Dear Editor,
While reading the right hand page of the opinion section of the Tufts Daily this Tuesday, I was greeted by a dignified and well-worded article on The Primary Source. The Primary Source, despite campus reputation as a "notorious" publication, does have a right to publish on campus.
However, it is not The Primary Source I am concerned by. To the right, a Tufts student engaged in outrageous attacks on the homeless. She referred to them as "hobos," a derogative term, and displayed an uncanny ignorance of the real world. I ask the author whether she has been homeless or ever experienced near-homelessness. The man has evidently lived in the basement on and off for 13 years, harmless and unobtrusive, desperate for shelter from the elements. Although he does not have a legal right to be there, the homeless man is human. He has inherent self-worth like all people. I find it reprehensible for the author to have such a callous disregard for human kindness or even a slight degree of sympathy. The sarcasm, condescension and disgust evident in the tone of the article indicates a disconnect from the unhappy facts of the world, a problem endemic in parts of the student body. There are more homes than homeless in America. Many homeless people suffer mental illness and disability. Many are veterans, mothers, fathers, children, abandoned and alone.
Rather than concern for the homeless man and his plight, the author felt concern for herself and her housemates - understandable but reprehensible. She called this man a "horror." She ignorantly used a term that is loaded with connotations: "an underground railroad of homeless folk." To compare men and women who have nothing, who have few if anyone left, to "horrors" and to allege that they are similar to slaves displays the worst in the human psyche: apathy and antipathy to the weak and oppressed of the world. What right does a privileged student have to criticize some of the most vulnerable people on the Earth? Who is she, or any of us, to judge these men and women, who undergo a cycle of suffering and misery?
Sincerely,
Benjamin Hosking
