches over
the inner conflicts. I quit my job in order to
save both my health and my marriage. I
couldn’t be more glad that I did. I had run
from the idea of being a stay-at-home mom most of
my life. I placed no importance on the role of
motherhood, and less on the role of keeping
house. This, I believe was the cultural bias I
was saddled with, having grown up in the
60’s, with the ideal of the
“liberation” of women having been
embraced enthusiastically by both my mother and
father. I found it to be a mirage however;
nothing but the road to a loveless desert
wasteland. It has taken me decades to recover. Though I married with the
idea that I would be the “breadwinner,”
and my husband would do the child-rearing, we
both discovered early on that this plan fit
neither of our personalities. He soon went back
to school, and as soon as he graduated and got a
job as a computer programmer with Apple Computer,
I quit my new job as a field director for the
Girl Scouts (there’s another story in this
one, but I’ll spare you the details).
I’ve now worked as a stay-at-home mom for 17
years, and I can’t imagine raising my
children in this rootless society any other way.
I thank God for the opportunity to do so, and I
pray for God’s special graces for those who
are not so fortunate as I. I am especially
encouraged to write you my story because your
conference happens to fall on the feast day of
St. Louis de Montfort, a Roman Catholic priest
who inspired me to have a relationship with the
greatest woman, and the greatest
‘merely’ human being who ever lived,
the Blessed Virgin Mary. When I lived in Amherst,
I was under the false impression that Catholic
priests hated women. In fact, I wasn’t
entirely sure even God liked women. Now I believe my real
problem was that I was very uncomfortable with
being a woman. Now I am grateful for the gift of
womanhood. I am grateful for fertility (which
isn’t a disease, by the way), and for my
children, whom I once looked upon as burdens, but
now I see as blessings from God. Thank God for
the gift of conversion and for the gift of
womanhood! May God bless you all, and your
conference. - Catherine (Graves)
Norman Children at Risk UMass
‘Art’ Is Child Pornography I take grave offense at
the disgusting, perverse and, I dare say, obscene
display of “art” at UMass Dartmouth
that has been on public display since March 29.
The “Century Project,” as this improper
spectacle is called, consists of several dozen
photographs that depict nude females. I
purposefully do not use the word
“women.” The photos are displayed
throughout the campus, but are most prominently
placed within the Campus Center near the Commuter
Cafeteria. The Century Project is
sponsored by the Women’s Resource Center.
The offices of Housing, Student Activities,
Student Activities Board and the Associate Dean
of Students co-sponsor the project. The
immorality of the Century Project aside, I am
outraged at the prospect of my tuition and tax
dollars funding this wretched display. However, there is an
issue even more upsetting than the fiscal
implications of the Century Project. There are
approximately a dozen photographs depicting not
women of legal age, but underage nude girls.
These photographs show infant and adolescent
girls in a state of full frontal nudity. If these
pictures had been developed at any local photo
shop, the police and DSS would undoubtedly have
been notified because they are pornographic. If women of legal age
choose to pose for such pictures, then that is
their legal, if immoral, decision. Despite my
intense objection, I could strain to rationalize
how such photos could be considered
“art.” The public depiction of entirely
nude children is unacceptable and intolerable.
UMass Dartmouth should be ashamed of itself. I am
now embarrassed to be a future alumnus of the
institution. Child pornography has no place in
this community. - Brock N. Cordeiro Judge Lopez Should be Removed Judge Lopez let a child
rapist go free and chose to not even enforce the
required minimum sentence. For this reason, she
should not be allowed to sit on the bench. If a judge is not
required to follow the laws we write, lawmakers
lose the power that has been given to them by the
people of their respective districts. - Vincent A. J.
Errichetti Bush
has Trouble Defining 'Morality' It’s a great dismay
to learn that the pedophile you had for governor
is now an ambassador. Last November, many of us
thought we were going to turn around the moral
decline this nation has been on. That is not to
be. Evidently, we are at a
point of no return: we have a “moral”
president who has trouble with defining
“morality” -- much like his father had
trouble defining “no new taxes.” Thank
you for the fight you waged. - Clarence Chagnon MTV
Contributing to Delinquency I believe parents should
monitor their children’s TV programming. Two
years ago, I watched a Marilyn Manson video on
MTV. I then programmed MTV off my list of
channels. I also caught a show called
“Jackass.” In this episode, a young man
with his pants pulled down (not his underwear),
heavily padded from head to toe except on his
crotch, sat on the ground against a brick wall
while another young man dropped billiard balls
from the rooftop trying to hit his privates. And
USA Today had a one-paragraph blurb about two
14-year-old girls who are suing MTV because they
got squirted with human feces during an episode
of “Dude, This Sucks.” Maybe MTV should be
regulated to pay-per-view if it is seen at all.
Although I believe parents are the largest
contributing factor to the delinquency of our
youth today, MTV, Hollywood and the music
industry sure don’t help. I am hoping USA
Today will follow up on this line of programming
to help make other parents aware, if they are not
already, what their kids are watching. - M. McGuigan Roe
v. Wade Taught Violence People with left-leaning
tendencies are baffled about the recent wave of
school shootings, but the explanation is obvious.
Once society admits violence as a valid solution
for certain personal problems, some youth will
imitate their elders by applying the pernicious
idea to their own painful situations. That
principle was first officially enshrined in our
culture by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Roe v.
Wade ruling legalizing abortion and reaffirmed in
the arrogant Planned Parenthood v. Casey
decision. Liberals may scoff at this suggestion,
but respect for the sanctity of innocent human
life is all of a piece. Either unborn children
are included in the whole cloth of protection or
the fabric eventually unravels as internal
restrictions on individual actions loosen and
chaos erupts. - David P. Lang, Ph.D. Pro-Lifers Do Help People ‘Who are Already Here’ An abortion advocate
recently said to me, “Why don’t you
pro-lifers help some of the people who are
already here?” To begin with, unborn
children are already here. What we’re trying
to do is see that they are allowed to remain here
alive. Secondly, this whole
question is a fraud. What kind of mentality says
that when someone prevents the killing of an
innocent person, they suddenly become responsible
for solving all the world’s problems? I get
sick of this kind of deceptive attack on the
pro-life movement. Thirdly, there are over
2,500 abortion alternative agencies in the United
States. In fact, there are more of them than
there are abortion mills. They provide
counseling, clothing, assistance with other
children, help with adoption, post-natal
instruction, pre-natal care, help in continuing
their education, room and board during and after
pregnancy, post-abortion counseling and so on. These centers have to
solicit donations since, unlike abortion
advocates, they don’t have a multi-billion
dollar industry supporting them. But almost every
pro-lifer approached is also contributing to
other ministries and organizations whose sole
purpose is helping people, whether prisoners,
people with physical and mental handicaps, single
moms or the elderly. If pro-choicers are so
concerned with helping people, they could stop
killing babies, and pro-lifers would have even
more money to spend on the remaining social
problems. There’s nothing we’d like to
see more. - Gay Guptill DSS
Deserves Class Action Suit I read your article
regarding the experience of the Howard family
with DSS, and I have read many other articles
about families who have fallen victim in similar
circumstances in your state. What you have described
is a plague that has taken hold in Massachusetts.
It has become a national emergency in its
proportions. No killer and no totalitarian state
has ever found a more effective way to inflict
psychological or physical violence on its victims
than the perpetrators of this crime against
humanity. I advocate formal charges
of crimes against humanity and class action for
damages against the perpetrators of these crimes. - Kevin Walton Liberal
Media Allowed Howards’ Tragedy to Continue Thank you for your story
about the Howards/Massachusetts DSS case. While
the story itself sickens me to no end, kudos to
you for having the courage to cover this
disturbing trend toward catering to radical
feminists and their agendas. This is a fine example
about how the feminist agenda has become
completely out of control in our great nation.
The fact that feminists would stoop as low as to
destroy a family and their rights to suit their
pathetic agenda is no surprise to me. They have
been falsifying statistics and lying for years.
But to break a loving family up over their skewed
agendas? Inexcusable. Do they ever consider the
harm they are causing to what was once a
righteous cause? There will come a time
when the rights of all women will all be unjustly
harmed by the actions of these people. They are
dangerous and must be stopped. Shame on the
liberal media and television networks for
ignoring this case, at least in the New York
area, as well as the politicians who cater to
these diseased individuals. Most of all, shame on
the DSS and the SJC of Massachusetts for allowing
this tragedy to happen. Thank you again,
Massachusetts News, for your bravery. - Peter F. Buono Mass. Has a ‘Jackass’ Court System Why hasn’t Ken
Newell’s ex-wife been charged with perjury?
Is she under oath in the Probate Court? Does
anyone in the Probate System have any courage?
The ex-Mrs. Newell is manipulating, intimidating
and orchestrating the Massachusetts court system
to her own advantage and whim. We here in Massachusetts
are operating in a jackass court system. Thank
you, MassNews, for letting me know what my state
tax money is paying for. If I am ever called for
jury duty, I will think more about the courage of
the judge; after all, I’m ultimately paying
his/her salary. - Marsha Benedetti Sterling Library Library
Censor Has ‘Moral High Ground’ While I am sympathetic to
your problem with the Sterling librarian who
refuses to allow you to use the library to
distribute your publication, I’m not all
sure that you have the moral high ground in this
case. The Massachusetts News
criticizes the American Library Association for
their principled stance that library patrons have
the right to access all materials, even those
that others might find objectionable. In order to
provide such access, the libraries collect,
catalog and make reference to materials that some
deem offensive or pornographic. The Massachusetts
News repeatedly criticized the Minuteman Library
Network for performing those duties. I can’t
find any mention of libraries or their operating
policies in either the U.S. or Massachusetts
Constitutions. Your statement that these
documents do not allow Ms. Campbell to censor
speech in a public library is incorrect. The
American Library Association strongly discourages
censorship of this kind, but Congress has made no
law regarding the Massachusetts News. Demanding that the
library provide a free distribution point for
your publication is quite different than asking
the library to accept a single copy for use by
patrons. One would hope that political
considerations would not enter into the
librarian’s decision-making, but one could
hardly blame a librarian for feeling less than
completely objective towards a publication that
routinely criticizes their profession. Will Mr. Pawlick make an
unequivocal public statement that libraries are
just as obligated to provide access to materials
that he finds offensive as they are to provide
access to his publications? Or is this really an
issue of whose ox is being gored? - Stephen Fairfax Editor’s
Comment: I am ambivalent as to whether a public
library should distribute any publications. I
have never demanded that anyone do that. I became
upset when our Puerto Rican distributor, who is
the nicest man anyone could know, reported that
he was treated rudely by the librarian. If there
are other publications available at a library, no
one should be refused merely because of the
political beliefs of the librarian. As for the
Minuteman Library Network, I always had respect
for them. I discovered their pornography only
after I recommended to our webmaster that we link
to their site. I was incredulous when he informed
me they had pornography on their site for
teenagers. I immediately thought that a quick
call to a librarian would cure that. But it
didn’t. Why they continue to peddle smut is
beyond comprehension. As to the request
for an “unequivocal public statement,”
that demand is too puerile to dignify an answer. Letter
Sent to Sterling Library Censors Massachusetts is chock
full of “liberal” hypocrites. The
citizen taxpayers of Sterling certainly
don’t need one running their public library.
There is an unseemly and overweening arrogance in
a public library director giving herself the
discretion to keep complimentary issues of a
newspaper, the political and ethical commentary
of which she happens to find personally
disagreeable, out of a public library. God knows
Massachusetts needs some editorial diversity. Those of us who pay the
taxes that fund the library don’t need a
public employee telling us, in essence, that
conservative political philosophy is bad for us
and that we shall not be permitted free access to
it. The next time a free
stack of the Massachusetts News is offered to the
Conant Public Library, I had better see it there. - James F. Gettens Good MassNews, Bad Globe Support
MassNews Classifieds I just noticed that you
are running classified advertisements. Good for
you! Perhaps others who think like me and prefer
to support your independent voice will do exactly
what I did: read the ads in hope of finding
something useful to buy. Better to buy
through your advertisers than through the
Globe’s, for instance. While I failed to
find anything useful to me in the current issue
of the Masachusetts News, I’ll keep
watching. Jeffrey S. Wilson Web Site Reporting ‘Top Notch’ I originally started
coming to your page on the Internet for your
coverage of the “Fistgate” scandal. I
have found, though, your coverage of the
state’s political figures very enlightening.
Your reporting is top notch, and the stories that
you cover are of great importance to the people
of Massachusetts and the nation. Keep up the good work,
and don’t ever let any of those that
don’t like your reporting the truth keep you
from doing what you do so well. And kudos to the
reporters that have been covering Cheryl Jacques.
I hope with all my heart that she gets tossed out
of office, if not thrown in jail. I don’t
think she will get that at all, but one can still
hope. - Richard McCormick ‘Undocumented’
Workers are Still Illegal Recently, I read a
laudatory article in the Boston Globe about how
the Attorney General valiantly protected a number
of what the Globe called “undocumented”
(illegal) workers from being cheated by their
employers; it’s out that even though he (the
AG) knew that these employees were in the US
illegally, he did nothing about it. As I understand the word
“illegal,” it implies a criminal act.
In other words, these illegal aliens, however
much they may deserve proper treatment, and
however politically incorrect it may be to
criticize them, had and still have the status of
criminals. As the chief law
enforcement officer of the Commonwealth, it was
the duty of the Attorney General to uphold the
law, regardless of the unfortunate position in
which he found these workers. He failed to do so,
and thus, I believe is guilty of malfeasance.
Frankly, I think this matter deserves airing. - Name Withheld ‘Tolerance’
Is Like Ketchup Brian Camenker sent
the following letter to his hometown newspaper,
the Newton Tab, for its March 28 edition. Liberals Use
‘Tolerance’ Like Ketchup To the Editor: Tracy Fidelman in her
letter [March 22], asks an interesting question:
“Why are many parents against tolerance
classes?” Fair enough. The answer is that
liberals use the word “tolerance” like
ketchup. They put it on top of anything that that
might not taste so good by itself. These
“tolerance” sessions are usually a
mishmash of left-wing politics and homosexual
indoctrination, aimed at kids who are too young
to know the difference. We’re told that
unless we invert all of our beliefs about
individual behavior, then we’re
“intolerant.” Tracy, please listen to
me. If you were truly tolerant, you would
tolerate the wishes of many parents not to be
part of all that. Go ahead and immerse yourself
(or your kids) into any nutty or bizarre program
you desire. I don’t care what you do. But
leave us and our children out of it. This may
seem strange to you, but we are perfectly capable
of teaching “tolerance” to our children
without your help. Furthermore, if you
continue forcing things at us that we don’t
want like so many storm troopers, then we will
continue fighting back and complaining. And it
will continue to escalate to other actions, I
guarantee you. (You label our side of the
discussion “conservative rantings.”
Yup, you really learned a lot in those tolerance
classes, didn’t you?) You also mentioned the
Tufts workshop last year. Let me correct some
lies that keep being repeated. First, it was not
“illegally” taped. No one has been
arrested or charged with any crime. Nor would it
hold up in any court. Second, the current spin
from the gay activists is that the children had
permission slips to get in. That’s complete
baloney. Even if they did, no parent was told
what unbelievable things would happen to their
kids there. Finally,
we’re all sick and tired of putting up with the liberal rage,
just because we happen to have different opinions. If you don’t
want us to complain, don’t throw this in our faces. |
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