November 17, 1998
E-mail a Response
Objective Objections
Opinion
A dangerous trend has emerged in the opinion pages of The Sun. People are abusing freedom of speech and using illegitimate information to promote their causes. Students whip out unilateral manifestos that twist and ignore the other side, while hard facts are misunderstood and propagated for the general community to discuss at the dinner table. This policy of excluding fact from opinion is starting to have tangible consequences, and must be put in check.
Last Friday, someone wrote a letter to the editor urging the community to adopt "the utmost concern" towards Cornell's proposal to cool its buildings with water from Cayuga Lake. The author hoped that "wiser and more rational members of the University [will] realize that this cooling experiment contradicts the very principles and standards that Cornell is renowned for."
For all the "wise rationality" the author hoped to impart to us, she didn't bother to take a look at the substantial research that had already been done into the project.
In reality, the proposal was deemed ecologically harmless not only by the Cornell administration, but also by the City of Ithaca, an independent engineering consulting firm, an independent committee of scientists and any member of Cornell's ecology and systematics faculty that was asked.
Of course these facts are weak against the intoxication of saving the planet and fighting the powers that be. Yet while groups still speak out against lake source cooling in newspapers and meetings - delaying the process and distracting the masses - the University remains stuck with its current system, which pumps coal and CFCs into the environment. The fish and plants have no thanks for the activists who are trying to save them.
This spectacle is not unique to the hyperactivity of Ithaca - there are many national cases of misinformed commitment. One of the most poignant examples is the public's resistance to NASA's Cassini mission. The objection to this Saturn-bound probe was that it was powered by radioactive plutonium, two words that freak people out. What if the rocket went off course and crashed into Disney World?
No matter how many studies NASA did to promise the public a safe mission, anti-nuke protesters held their hands to their ears in the name of a higher morality. They ignored the final two-foot-thick document affirming the mission's safety and the million-to-one odds of the rocket going off course. Both were verified by the White House, the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Federation of American Scientists. Protestors continued their activity, holding vigils, occupying government buildings and smearing cow shit on a senator's house.
NASA ended up having to blow $50 million of our cash on lawyers because of the ignorance of some misdirected do-gooders. It sucks, because these activists are people with hearts of gold, that actually care about the world. With the guidance of a little information, they could be heat-seeking missles for all kinds of good causes. Instead, they throw themselves between the cogs of the few machines that are actually doing something useful.
But back to the perils of campus misinformation. A couple weeks ago Robert Cohen, a vegan activist, addressed the campus on the health risks of dairy in his talk titled Milk: The Deadly Poison. He made several warnings about BGH and other hazards that were then amplified by vegan activists in Sun letters.
Fortunately, Cornell freshman Kathleen Cody and Animal Science Chair Alan Bell wrote follow-ups disrobing this charlatan that has neither experience nor credibility in any scientific community. Still, the initial misinformation got to people that might have missed the next day's letters revealing the truth.
Another recent letter to the editor addressed free speech. The author said it was an Orwellian nightmare that the police had banned an animal rights activist from going near Comstock Hall after what he called a "peaceful, democratic protest". Yet there was no mention of the fact that the banned activist used physical force in trying to enter the classroom.
And a column last week, amazingly, criticized affirmative action as racist toward minorities for Òdenying younger people the chance to see others reaching high positions. No reference was made to the considerable scientific evidence that affirmative action has greatly enhanced the economic status of minorities.
Political-types consistently give their ideas the handicap of a one-sided presentation. They try and twist their agendas into our acceptance, as if their ideas wouldn't hold up to honest scrutiny. Since an informed majority will not accept their ideal, they are forced to rely on misinformation to advance their cause.
This is not democracy and this is not the role that The Sun's pages four and five should serve. Unlike the opponents of the lake-source cooling proposal and the Cassini space mission, Cornellians are willing to recognize facts when they are given to us.
When letters or columnists are ignorant or purposefully one-sided, trash the hell out of them. Since we're stuck here with a Bill of Rights that indulges any communication, no matter how much it compromises our quest for an honest dialogue, it's now up to us to filter out the noise and get to the underlying truth.
Nathan Wilson is a senior in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. The North Façade appears every Monday.
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