Letter to the editor

I'm an ACC student and I recently got a bulk e-mail message about "ACC Emergency Preparedness Week." One particular line bothered me: "There is no harm in reporting something. You know the saying – It's better to be safe than sorry."

I take some umbrage to the notion that "there is no harm in reporting something." Students of history know that there are plenty of examples where there is harm in reporting something. I'm not so hyperbolic as to compare the ACC faculty and staff to the Stasi or the Gestapo, organizations which encouraged their citizens to inform on one another (oops, I just did). I don't appreciate the culture of fear being promulgated by ACC staff in this message.

The threat of terrorism in Austin is quite small, but to behave as if terrorists are lurking around a community college is, ipso facto, allowing the few actual terrorists a psychological victory. Besides, when terrorism does occur in Austin, such as when Joe Stack flew a plane into government offices only a few miles from my home in North Austin, the local leadership largely refused to call it terrorism for plainly racist and nativist reasons.

I would hope to see ACC, a traditionally liberal institution in a traditionally liberal city, take a stand against the terrorism-obsessed zeitgeist. To do otherwise strikes me as profoundly reactionary, not befitting our progressive culture here in Austin."

-Anonymous