Letters
2/25/05
"I'm going to make you an offer you can't refuse. You're going to sell me your house at the price I choose. And if you do refuse, I'm going to put an end to your life."
Is this a quote from the Godfather or perhaps the threat of a totalitarian despot? Nope, it's what the Colgate Board of Trustees are saying to the Greek organizations at the university. But isn't this extortion? Of course it is. If it were being done to a shop owner in Brooklyn or a peasant in a third world country, the liberal establishment would howl at the injustice. So why isn't extorting the houses from the fraternities not a similar, immoral appropriation? For the life of me, I don't know. To me, it's exactly the same.
Former British Prime minister Harold MacMillan was once asked what the advantage was of a liberal arts education. His answer was that as far as he could see, a liberal arts education held little benefit except for one thing: If properly employed, it allowed one to recognize rot when one saw it. Well, this is rot, pure, unadulterated rot. And if the Trustees or anyone else in the Colgate family can't comprehend this simple fact, he or she certainly wasted his parents money on a college education.
I was recently asked by my fraternity's alumni association to authorize the sale of our house to the university. I voted an unequivocal 'NO'. One of the lessons I learned a long time ago was that you should stand up to bullies, not capitulate to them. Frankly, I haven't seen a shake down like this since I was on the playground when I was 13. Accordingly, I would prefer to see my fraternity house boarded up and moldering away rather than give in to this threat.
I urge anyone who has a vote to say NO to this tyranny. And by the way, the next time someone from the university calls to ask for your contribution, tell them that you don't surrender your lunch money to bullies.
Robert Williams, PDT '68