2008 Woodie Awards
Religion should be kept private
Issue date: 10/7/05 Section: Rocket Letters
To the Editor:
I've been stuck in this town for the past 7 years, and much like Jimmy Stewart in "It's a Wonderful Life," I cannot seem to get out. In these years I have read the Rocket out of the fact that I'll read anything, even labels, but nothing has disturbed me more than the last few weeks in the editorial column. When I got here Main Street looked as if somehow it had stopped caring in the late 1970's, the ARC was just being built, I used to sit on the porch at the house where Ginger Hill is and call drunken kids on the pay phones at 3 a.m., and there were hippies as far as the eye could see. Now, I look around to see campus trying to revive itself, Main Street has been "Disneyfied," there are two providers of the sweet nectar of the gods, and the students look like an Abercrombie ad threw them up (wearing jeans with holes in them used to just mean you were too poor to buy new ones).
As I am attempting to finally make my way from this place, which is unlike any other I have ever been to, I will remember many things about it, but none more importantly than the people that I have met in the beginning. The people in this town used to get along for the majority of the time and occasionally some "balboa" or screeching girl got into some shit. We used to have in common the fact that there was nothing really to do in this town but hang out and do whatever passed the time. Now it appears as this town, or at least the student population, is getting obnoxious by focusing on everything that makes one person different from another. To better inform all members of this community please listen to the following message carefully: you are not a reality show and this is not your Sweet 16 and it certainly is not Laguna Beach. Those people have their own issues to worry about in this life and the next. We have begun to consume the town rather than live in it. In the summers, it's nice just because most of you are somewhere else. There is a sleepy pace to everything and everyone says hello. Last week some losers tried to steal the furniture off of the porch while we were inside with the lights on watching television. We got the chairs back but they took the grill from the driveway, what a bunch of savages! To make matters worse, now I have to read about a holy war in the paper. I think that all of the letters have been thought provoking to say the least save for Josh Bortnik's article either week. Unlike Michael T. Muha, whose letter was the smartest of them all, I will pass judgment on those that choose to take any idea as extreme as anyone like you does. Religion always stirs up controversy because we all want to believe that we have made the right choice but it is a choice to be made by the individual without any pressure or rhetoric. That is want makes this country, the ability to have a choice even if it is not the best. As long as the choices we make as individuals does not cause intentional harm on others, then do as you will but leave me alone. I don't want your beliefs no matter how giddy you may seem about them. Jesus is not my homeboy and neither is Buddha or Vishnu. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that "to believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all - that is genius" but he never said that you had to push it on anyone.
Rick Fera
Graduate Student
English
I've been stuck in this town for the past 7 years, and much like Jimmy Stewart in "It's a Wonderful Life," I cannot seem to get out. In these years I have read the Rocket out of the fact that I'll read anything, even labels, but nothing has disturbed me more than the last few weeks in the editorial column. When I got here Main Street looked as if somehow it had stopped caring in the late 1970's, the ARC was just being built, I used to sit on the porch at the house where Ginger Hill is and call drunken kids on the pay phones at 3 a.m., and there were hippies as far as the eye could see. Now, I look around to see campus trying to revive itself, Main Street has been "Disneyfied," there are two providers of the sweet nectar of the gods, and the students look like an Abercrombie ad threw them up (wearing jeans with holes in them used to just mean you were too poor to buy new ones).
As I am attempting to finally make my way from this place, which is unlike any other I have ever been to, I will remember many things about it, but none more importantly than the people that I have met in the beginning. The people in this town used to get along for the majority of the time and occasionally some "balboa" or screeching girl got into some shit. We used to have in common the fact that there was nothing really to do in this town but hang out and do whatever passed the time. Now it appears as this town, or at least the student population, is getting obnoxious by focusing on everything that makes one person different from another. To better inform all members of this community please listen to the following message carefully: you are not a reality show and this is not your Sweet 16 and it certainly is not Laguna Beach. Those people have their own issues to worry about in this life and the next. We have begun to consume the town rather than live in it. In the summers, it's nice just because most of you are somewhere else. There is a sleepy pace to everything and everyone says hello. Last week some losers tried to steal the furniture off of the porch while we were inside with the lights on watching television. We got the chairs back but they took the grill from the driveway, what a bunch of savages! To make matters worse, now I have to read about a holy war in the paper. I think that all of the letters have been thought provoking to say the least save for Josh Bortnik's article either week. Unlike Michael T. Muha, whose letter was the smartest of them all, I will pass judgment on those that choose to take any idea as extreme as anyone like you does. Religion always stirs up controversy because we all want to believe that we have made the right choice but it is a choice to be made by the individual without any pressure or rhetoric. That is want makes this country, the ability to have a choice even if it is not the best. As long as the choices we make as individuals does not cause intentional harm on others, then do as you will but leave me alone. I don't want your beliefs no matter how giddy you may seem about them. Jesus is not my homeboy and neither is Buddha or Vishnu. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that "to believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all - that is genius" but he never said that you had to push it on anyone.
Rick Fera
Graduate Student
English
