More Letters

It is clear from the latest response from President Nichol that he continues to deny his original, arbitrary decision was just plain wrong. I believe he should be pressed to answer specifically what problem he sees with the policy that has prevailed for the past 200 plus years. It is deferential to those who may find the cross offensive, by removing it on those infrequent occasions. Furthermore, I doubt there are more than a handful of visitors, students and alumni that have complained. I find it perplexing and troubling that secularists wish to impose their minority views on the majority in a democratic society. It’s a basic tenet of our democracy and fundamental to the rule of law.

If President Nichol refused to reverse his decision, I strongly recommend the matter be elevated to the Board of Visitors for their review and ultimate decision. I hope President Nichol would want to avoid that potentially embarrassing step, and admit the longstanding previous policy satisfies all parties. It would be a noble and applauded decision, avoid further acrimony, and put the issue to rest.

Michael Kirby

******

This ordeal reminds me of a Malcolm Muggeridge quote.  See below
 
Fight the good fight !
 
W. Clay Asbury, Jr.
Richmond
 
 
 "So the final conclusion would seem to be that whereas other civilizations had been brought down by attacks of barbarians from without, ours had the unique distinction of training its own destroyers at its own educational institutions and providing them with facilities for propagating their destructive ideology far and wide, all at the public expense.
 
Thus did Western man decide to abolish himself, creating his own boredom out of his own affluence, his own vulnerability out of his own strength, his own impotence out of his own erotomania; himself blowing the trumpet that brought the walls of his own city tumbling down.
 
And having convinced himself that he was too numerous, labored with pill and scalpel and syringe to make himself fewer, until at last, having educated himself into imbecility and polluted and drugged himself into stupefaction, he keeled over, a weary, battered old brontosaurus, and became extinct."