I must admit, I am terribly disappointed in two of the recent opinion articles written by Thomas Kyle-Milward. The first (“Artificial activism aids no cause,” ODE, April 23), claimed that students should feel valid if they avoid activism and essentially tried to insist that student activists on campus are only participating in activism to plump up their resumes. The second (“Watching words is a lost cause,” ODE, April 30) insists that we should not bother to concern ourselves with being “politically correct,” and argues that we should focus more on growing “thick skins” than on trying to speak in a manner that doesn’t offend others.
As a student activist, and as a co-director at the UO Survival Center, which is the umbrella organization that helps provide resources to activists working for social justice, I know from personal experience that participating in events and working on campaigns is often an extremely rewarding experience for students and is not merely an attempt to pad their resumes. Many students pour their hearts and souls into their projects because they truly want to make a difference in their community and in the world. I have seen so many people lose sleep and nearly lose their minds because they are so upset with the state of the world. Instead of criticizing them for getting frustrated about injustice and trying to work against it, we should be proud of them for thinking outside of their own life and taking a moment to reflect on how the way we live our lives impacts the rest of the world.
Thomas claims we should just put on our iPod, play with our phone and ignore the people asking for a minute of our time (who, by the way, are often paid activists and not students). But who ever changed the world, positively impacted their community or improved the livelihoods of others by zoning out, turning inward and cranking up their headphones? Do we want to teach apathy at this university, or do we want to inspire others to go into the world and be great leaders, community members and global citizens?
To encourage the former is to undermine the very reason we are here at this university, to better ourselves so we may better the world.
I am appalled at the second column, which insists that we should freely use hate speech or insensitive words in our daily lives, and that those who are hurt by these things should simply toughen up. I am not surprised that this argument is coming from a privileged (as we all are, for being able to attend this University) white male who may not experience the alienating, painful feeling of hearing hate speech that targets the group that he identifies with on a daily basis. However, it is shameful that he believes that we should all “toughen up,” by continuing to perpetuate words like “gay” or “retard” with a negative connotation, we are simply reifying the homophobic, heteronormative, patriarchal norms that has led to hate crime time and again in our society.
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