Best Letter Yet

December 23, 2006

My dear Mr. President:

I tried to call your office on Friday, December 22, 2006 A.D. (at 6:30 in the morning Pacific Standard Time) to respond to your latest salvo on the Wren Cross "Controversy", only to discover that the office is closed for Christmas. What a serendipitous coincidence. Your proffer of a "compromise" seemed to occur just as everyone scampered off for the festive Holy Day(s). More coincidence, I assume.

I am fascinated by your statements that you "learned" or were "told" or otherwise informed of unhappiness in those who allegedly were distressed to discover a Christian cross in the Chapel of a college founded by Christian rulers (I believe His late Majesty King William III was called by Daniel Defoe "The man of God's right hand") for the purpose of educating Christian gentlemen (all races and ethic groups included therein) to be presided over by a leading Christian (Blair, by name). May we know more? When did these "incidents" occur? Who made the report? To whom was the report made? To you or to someone else? May we see the reports? If there are no written reports, may one know why not? What are the names of the offended groups or persons? Did anyone give - or get - a name? Were all the reports anonymous? Why? Are we who support the Wren Cross in its proper place too frightful, too violent, too dangerous to others to be informed?

Speaking of information, why, as an alumna who is a member of the Sir Robert Boyle Society, was I not informed of this "crisis" of injured feeling and asked for my opinion? No one seemed to have trouble finding me to inquire how much William & Mary will inherit when I shuffle off this moral coil - in fact, a college fund raiser actually turned up in my office here on the West Coast. I am, therefore, not hidden. Why was I not consulted by email at least? I assume that you assume that as a William & Mary graduate I can read and write. Why the secrecy and stealth? I assume that your money raisers would prefer that I not re-write my Will, but I assure you that there will be no more checks until the Cross is respectfully returned to its rightful place.

I very much regret that your vague descriptions of hurt feelings and avoided Chapel-using remind me of the elaborate descriptions I read in civil depositions of phantom cars that are mysteriously responsible for collisions as opposed to the defendant. To paraphrase Voltaire, if the Wren Cross offends you, ask for its removal while your particular service is in progress - oh, dear, that was the rule, was it not? Are these offended students and/or parents unable to understand that a polite request is - or was when I was enrolled - the "norm" at William & Mary? If they are so unnerved by the mere sight of a cross, why are they or their children taking up space in a revered institution that was unafraid of Banastre Tarleton and Lord Cornwallis - or, for that matter, Ulysses Simpson Grant? Are those who shrink like Dracula at the sight of a cross expected to follow in the robust traditions of Thomas Jefferson and John Marshall?

I strongly urge you, Sir, to reconsider your most unfortunate decision. You are making our beloved alma mater a laughingstock. You are rewarding, indeed, in my opinion, encouraging intolerance and dysfunctional behavior. You are abetting in students who should be the next generation of American leaders the indulgence of extended adolescence - name me a rational adult who storms out of a Chapel tour because he espied a cross! Such public posturing is the mark of a spoiled school boy, not of a future governor, senator or president. Actually, haven't we produced several Presidents of the United States? Did any of them exit the Wren Chapel bawling that they were offended by a cross? Or were they too busy creating a nation?

I look forward to 2007 - the College's 314th year of service to humanity - with the Wren cross back in its place and the campus once more only in the news for its service to the nation.

Yours faithfully,

Elizabeth Gibbons, M.A., Graduate 1971