To Reverend Rubicon,
You provided the definition of hate crime in your article, and yet you seem confused that the term does not apply to Sulk. She was not a victim of a crime “motivated by bias against a particular race, religion, ethnicity/origin, disability, or sexual orientation.” Yes, she was a victim of a hateful and abhorrent crime. This does not, however, make it a hate crime.
You asked why Shepard’s torture and murder is more worthy of attention than Sulk’s. Well, I respond to your story of Sulk with the story of another murder. On an early morning in August 1955 in Money, Mississippi, a 14-year-old African-American boy named Emmett Till was kidnapped, brutally beaten, shot in the head, wrapped with barbed wire to a cotton ginning fan, and thrown in the river. His murderers, two white men, were arrested, tried and then acquitted of the crime by an all-white jury.
Two and a half months later, the story of Emmett Till motivated one Rosa Parks, on December 1, 1955, to refuse to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. When Parks was asked why she would not give up her seat, she said, “I thought about Emmett Till, and I could not go back.” Till’s murder, like Shepard’s, was a hate crime. Like Till’s murder, Shepard’s murder has become an allegory for the social injustice suffered by a minority group–in Till’s case, it was African-Americans in the civil rights era, in Shepard’s, it is the LGBT community in the late 20th and now 21st century.
The murder of another woman and her unborn child DID make national news–Laci Peterson. Your argument that a girl and her unborn child are brutally murdered and no one cares does not really hold water. The purpose of hate crime legislation is not to create “victim groups” but to punish the perpetrators, raise awareness and promote tolerance. Your editorial came across as nothing more than a rant against those who pursue civil equality for all regardless of sexual orientation, race, religion or creed.
Abigail Scott
Graduate Assistant, History Department
Midwestern State University
—————
Are any MSU students unhappy with the Vinson Health Center? Maybe I should rephrase the question: Who is happy with the Vinson Health Center?
I’ve been at Midwestern for over four years now (first Bachelors, now Masters), and I haven’t had one good experience with the Vinson Health Center. Here’s why:
• They seem to not want you to get an appointment with the doctor.
• The nurses have no clue what they are talking about.
• They have no regard for your privacy.
First, when you make a phone call to the Vinson Health Center, you want (hope) to get an appointment with the doctor. The receptionist begins to ask you a million questions, not starting with your symptoms.
Of course she wants to update your address. Important, eh? God forbid you don’t have a valid address. You know, just in case the doctor wants to show up at your doorstep to check up on you.
Yeah, right.
When the receptionist finally gets around to talking about your symptoms, she says, “Well, that doesn’t sound too serious, I would suggest you wait a couple of days and then call back if you don’t feel better.”
Really?!
Isn’t it our right, as students, to see the university doctor if we feel like it?
So, if you persist, she says, “Ok, you’ll first need to talk to the nurse before I can make you an appointment, but she is unavailable right now, so you will have to call back.”
Fine.
You call back, and after some back and forth, you get the nurse on the phone. In my case, I told her my symptoms, and added, “I think it’s (disease/sickness has been changed) a stomach infection.”
“Well, do you feel this and this and this (she suggests some symptoms).”
I answer, “No.”
“Then it cannot be a stomach infection.”
Ok, but can I still see the doctor? So, finally, I get an appointment.
I get to the office and the receptionist asks for my student I.D. Well, I just happen to feel like I’ve been run over by a bus, so no, I don’t have my student I.D., but I do have a valid I.D.
That’s not good enough. I have to have a student I.D. Can they not check in the computer if you are a current student?!
No.
You have to physically prove that you possess a valid MSU I.D.
So, I had to go home, find my student I.D., and head back to the Vinson Health Center. So I get back, and, again, she wants to update my address.
“But, you just did that a couple of days ago on the phone, remember?”
“I need to do it again.”
Fine.
After she is done with her pointless updating, she asks me for my symptoms. You should know, there are about four other students sitting about three feet away from the reception desk. The receptionist obviously does not care about my privacy, and she continues staring at me, waiting for an answer.
“But, I just gave you those a couple of days ago on the phone, remember?” Apparently, she needs them again, because she didn’t record them.
So, I finally see the doctor.
He does his checks, asks a couple of questions, and proceeds to say, “You have a stomach infection.”
Anonymous