LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Eating Disorders Fostered

To the Editor: Jeffrey's paragraph that began, "let's walk by My Favorite Muffin on the way to class," makes very light of the obsession of many girls living with anorexia to, as Jeffrey puts it, "keep that figure nice and trim." In fact, to many of these girls, those "two pieces of lettuce" at lunch may be too much and make them feel too guilty. This situation is far from a joke and is just as I stated, an obsession. It is an obsession that these girls live with every minute of every day of their lives that can continue until it reaches a point where it is a threat to their existence. Jeffrey's discussion of the "same herd of sorority girls on stairmasters," is again another lighthearted attempt to make a mockery of another aspect of the obsession. Perhaps if Jeffrey and others were to look a little more closely, they would see that these are probably the same girls seen running, aerobicizing and biking at least once and more often two or three times a day. The issue for these girls isn't how entertaining the workout is, a point Jeffrey questions, but how many calories and how much fat it burns. This problem is far from just a "sorority girl's" problem (a term Jeffrey uses to group these girls together). Instead it is a problem for our entire campus from freshmen to seniors, Greeks to non-Greeks. It is something that I have seen strike and eternally wound the strongest of my friends. Anorexia and bulimia may seem incomprehensible to many, but that doesn't make it any less your problem. These diseases may just as easily strike a friend, family member or a girlfriend. So to Jeffrey and others who find it easy to make light of the many obsessional aspects of the disease, think next time you speak because your jokes, whether intentionally harmful or not, are one of the many roots of the problem. KRISTIN NEWMAN College '97 Unfounded Racist Accusations To the Editor: Let me see if I understand Paula Odysseos' guest column of November 8, "Crossing the Racial Divide." Perhaps I am missing something. What I understand is that a group of black women decided to begin a celebration at 11:30 p.m. on a school night. They chose to do so in a location, outside High Rise North, where they knew that hundreds of Penn students would hear the celebration. Being Penn students, they had to know that their celebration would be disturbing at best and infuriating at worst. Having provoked hundreds of students, Ms. Odysseos and her friends are dismayed and insulted that the people who were provoked responded as they did. Feeling no guilt on her own part, and seeing no error on the part of the other provocateurs, she labels both the high rise students and the Penn environment as racist. In addition, she compares this premeditated, public conduct of the celebrants with drunken behavior inside fraternity houses or at least not in a location selected for its high density occupancy. She labels the behavior of her cohorts as a celebration of "cultural heritage and identity" in order to make it more palatable than ordinary or drunken rowdiness. "Racism" has to be defined in terms of unjustified and unprovoked views or conduct directed at a group solely because of the race of its members. By such definition, there is no racism here on the part of the High Rise North residents. Finally, there are two premises that Ms. Odysseos raises, which I cannot accept: 1. That only white residents of High Rise North were disturbed and responded. 2. The residents who responded knew that the celebrants were black. Some probably knew, but most others, particularly on upper floors, could not distinguish black from white at 11:30 at night. In any event, charges of racism are serious charges. To Ms. Odysseos, I say when making such charges, make sure that you speak from a position of strength and logic. Do not try to justify offensive behavior and please don't join those mindless souls who believe that every put down of such behavior has racist overtones. Charles Mangan College '65 Irresponsible Journalism To the Editor: As one of the organizers of the Clinique protest, I am appalled by the DP's lack of journalistic standards. The article "Demonstrators decry Clinique" (DP, 11/20/95) had little to do with the truth. We just "wanted to protest?something"? We "met for a three-week period, discussing issues and hoping to pinpoint exactly what problem needed to be addressed most"? Was your creative writing staff feeling rambunctious Sunday evening? These statements are simply not true. We were complaining one afternoon, over lunch, about the Clinique counter, and we decided that it would more effective to actually do something, instead of simply complain about it. As simply a group of individuals, as opposed to an organization, it did take us a number of meetings to plan the event -- but the meetings described in the article in which we tried to find "something" to protest are entirely fictional. While our methods were non-standard, we all felt passionately enough about both the importance of emphasizing education and women's issues to spend some of what little free time we had to try to draw attention to important questions: Is it appropriate to have a make up counter in the bookstore? Where do Penn's priorities lie: education or economics? Why do so many of us consider make up a necessity? The belittling of our efforts through irresponsible journalism was both personally insulting and a disservice to the Penn community. Josh Marcus College '98