Letters to the Editor

Appreciate Student Health To the Editor:

While I sympathize with Rebecca Blatt, her indictment of the entire Student Health Service ("A complaint for the Student Health Service," The Daily Pennsylvanian, 2/22/02) is inappropriate. In any clinic that caters to 20,000-plus students, there will inevitably be errors and delays. It is neither fair nor accurate to use those to question the professionalism of providers or declare SHS care to be "substandard," and doing so demonstrates incredible naivete. Readers should weigh Blatt's anecdotal assertion that SHS has a problem "treating patients" with the fact that over 90 percent of patients have rated their SHS treatment as good or excellent.

Mistakes do happen. They happen in "real world" clinics too and there you have to pay for them. Only at Penn, however, are we self-important enough to denigrate hard-working clinicians when we have one bad experience or have to wait 15 minutes to see a doctor when we show up without an appointment.

The SHS clinicians are dedicated, underpaid and enthusiastic providers that truly care about their patients. In my experience as the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly chairman, SHS Director Evelyn Wiener has been one of the administrators most interested in student concerns and in working diligently for students. To anyone who knows the SHS clinical staff, Blatt's empty conclusions that no one at SHS cares are preposterously wide off the mark.

Clearly, Blatt's experience was regrettable. But perhaps the thousands of students who use SHS and are satisfied with their care will make their voices heard. Perhaps, we should stop taking SHS for granted. Perhaps, we should stop blaring our horn whenever things do not go exactly our way all the time, and start offering constructive suggestions for change. Tens of millions of people would give anything to have a place like SHS. That some people don't appreciate this tells me that many of us still have a lot of growing up to do, before the real world gives us a swift and deserved kick in our spoiled behinds.

Christopher Leahy

Law '02

The writer is chairman of the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly. Reparations not the way To the Editor:

On Friday, I attended the Penn Forum panel discussion about reparations for slavery ("Horowitz stirs controversy at forum," DP, 2/25/02). At the outset, guest panelist David Horowitz indicated that the discussion would eventually get far afield, as such controversial subjects often do.

Well, it did, and the reasons are obvious.

Slavery reparations, by definition, are about monetary compensation for the victims of a system of forced labor in Southern states from the 1680s until 1865. The panelists and audience in Vance Hall introduced issues as diverse as Jim Crow laws, discriminatory government housing polices in the 20th century and school vouchers for students in failed inner city schools into the fray.

But the only question germane to this debate is do the people of the United States have a moral obligation to pay the slaves for their labor? If so, should the descendants of those enslaved receive the compensation? If reparations for slavery are to be paid, justice for all demands that all slaves included those who were freed or had escaped from the 1680s to 1865 be compensated.

The struggle of many African Americans in the country is saddening. But the racism and discrimination prevalent in America since 1865 has no bearing on the issue of slavery reparations. Blacks in America today do not suffer from slavery: the practice of forced labor was abolished in 1865. They suffer from the racism and discrimination of whites in power, among many other human and social factors.

Whether we pay the descendants of former slaves for the forced labor of their ancestors or not, we must address and resolve the social ills that plague American society. But these problems were not caused by slavery and cannot be resolved by making monetary payments to select African Americans who are descendants of slaves.

Philip Nahrgang

Political Science Department

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