To Whom It May Concern,
Recent events at the University have prompted me to write this open letter to the administration.
First, I’d like to introduce myself. My name is Shauna and I am an alumna of your university. I attended the University of Massachusetts and earned a Masters degree in Communication Disorders from 2010-2012. I currently am gainfully employed in my field of study. I thank you for the education and opportunities that you provided me over those two years. I also appreciate your open dialogue regarding how you would like to change the reputation of the school. However, in order to change this reputation, it is in my opinion that the administration needs to change their attitude regarding the student body.
Over the two years when I was attending UMass, whenever arrests were made, the UMass administration placed blame on the student body for misconduct regardless of who was involved or the circumstances surrounding the events. The “Blarney Blowout” recently resulted in 60 arrests, according to Masslive.com, 20 of whom were UMass students. It saddens me that the administration sent out an email that was similar to a death notice stating how disappointed they were the next day. Although I do not condone the actions of the 20 students, I am frustrated by the administration’s immediate placement of blame on students insinuating that all current and former students are irresponsible and not able to make rational choices, not only sober, but also when consuming legal substances such as alcohol.
It is my opinion that the UMass administration’s reaction to the arrests greatly affects the actions and attitudes of UMass students and alumni. I am proud of my degree from UMass. However, it bothers me that much of what I learned in the process of earning my degree emphasized and continues to emphasize making informed, educated decisions about events and cases, but the administration does not follow suit with the culture of many of its programs.
The energy you put out to the world is the energy you will receive, and if you continue to demonize the student body, they will behave accordingly. I urge you to make informed decisions that are not rash. The students you are educating are young adults and do not need to be scolded for their actions in an email. Twenty students misbehaving out of over 22,000 students in total does not warrant a scolding email, nor does it highlight the behavior you’d like to see in your student body. It fails to mention the other students who attended the “Blarney Blowout,” behaved responsibly and returned to their homes without incident.
Again, I am not negating the irresponsible actions of those 20 students, but it infuriates me as an alumna that the Dean of Students continues to highlight bad behavior of a few students when many are responsible, hard working individuals such as me. Please stop emphasizing alcohol, illicit drug use and arrests, and start emphasizing how all students are working toward creating careers and furthering themselves not only as students but as young adults.
I urge you to reconsider how you view your student body and the young adults that you are educating. I assure you that if you change how you view all of the young adults whom you educate, then they will, in fact, change their behavior. Again, thank you for the education and opportunities you have provided and thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Shauna McManus G’12
To the editor:
At the moment, our community is engaged in damaging accusations accompanied by profound rage. Community members are slandering the students that call Amherst home, students are condemning those responsible for keeping order as abusive and brutal and the University is taking heat from all angles as it gears up to what promises to be the highest number of expulsions in recent memory.
Does that sound unpleasant to you? How about embarrassing?
In his email sent on Sunday, Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy said that difficult conversations lie ahead. I propose we get them underway so that we can begin to heal as a community and move forward with our lives.
Let’s start by ending the blame game and starting to take responsibility. I am a student at the University of Massachusetts. I am not a fortune teller, but I could have told you a week ago how “Blarney 2014” would end. So could every one of my classmates. Most of us avoided those now-infamous North Amherst apartment complexes this weekend.
Why? We knew that if we went, there was a chance we would spend the rest of the day washing tear gas out of our eyes – or in jail. The 73 people arrested presumably did both. It’s a shocking number to all sides, but not a representative one. After all, of those 73 arrests, only around 60 percent of them were UMass students. So, those arrests make up approximately one-eighths of a percent of our 28,000 student university.
I don’t know if I should be more horrified by the accusations of students assaulting and injuring our public servants or by the images of those “servants” shooting rubber bullets and tear gas at cooperating students or by the likelihood that some of my classmates will be expelled from the University in the coming weeks before being convicted of any crime. Perhaps most horrifying is the fact that these transgressions have instigated mothers, fathers, devoted students, irresponsible students and mostly everyone in between to a war of words that is gripping our town.
My hope in writing this letter is to spark a response from all members of our community – students, residents and officials – to consider the needs of each group rather than slandering each other. In a community where respect is mutual, I see no reason why maintaining a safe environment and having drinks with friends on a sunny weekend afternoon should be mutually exclusive.
These are my concerns, what are yours?
Sam Gragg
To the editor:
I do not condone police brutality. I find the use of unnecessary force unacceptable and I would hope that any officers in Amherst who engage in such behavior are punished accordingly. With that said, I take issue with the way this past weekend is being discussed on campus.
Many have criticized the tactics used by officers to disperse the large crowds on Saturday, complaining that the police unnecessarily harassed people who “weren’t doing anything wrong” and were excessive with their use of pepper spray and physical force. First of all, you were doing something wrong. Public intoxication, providing alcohol to minors, verbal and physical assault, throwing bottles and cans into crowds and at officers: All of these are illegal in Massachusetts.
Gathering in dangerously large numbers on property that does not belong to you, littering wherever you please without the slightest consideration for the people who will have to clean up after you, crowding streets and neighborhoods in which families make their permanent home, disrupting their lives without any regard for their comfort or wellbeing: These are all acts of immense disrespect that jeopardize the likelihood of our needs and opinions as students being respected in return.
Consider the position these officers were in. Mob mentality is real; cases of death and serious injury in large crowds turned aggressive are all too common. Those officers were concerned for their own safety, as well as that of students in the crowd, should something have gone terribly wrong. In front of the Student Union on Tuesday, I heard a protester remark that it seemed like the police were “just trying to meet a quota,” and while I can’t say I doubt it, consider it from their point of view. Four thousand people are blatantly breaking the law in front of your face and when you succeed in arresting a mere 70 of them, your motives are questioned?
I don’t necessarily condone pepper spray and physical force, but if it were you who was grossly outnumbered and responsible for so many lives, how would you have dispersed the crowd and apprehended the deserving individuals? A megaphone? Good luck.
Police harassment and brutality are serious and terrifying issues in the United States. Many cases go undocumented or unprosecuted, low-income and minority populations are disproportionately affected and innocent people are denied access to their fundamental rights. Thus I find it incredibly difficult to sympathize with college kids who want to protest the issue only when it affects their personal ability to trash Amherst and keep on doing whatever they want. The sense of entitlement is nauseating.
If you want to construct an argument that is deserving of attention, acknowledge your faults. Acknowledge that the act of being there is irresponsible and illegal in itself. Acknowledge that when we consciously break the law, we accept the risk of consequences, including the unfortunate truth that our bodily autonomy may be jeopardized. By failing to call out the ridiculous idiocy that is Blarney weekend (and any other gathering wherein the objective is to get rowdy and drunk without concern or respect for others), you fail to recognize all the reasons why you will not win this fight, and why police officers will continue to be able to justify their use of force, thereby avoiding consequences.
If you really want to talk about this weekend, take some responsibility. You owe it to the people of Amherst and those who come to UMass to learn and work rather than flaunt their immaturity and privilege.
Sincerely,
Erin O’Meara ’14
