The February 5 issue of The Poly contained two similar yet very different editorials addressing the ongoing debate about the appropriateness of the January 16 Campus.News bulletin: one by James Natarelli, CIVL ’03, and one by David Haviland, vice president of Institute advancement. I shall address these both in turn.

What interests me about Mr. Natarelli’s response more than the uninsightfulness of his position, is his general apathy, which offers published evidence to the validity of my original grievance. Mr. Natarelli stated that “Campus.News is the media between the student body and the administration. How else would we know the standpoint of the administration? If you want the other side of the argument, go ask your roommate what he thinks, but please don’t explode for the sake of exploding. It doesn’t make for good reading.” Perhaps he is correct, that my best source for “the other side of the argument” is my roommate, unless of course my roommate happens to be him. In the same editorial, he stated, “I am just a student who is serving his four-year sentence in Troy in order to earn a degree so I can leave and start my life. In other words, I don’t care what happens to this school as long as I have a degree at the end with RPI’s seal on it.” I find such a blatant and overt lack of concern for others on his part extremely unhelpful. To his plea for me not to “explode for the sake of exploding,” I will answer only that I had a reason, an informed reason, for stating my grievance, because I care what happens to this school.

Mr. Haviland states that “the decision was made to disseminate the statement through Campus.News to promote informed discussion of both sides of the issue.” In response, all I can say is that while this decision may have been made in good faith of this objective, it falls far short of actually attaining to it. To support this statement I look not to myself but to Mr. Natarelli, whose position seems to me prototypical of a major problem we face at this school and betrays the root of my indignation over the use of Campus.News as a tool for propaganda. Students at this school are not always well-informed, and worse they do not always even care to be. I find Mr. Haviland’s statement that “The Institute provided its side of the story ... to give each individual the opportunity to weigh both ... views and form his or her own opinion” misleading because it assumes a well-informed audience. It seems to me that the “Institute”—whoever that is—exploited a communications avenue not available to the unionizers to demand the attention of the student body and only provided one side of the story, which is why I labeled it as propaganda. If we are really interested in “informed discussion,” we need to begin by providing all of the information.

When I use the term “propaganda,” I use it intentionally with all of its connotations to raise the issue of the very real lack of informed discussion here at the “Institute” and the negative repercussions this carries for our community. That was my original displeasure, and it remains so.

John Westbrook