No equivalency

I rarely respond verbally to my reading material, but I made an exception (in four-letter form) while perusing (last week’s) Hatchet. To hear the head of Student Judicial Services declare (in “UPD finds drugs,” Nov. 13, p. 1) that there is no difference between marijuana and cocaine- that “drugs are drugs”- was both absurd and disturbing.

Cocaine causes an average of more than 3,000 deaths a year, to say nothing of its close cousin, crack. Marijuana, on the other hand, has never been conclusively linked to the death of anything more than brain cells. Cocaine is highly addictive, leading to a host of serious health problems (deviated septum, anyone?), while most doctors agree than marijuana is both less addictive and less harmful than the legal recreational drugs. One in three Americans believe marijuana shouldn’t even be illegal. Don’t believe the lies of the Bush administration, either- buying a bag is far more likely to support some farmer in West Virginia than a terrorist (pot is America’s fourth largest cash crop).

It is bad enough for the University to impose outdated, draconian rules on the student body, but it is worse still for it to do so because of an ignorant, black and white view of the world. Wake up, Tara Woolfson- it’s not 1950 anymore.

– Noah Lentz
freshman

Commies in D.C.?

I found the letter (“Commies are the problem?,” Nov. 13, p.4) written by Sue Schlobin to be astonishing. She writes about how terrible it was of a GW student named Doug to have wielded a sign that read “Go Home Commies” at an anti-war march. She launches into a very ironic diatribe asserting the merits of protest, tells this Doug fellow that he is wrong, and mentioned some things about Emma Goldman that must seem pretty silly in context.

Ms. Schlobin’s letter suggests that she has never attended one of these “anti-war” protests. First off, there were very few demonstrators attacking the actual war, standing up for the Hussein regime, or even urging blissful pacifism. Instead they sported slogans accusing the president of the United States of being a Nazi, barbarian, mass murderer, and imperial expansionist. How did they convey this message? Not by means of effective and tasteful posters, signs or slogans, but rather, through the use of costumed individuals mimicking the president, bloods smeared cloths, signs asserting a “Right to Revolution” that implicitly urge violence against the social order. And that is only what the people protesting Iraq were saying.

The protests did not just bring together far left-wing students, but also throw backs from the anti-war protests of the 1960’s, anti-Semites, and yes, communists. In fact, at least half of the protesters at any of the three antiwar protests I observed (as a bystander each time) were not even protesting the war in Iraq. There were signs to legalize medicinal marijuana, spend money on “Jobs not War” (whoever wrote that one must have been a communist, seeing how in a capitalist economy the government does not control industry), and to eliminate the world financial system.

So perhaps Doug wasn’t so far off the mark after all. I would also be curious to know if Schlobin would consider the statements of the protesters I mentioned to be those which aid our objective thinking and encourage discourse. It would seem to me that Doug just knew who he was up against and worked accordingly.

The true irony in Ms. Schlobin’s letter was really the last paragraph. I am quite sure that Doug has heard of the constitution, and was merely exercising his own rights and freedoms. It is people like Schlobin, who make conservatives afraid to express their ideas for fear of being branded oppressors. If you sincerely believe in the right of the protestors to protest the government, you must believe in Doug’s right to protest the protesters.

Oh, and by the way, I am sure that when Doug referred to going home, he meant to where your mail gets delivered.

-Jake Glickfield
sophomore