2008 Woodie Awards
Letter: Lack of tolerance in letters disappoints former student
Issue date: 10/26/07 Section: Editorial/Opinion
- Page 1 of 1
10/26/07 - To the Cigar,
I was fortunate enough to spend my freshman year of school at URI working for the Cigar's ads desk and I miss everyone there a lot! Working around the paper taught me a lot and I was always up-to-date on campus news. I always loved the drama in the paper and the letters flying back and forth in the op/ed section.
To make a long story short, I transferred to the University of Massachusetts at Boston but remained on the Cigar's mailing list. I still read the paper every day and I still love the drama. However, I found the need to comment on a few things I have noticed since my move to the big city.
Unlike URI, UMass Boston wasn't exaggerating when it told me I would be coming to a diverse campus. I have never met so many people from different countries, backgrounds, religions and ethnicities! The city is a big place, and Boston is truly a "melting pot" of immigrants. It got me thinking that the letters found in the Cigar would never make it into our campus paper, The Mass Media. Not because the paper wouldn't print them, but because students here wouldn't write them in the first place!
Along with great diversity comes great tolerance. The things I have learned from my new friends here are absolutely priceless. While I have always considered myself a conservative and have continually supported U.S. efforts to fight terrorism, my peers here at UMB have taught me not to make constant generalizations. I graduated from high school in a very white, very upper-middle class, very Christian town. URI, while slightly more diverse, was again in a small town and there wasn't much to mix things up.
For the first time in my life I am meeting people with strong religious convictions in a religion other than a form of Christianity, I am friends with people who are not American citizens, I know people who at 18 can speak upwards of five languages fluently. It's hard to discriminate and generalize these people once you get to know them.
So while I continue to laugh at and enjoy the letters published in the Cigar, I also hope that the authors and readers of these letters will one day have the same opportunity I have. That they will meet these people they so easily throw in to categories of race or religion or ethnicity and they will see that their letters have done nothing more than reinforce stereotypes that are both incorrect and offensive to those they have targeted.
As a last note, I do not mean to put URI down or to put my new school above URI. I am simply saying that given the setting and population of UMB, diversity and tolerance are much more prevalent here, at least from my point of view.
Amanda Meyer
I was fortunate enough to spend my freshman year of school at URI working for the Cigar's ads desk and I miss everyone there a lot! Working around the paper taught me a lot and I was always up-to-date on campus news. I always loved the drama in the paper and the letters flying back and forth in the op/ed section.
To make a long story short, I transferred to the University of Massachusetts at Boston but remained on the Cigar's mailing list. I still read the paper every day and I still love the drama. However, I found the need to comment on a few things I have noticed since my move to the big city.
Unlike URI, UMass Boston wasn't exaggerating when it told me I would be coming to a diverse campus. I have never met so many people from different countries, backgrounds, religions and ethnicities! The city is a big place, and Boston is truly a "melting pot" of immigrants. It got me thinking that the letters found in the Cigar would never make it into our campus paper, The Mass Media. Not because the paper wouldn't print them, but because students here wouldn't write them in the first place!
Along with great diversity comes great tolerance. The things I have learned from my new friends here are absolutely priceless. While I have always considered myself a conservative and have continually supported U.S. efforts to fight terrorism, my peers here at UMB have taught me not to make constant generalizations. I graduated from high school in a very white, very upper-middle class, very Christian town. URI, while slightly more diverse, was again in a small town and there wasn't much to mix things up.
For the first time in my life I am meeting people with strong religious convictions in a religion other than a form of Christianity, I am friends with people who are not American citizens, I know people who at 18 can speak upwards of five languages fluently. It's hard to discriminate and generalize these people once you get to know them.
So while I continue to laugh at and enjoy the letters published in the Cigar, I also hope that the authors and readers of these letters will one day have the same opportunity I have. That they will meet these people they so easily throw in to categories of race or religion or ethnicity and they will see that their letters have done nothing more than reinforce stereotypes that are both incorrect and offensive to those they have targeted.
As a last note, I do not mean to put URI down or to put my new school above URI. I am simply saying that given the setting and population of UMB, diversity and tolerance are much more prevalent here, at least from my point of view.
Amanda Meyer