College serves the role, one that most people would consider its primary function, of providing its students with knowledge relevant to their coursework. However, it should also serve us by making us better people in terms of our character and ability to engage in critical thinking well beyond our academic years.
Unfortunately, this does not seem to be a common ideal pursued at RPI. We often learn about the nitty-gritty details of engineering, but rarely hear about the ethical issues that need to be considered when applying that knowledge to the real world. We learn programming languages, but don’t learn how to examine the issues going on outside of our computer that affect the world at large.
It is for this reason that we are consistently ranked among the least politically active campuses in the nation. One would hope that this apathy could be addressed and that the students could be encouraged to recognize this as a problem. Unfortunately, the recent appointment of Hillary Clinton as a commencement speaker has shown that not only is this not the case, but people are downright hostile to the idea of listening to a woman with whom they may disagree politically.
One of the most disturbing trends I have seen at RPI is the tendency for people on campus to try to keep silent opinions with which they do not agree. We have seen this with the attempts to keep Fahrenheit 9/11 from playing at UPAC Cinema. We saw this when a passerby threw a street cone at the rally supporting President Bush. We saw this when the College Republicans attempted to “drown out” the message of the people at the recent peace rally in Albany. RPI and the country as a whole can only flourish when people are willing to thoughtfully listen to opinions with which they disagree.
But perhaps the most striking aspect of the debate over Mrs. Clinton’s planned speech is that it is not even a debate about her politics. She is not coming here to stump for re-election to the Senate or for a presidential bid. She is simply coming to offer us her well wishes and to give us some inspiring words for the future. I imagine her speech will not be greatly different in tone from one that would be given by a non-political figure.
So we come down to the fact that people are not trying to stop her from coming to speak about politics with which they disagree, but they are trying to silence her from speaking on an unrelated topic because they do not like her as a person. It is disturbing that we as a community cannot unite to show respect to a speaker despite disagreements.
Mrs. Clinton is a leader of the state of New York and thus a more than fitting selection for the commencement this year. I would never object to Governor Pataki speaking at my commencement even though I disagree with his political actions, because he is also a leader of our state and could offer words of wisdom to our graduating class. I would have the ability to respectfully listen to his speech. I hope that those who have a problem with Mrs. Clinton can show her this same respect and cease their attempts to keep her from our campus.
Brian Whipple
CSCI/PSYC ’05
