Dear Mr. Woell,

I’ve read the recent editorials in the Daily both bashing and supporting The September 29th Movement, and I’ve chosen not to react until your article, because frankly it disturbs me. You state that people do care, that students are not apathetic and activism is not dead.

Then you argue an opposite pint of view, something I’ve seen for a long time, that the student body at this university cares for nearly nothing but maintaining the status quo. You even go so far as to promote it.

How can you argue that students care and then two paragraphs later state that The September 29th Movement was “drowned out by a massive silence” and that “the vast majority of the student body did not care?”

You even admit that most students are here simply to get an education, graduate, get a job, get married and have children, and then retire. That, however, is not the “meaning of life,” as you claim.

The purpose of educating one’s self and the purpose of attending university is not what you claim. The purpose is not simply to go through the motions of life, like a lifeless robot, but to challenge your mind, to seek out issues and better understand the world around you and the people within it.

I’ll admit that our conciliated meeting with the ISU administration went horribly wrong. The university insisted that we not bring a tape recorder, and we protested by bringing one anyhow.

We placed it on the table, in full view of everyone and pushed record. I know; it was right in front of me. We weren’t sneaky and we weren’t sly. We just put it on the table. We chose to be honest, and we didn’t break a promise (if you were familiar the chain of events, you would know that we never AGREED on the tape recorder issue).

We didn’t put the tape recorder in our pocket because that would have seemed deceitful. We made it clear where we stood — we wanted the university to tell the truth.

We wanted the administration to explain why they refused to meet with us after over two years of requests for a meeting. We wanted to know why they didn’t listen to the over 1,000 letters from faculty, students and staff that were sent to the office of the president.

We wanted to know why they wouldn’t listen to anything we had to say about Catt Hall, and about minority studies programs, LGBT issues and support, cultural centers, and multicultural education on this campus. We urged them to explain, but they would not.

They would not listen — and we wanted to know WHY. In fact, the main issue of The September 29th Movement became less about Catt Hall than about how students were being treated (ignored) on this campus.

They NEVER explained their position on these issues and refused to explain how they were going to deal with them, save their sound bytes and snippets, words they constantly went back on.

Something is wrong with this university, Mr. Woell, and you outlined it perfectly in your article. If you choose to remain passive and roll through the motions like so many others on this campus, that is fine with me.

But please, please don’t try to educate people about issues that you clearly are not fully educated on yourself.

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Robert Allen Mohr.

Senior

Architecture

Member, The September 29th Movement.