Editor,
Just when I thought the level of absurdity regarding the Sigma Chi parking lot fiasco couldn't possibly increase, along came Joel Nossoff's successful letter in Wednesday's Daily Lobo.
I find it interesting, and of serious concern, that today's social liberals will abandon basic principles so readily in preference to minor virtues. The "politically correct" invariably focus on the peripheral and miss the core. Their continuing efforts to force governing bodies to control what individuals think and say is as obscene as it is irrational.
Berthold's private response to a public accusation may or may not have been appropriate, but that's not the issue. Berthold's e-mail was far from tactful, but that's not the issue, either. The question of Berthold's e-mail pales to the enormous and absolute necessity of valuing reason over emotion, integrity over image, liberty over expediency.
In the published letter, which motivated the private e-mail, student Everett Wheeler-Bell absurdly called for reprimands against unnamed "University administrators" and Berthold for saying things he didn't like. He also wrote: "The professor speaks his intellectual words of apathy and ignorance, while the students act them out."
This is nothing less than an accusation of conspiracy to commit a crime leveled against a faculty member. If Wheeler-Bell has evidence to justify such a serious charge, let him bring it forth - if he has none, it is he who should be apologizing. I personally suggest that the young man at least acquire the courage to confront a privately given offense directly and privately.
It was Wheeler-Bell, not Berthold, who made the e-mail public. Running into the kitchen and squealing to mommy carries with it the foul stench of childish cowardice. And no, this has nothing to do with anatomy and physiology. Not everything does - deal with it.
Can we rationally condemn a faculty member for a private response to a public assault because we didn't like his choice of words? While civility and good form are most emphatically worthy and what we should strive for, they must never be allowed to transcend truth and reason. Robert Pirsig wrote correctly: "The real University is nothing less than the continuing body of reason itself."
As a university, we must never allow political expediency to betray reason. We must not allow style to pre-empt substance. And we must never allow the corrupting notion of "political correctness" to thwart integrity.
Are we so frightened and petty that we are willing to abandon our basic principles because someone might take offense? Where resides the greater crime?
John Bauer
Staff member
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