Letters to the Editor
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BMCC Faculty’s Lost Perspective
The New York Sun reported that the student government president and many faculty members at the Borough of Manhattan Community College are “furious” over plans to establish a program for security management [“Protest Over ‘Homeland U,’ ” Jacob Gershman, Page 1, December 24, 2004]. They see it as an endorsement of the Department of Homeland Security and the Bush administration. Many posters of the prisoners in Abu Ghraib hang in student government headquarters but none of the decapitated victims of Iraqi terrorists.
Apparently, many of the students and faculty at BMCC are composed of America-haters who are costing the taxpayers large sums of money that produces radicalized, alienated graduates who believe President Bush is a tyrant and hate America. In the real world, those who pay the piper call the tunes. However, at BMCC, and in too much of academia, radical students and faculty, who depend on the taxpayers’ generosity, think they have a natural right to bite the hands that feed them.
GEORGE RUBIN
Manhattan
BMCC: Disappointing Alumni
As a proud master’s graduate of City College of New York (now known as the City University of New York), I am appalled by those of its faculty and students at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, the two-year CUNY school, protesting the proposed curriculum leading to a certificate in Security Management [“Protest Over ‘Homeland U,’ ” Jacob Gershman, Page 1, December 24, 2004]. Learning such a discipline could help students play a vital role in countering threats to our national security. It is a field that now is seriously underserved.
Those students accepted for study in a CUNY Security Management program will likely have excellent employment opportunities for the foreseeable future. They will be performing honorable civilian duties parallel to our national military and local police. What could be wrong with that, except to those who have a reason not to want our country safer or our borders more secure?
Which brings up the obvious question: Who are the students who some faculty members say will be “driven away and intimidated” by this program, and why?
These answers should be specified or I must question the motives of those who protest.
CAROL LYONS
Irvington, N.Y.
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