Four men enter a room and immediately walk to the back, suspicious of those who sit in front of them. They have reason to be, considering the hostile and distrustful glares pointed in their direction. Without hesitation, or provocation from either side, both begin to attack, with neither sure who fired first. And a war, not with guns, but misguided words has broken out.
When we were in grade school a common question we asked, “Why do we study history? It isn’t going to help us when we grow up.” Then the teacher or a parent usually replies, “We study history, so we can learn from our mistakes.” It seems that the students who attended the Hunter Brookdale Council Meeting on Wednesday, September 25 paid little attention to this lesson. Because if they had, they would have realized that most wars start over a petty misunderstanding, that could have been resolved through rational communication.
The battle took place between the Council and United Student Government. The government accused Tim Schiavone, the Councils leading candidate for Brookdale Commissioner of making insensitive comments toward the Haitian population. Schiavone denied that his comments were racially insensitive. Here is where a misunderstanding flared into much more, with both sides taking drastic steps toward the other. USG distributing a letter at the polls, and the Council accusing USG of bullying them, and trying to take away their power. Like in most disputes both sides were a little right and a little more wrong. Here is what they had to say.
“He was trying to give an example of why he and the Brookdale Council were not interested, He said ‘you know the envoy covers stories that have to do with the Haitian communities, Me and the people of the Brookdale Council don’t care about that, we’re not worried about that,”’ said Rachel LaForest of USG. “Now there were three Haitian students sitting in that room, myself and two of my staff were sitting in that room, and I took great offense to that. Because someone who is going to represent what this body believes in and what this body is for them that off handish attitude about things that are very real in peoples lives. How could you not care?”
During the meeting a noticeably disturbed Schiavone said, “I apologize with the deepest apology I can give. I never meant anything bad about the people of Haitian decent. And I feel if the conflict continues, I’m ruined as a student. I think I’ve lost my respect.”
