Marcu 8, 2005

THE CADRE e 73

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Dear Ray Keating and Staff: I congratulate you on your (rare) courage in attempting to publish the news as you saw fit. I have already condemned (in the National Post) the repression conducted on your campus and the infantilism it represents. Here’s an idea. Why not let one great writer be your spokesman. I’m thinking here of Czeslaw Milosz, Nobel Laureate for Poetry in 1980. Oa Milosz lived through, and wrote about, the Nazi _ destruction of Poland and its people, and was a constant witness for freedom. Here’s one of his most memorable poems. I think it well expresses the spirit of your struggle. Perhaps publishing it in the Cadre will enlighten your community and provide your administration with something to think about. -Walter Bruno, Calgary, Alberta

INCANTATION

Human reason is beautiful and invincible.

No bats, no barbed wire, no pulping of books No sentence of banishment can prevail against it.

It establishes the universal ideas in language

And guides our hand so we write Truth and Justice

With capital letters, lie and oppression with small. :

It puts what should be above things as they ate,

Is an enemy of despair and a friend of hope. It does not know Jew from Greek or slave from master,

Giving us the estate of the world to manage. —

It saves austere and transparent phrases

From the filthy discord of tortured words.

It says that everything is new under the sun, Opens the congealed fist of the past. Beautiful and very young are Philo-sophia And Poetry, her ally in the service of the good. As late as yesterday Natute celebrated their birth. The news was brought to the mountains by a unicorn and an echo.

Their friendsip will be glorious, their time has no limit.

Their enemies have delivered themselves to destruction.

from City Without a Name, 1969

Editor:

This letter is in reply to material that ran in the Feb. 22 edition of The Cadre. First of all, let me comment on the

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letter to the editor from K. Benoit- Evans. This letter makes a crucial mistake in attempting to dissect the cartoon controversy. The author claims that the controversial cartoons are no different than running a cartoon making fun of Jews. Since the press does not do this, the author (mysteriously known simply as “K.’’) complains of a double standard.

The author, though, misses a vital point here. A Jew is a Jew because of unchangeable ethnic identity. A suicide bomber is a suicide bomber because of a changeable, dangerous ideology.

I would also like to address the article on pg. 4 by Will Cooper. This article asks why UPEI should have a Chaplaincy Centre. Cooper claims universities should be unbiassed institutions embracing all beliefs, yet uses the university newspaper to betray his own bias towards those with certain religious beliefs.

Furthermore, Cooper seems to miss the point of a Chaplaincy Centre. Many of UPEI’s students are away from home. For this reason, there are several facilities in place for them on

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campus, including the Wave and the CARI facility. The Chaplaincy Centre is no more out of place than these. In fact, for those of you who find the Chaplaincy Centre offensive on moral grounds, remember that institutions like the Wave offend people as well. Mote than one religion on campus objects to alcohol.

The end of Cooper’s article is the most galling part. Cooper states that the Chaplaincy Centre isn’t a “scary or negative” place. Why? Because the few “fundamentalist- type” believers on campus avoid it. In this paragraph, Cooper reveals his apalling misunderstanding of the word “fundamentalist” and also betrays what appears to be his real motivation in writing the article. This also raises interesting questions. Which fundamental belief of Christianity does Cooper find scary and negative? Is it that of caring for the poor and needy, or perhaps the forbiddance of stealing or murder? Cooper should keep in mind that Christianity was actually the start of most beneficial social programs

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