50th anniversary letdown

Hi,

Three of us decided to go to the 50th anniversary weekend (August 7-10, 2014) coming from Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto. We did an overnighter in Otonabee on the Saturday night as were were in residence together in 76-77.

Though we had a great time visiting our old haunts, we were surprised that over the course of 24 hours we did not run into one person from this era - even at the pub crawl downtown!

On campus, though there seemed to lots of effort put into signage etc. the book store closed on Saturday at 4pm for the weekend. The Campus was virtually a ghost town on the Sunday, and in many ways it felt like a non event. I didn't think turning 50 would look so tired.

On Saturday, after we made a quick purchase in the book store before they closed at 4pm, we wandered over to the Bata Library to see the old furniture in the basement. That also closed at 4pm but someone was kind enough to let us in.

We then went to check out the BBQ and beer garden at the Athletic Centre – the BBQ was very unappealing – an assortment of salads baking in the hot afternoon sun and dried up burgers, chicken and wieners for $15.

And to get to the beer garden one had to pass 4 police officers – WTF? Were they expecting us to all get drunk and trash the place?

Sorry if I am sounding jaded but we have all grown up and I guess our expectations have as well.

Larry Peloso '75-78

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Combatting offensive language

Dear Editors,

Language is one of the most powerful ways of expressing ourselves. It can bring us to our knees or uplift us to the heavens.

Because we allow the use of certain words in our language, we keep people of the lower classes in our society belittled and without any self-esteem.

We all use these words and we all know the meaning of our expression.

Words such as loonie, retarded, bitch, squaw, old lady, whore come to mind. One is named after the dollar coin, it’s known as a double entendre, “a word with two meanings,” and we have done this deliberately in our own country.

If we must, we should see about making laws to protect people of the lower class against this kind of discrimination. I know it’s against the constitution, but I feel we have gone too far with the use of language and we have made our society angry, depressed, and stressed.

I would go so far as to say people commit suicide with this constant mood we have created.

Thanks for your time,

Robert M. Bowers