I write to add my voice to those voices across the nation protesting the deep and debilitating cuts to the budget of the Labor Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
The widespread reaction to the cuts is easy to understand. The center is one of only 30 such programs in the nation, and known to be one of the best of its kind. I experienced its quality firsthand because I taught (U.S. and then global labor history) there for over 30 years starting in 1971 until my retirement in 2008.
Our students came to the center from a variety of backgrounds but few of them applied for admission with the resources of graduate students from better-off families. Most were from working-class and poor backgrounds driven not by careerism or prospects of riches but the idealism of making life better for working people in the capacity of researchers and organizers.
Very few actors have done more to fight the social inequality that bedevils this nation. The right to organize trade unions became national public policy in 1935. The university’s action casts a public institution in the troubling role of defeating public policy.
The dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences should rescind his budget cuts forthwith and resume support for a program that does an awful lot of good.
Bruce Laurie
Pelham
The writer is a professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Enough about emails, Clinton has apologized
The unending public exposure and vilification of Hillary Clinton’s email practices while secretary of state remind me of a rape trial.
She has clearly, simply and repeatedly apologized for her errors and promised never again – this from a candidate unafraid to be publicly sorry, and self-controlled enough to keep her word.
Who cares about the emails anymore, an unending trail of evidence leading nowhere?
There is more justice in continuing to scrutinize the other candidate who is nothing more than a metaphor, as in the GOP shot itself in the foot.
Too often in the interest of balanced reporting criticism is leveled at both candidates when a true equivalency is missing. Trump’s repeated infractions are factual, obvious and always without apology.
A truly responsible press could do better by refusing to treat as newsworthy pointed arguments that seek to rationalize and promote obviously partisan agendas, and in the process would end its own co-option via stories that have the low appeal of gossip with the usual corrupt innuendo and unknowable truth.
Enough with the age-old complaints and accusations that serve only as fodder about a woman candidate who is just about as good as it gets for a politician.
Lorraine Desrosiers
Hadley
There has been a good deal of discussion over charter schools, some of it coming from public school officials upset over the way charter schools are funded. A simple example shows why they are upset.
Suppose you are the principal of a K-8 elementary school with two classes per grade and 25 students per class. What do you do if 30 of your students decide to enroll in charter schools? In the very unlikely event that 25 or so are all in the same grade, you could lay off a teacher and save a teacher’s salary. (Of course support staff couldn’t be cut, since they are needed by the remaining students).
More likely, you would lose three or four kids per grade and be unable to lay off anyone, resulting in zero savings.
But you would be required to pay the “tuition” cost at the charter school – typically $10,000- $15,000 per student per year, which adds up to $300,000 -$450,000 per year lost from your budget.
So what do you do? Probably cut art, music and physical education staff, to the detriment of the students who remain. To make matters worse, it is likely you also lost some of your most engaged parents – the kind who opt for charter schools. Doesn’t sound fair, does it?
A better way would be to pay all charter school costs out of the Commonwealth’s budget.
That would avoid unfairly burdening local public schools.
It might mean we would have to pay a few more dollars per year in taxes, but it would spread the pain more equally.
It would be worth it to save our public schools from being starved into mediocrity.
Meanwhile, until the funding becomes more fair, I am going to vote against expanding the charter school program. I encourage readers to join me.
Jim Harvey
Hadley
I am delighted to report that Hadley townspeople appear to support the construction of a new senior center as evidenced by over 600 signatures on a petition to include a warrant article for the fall Town Meeting.
It is most important for seniors to remain strong, healthy and independent for themselves as well as their families. A well-planned senior center is inviting and will offer more seniors a place to go to get exercise, mentally stimulating classes, social companionship from others and food to boot (!) to help them continue to be healthy and independent.
This is a win/win. It is heartwarming to realize that our citizens recognize that seniors do not flourish in a building with no air conditioning, mold issues, restrooms designed for 11-year-olds, chipped asbestos floor tiles, a cranky, intimidating elevator, many sets of stairs and ceiling tiles which might drop on them at any moment. Retrofitting the current site would cost $3.2 million with no air conditioning, according to the study done by the town building committee. Hadley seniors have often spent their whole lives making this town the wonderful place to live that it is.
Lynne Edwards
Hadley
The blank slate
that is Donald Trump
There is one thing about Donald Trump’s candidacy that should cause his supporters as much fear as he causes his opponents. We really don’t have any clue as to what he will do. Or, you could say, we have too many clues but no evidence.
The Trump candidacy is based entirely on what he says, since he has no record of public service at all. He is like the first-time candidate or the very young candidate, totally without a record of activity to indicate what he will do or can do. We’ve each got a pretty good idea of what he says he will do, and what he says he can do. But he’s never held a public office or led any public social issue. Whether or not you like Hillary Clinton, you know pretty much what she will do, because she’s been working on public issues in front of us for a good long time. Is she going to advance the Obama health care legacy, as she says? She’s worked for it as well as argued for it.
Trump promises his supporters that he’s against Obamacare. But we don’t know what he actually will try to do or will be able to do, as he’s never held a public office or had to work with other public officials.
Gary M. Tartakov
Amherst
I keep biking by the hole every few days – and the same thought darts through my mind. They are tearing down habitable dorms for a new science center at Amherst College. Suppose they built that center 200 yards further away (where they are tearing up tennis courts), and had let 250 Syrian refugees live in those dorms?
The money spent tearing down those buildings would pay for food and clothes for them for several years, I am sure. The big hole where the dorms were now seems like a metaphor for a hole in our collective conscience.
Of course, yes, of course, it would disrupt life on the campus. Would it, really?
Students might have to walk through the Syrian community to get to the science center. And the Syrians would be of interest for students from anthropology, psychology and sociology to interview. Students could organize activities for the kids. A few Syrians could sneak into classes, or be invited.
Still, disruption! Perhaps one might have to tell the nursery kids to be quiet, if they disrupted classes (or the students would have to be quiet at late-night parties, because they disturbed young kids).
My guess is that 30 years from now, students would look back with pride and boast that they were at Amherst when the Syrian refugees were. And that it was one of the most meaningful parts of their undergraduate experience. And the college itself would become an incredible example, praised around the country. Syrians everywhere would hear about it.
Fifty years ago I was involved in something people said was more impossible – I taught Freedom School at True Vine Church in Jackson, Mississippi, for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
The dangers seem greater than any “disruption” at Amherst. The day I arrived someone gave me a flyer that said, “Come to the Ku Klux Klan rally. Ask any policeman for directions.”
My little school had reason to be afraid of attack. It was just a few weeks of my life, but it still has an impact on me.
UMass, Hampshire, Smith and Mount Holyoke, are you listening?
Tom Roeper
Amherst
Rotary not needed
to ease Amherst traffic
The Amherst Select Board has voted to install a rotary at the intersection of East Pleasant and Triangle streets, but that plan has not yet been funded, and funding will be brought up at Town Meeting in October. Funding should be refused. Rotaries are excellent in low traffic, but they are horrible in high-traffic intersections, and the traffic at East Pleasant and Triangle is too high for a rotary to be effective. There are better ways to improve traffic in that area.
North Pleasant Street formerly carried traffic straight through. Restoring that configuration would be an excellent way to improve traffic and would simply require pulling out the curbs and vegetation and repaving the straightened street. There would have to be a stop sign at the south end of East Pleasant Street and another at the west end of Triangle Street.
The present signal at East Pleasant and Triangle would be adequate. Another possibility would be to make the traffic around Kendrick Park one way; northbound traffic would take East Pleasant to Triangle Street and then Triangle to North Pleasant.
Southbound traffic on East Pleasant would turn onto Triangle and then turn left onto North Pleasant. Traffic going from East Pleasant to North Pleasant might have a difficult time. Either configuration would work and would require only restoring North Pleasant and replacing signs. There probably would be no change in the number of parking spaces; whatever might be lost on North Pleasant could be added on East Pleasant. During times when traffic is especially high, I believe this configuration would tend to allow traffic to move more freely.
Peter P. Lewicke
Amherst
Amherst’s leadership struggles go on
Here is a comment I have heard lately regarding leadership in Amherst: “Here we go again.”
There are many unanswered questions, one being: Is this personal? We humans are very complex.
When I worked as a teacher in the public schools of Holyoke, we encountered similar issues daily. Teachers and administrators worked together to deal and solve them.
Why, in a town like Amherst, with so many illustrious residents, can’t we do the same?
Now that I’m retired, I realize that common sense and good intentions are better than graduate degrees to deal with anything collectively.
As a professional student of life, I wish everyone would learn how to deal with sensitive issues.
I hope we have peace in our civic life in Amherst in the coming years, or until the cycle starts again, but I doubt it.
Some people are just never satisfied and choose to live in the past, not being able to turn the page.
Recently, a lot of people criticized an African-American athlete who won a gold medal in the Olympics because she didn’t place her hand over her heart while listening to the U.S. national anthem. Yet no one has criticized the young, white winner of the shot putt for doing the same. Same action, different reaction.
Only they know why. A few days ago, I was shocked to see on the front page of the Gazette a photo of an African-American school committee member voting against the majority. He had a clenched fist up in the air, making the sign for black power. He must know better. Semiotics and symbolism are important and say a lot more than words.
Victor Guevara
Amherst
