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In print | Published November 19, 2009

To the Editor:

We are writing in response to the column written by Soren Larson in the November 12 edition of The Phoenix. While we respect Mr. Larson’s opinions, we are disappointed by the factual inaccuracies, distortions and misunderstandings diffused throughout his analysis.

First: The chalkings to which Mr. Larson referred throughout his piece were not initiated by Class Awareness Month, or CAM.

Those responsible for the chalkings are not officially affiliated with CAM and they are not part of the CAM organizing committee.

Mr. Larson could have contacted the CAM organizers, whose contact information is posted around campus on our calendars, to ask if the chalkings were ours. Instead, he chose to jump to conclusions and wrongly attack CAM.

Second: Mr. Larson is correct that CAM invited Tyrone Boucher to campus on November 3, after receiving positive feedback on the workshop Mr. Boucher led during last year’s CAM. While it is true that Mr. Boucher’s agenda includes “resisting capitalism” and “fighting wealth inequality” and that these themes influence the way in which he facilitates his workshops, the main purpose of this discussion was for attendees to become more informed about their class privileges and their roles as class allies.

It is up to the individual attendees, each of whom has his or her own reasons for coming to the discussion, to decide whether they want to embrace Mr. Boucher’s political ideology. Mr. Larson would have been aware of all this had he attended the open event himself. Unfortunately, he did not.

It was also Mr. Larson’s error to thoughtlessly generalize the political agenda of one event facilitator as the theme of the whole month of events, which hadn’t even come to pass at the time his column was written.

Third: It appears that Mr. Larson has grossly misunderstood the purpose of Class Awareness Month. The CAM organizers each approach Class Awareness Month with their own politics and their own reasons for involvement, and this year’s events were not designed to promote a specific political agenda.

While CAM events do hope to address issues of inequality, we find it equally important to shed light on the structural social problems to which Mr. Larson referred, the notion that class is a “taboo” topic and more.

It was wrong for Mr. Larson to attribute a particular agenda to us without contacting us to ask about what our goals actually are.

It would have behooved Mr. Larson to engage in a dialogue with the Class Awareness Month organizers before publishing his column. As an economics major, he clearly has a deep interest in these issues. We cannot and do not intend to speak for the entire campus on class issues, and we would have welcomed him at any of our planning meetings, which were advertised earlier in the semester in RSD, or at any of our events.

Instead, Mr. Larson chose to criticize from afar, to refuse to attend our events, and to publish inaccuracies about our goals and our events. We are disappointed in Mr. Larson’s lack of thorough investigation. We are equally disappointed in The Phoenix for allowing Mr. Larson to publish so much misinformation in a well-read, public forum.
It is our hope that in the future, those who have questions or concerns about CAM will engage with us directly. Please see our calendars around campus for contact information and a full list of CAM events this November.

Kate Aizpuru ’10
Rosario Paz ’10
Hilary Pomerantz ’12
Class Awareness Month Planning Committee

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