Dioxin Dorms Blog :: SUNY New Paltz

I MET with a couple of New Paltz students the other night to discuss the dioxin issue, and I explained to them a legal theory that pretty much sets the ground of the conversation.

The SUNY New Paltz administration is killing students. That is the basis of the whole discussion. They have a license to kill (state document 0549P by Drs. Kim and Hawley, dated July 1985). But killing is killing, if you have a hunting permit or not, and whether you use dioxin or an Uzi.

Under American law, a person has a right to self-defense in their own home, and to defend their family. In other words, if you’re a guest in my house, and an armed assailant breaks in and tries to assault you, I have a right and indeed a duty to disable or even kill the attacker if I need to, in order to protect us. I may be tried for manslaughter, but depending on the evidence, probably not.

I would argue (from a purely rhetorical standpoint, such as a law school debate) that that defending ourselves physically against SUNY administrators who poison students should be perfectly legal. It would be, after all, an act of self-defense. Every American understands that, right? Don’t half of us carry guns? Why do we have them? Well of course - self-defense; just in case.

That, however, is not why I have come to this planet as a writer. The pen is mightier than the sword, or the gun, and I am Quaker; we shun violence if we can, we walk out of wars, and we know there are better solutions. I personally never touch firearms. Gandhi proved that there is a better way. Many have demonstrated this same basic fact.

But let’s not forget that when we work on this issue, we are acting in self-defense. In working to close the dorms, we are working to stop premeditated mass murder. Oh, it’s the clean, friendly kind of murder; no blood is shed; nobody gets their clothes dirty, until the leukemia ward.

I would say that, respecting the value on human life, there are no limits on what we should do to get the students out of the dioxin dorms. We who are fighting the issue have agreed to play like ladies and gentlemen: with computers, notebooks, tape recorders and through using the political process. We have agreed to talk things through, even as the bad guys soak our friends with dioxin and PCBs. As this happens, we have to act like we have all the time in the world - in the face of an imminent threat.

Here is the problem. And it is a big one: it seems that nobody has the strength to get angry about this. Well, I do, and people think I’m weird. But I went to therapy, and I learned how to let my anger out, and how to turn it into power. I suggested to the students that we set up a Gestalt Therapy styled workshop with sticks and pillows and get in the mood to express our rage; to loosen up the chunks of ice, and let it out. To learn how to scream, to yell, cry about this, to feel the fear and the disgust, and process the rage and get free of it - so that we can work effectively however we need to do it.

Most of the students and student activists who are either contamination victims are what I would call docile. Nobody breaks a sweat. I have not seen anyone (besides me) raise their voice. I have not heard anyone (until I pressed them a few nights ago) so much as admit they are angry.

Well now, what are we going to get done, in that case? This is not a video game. I would propose that we need to express more emotion than when using a PlayStation.

Students who live in Bliss, Capen, Gage and Scudder halls: you may not be angry today. But if you are one of the unfortunate ones who ends up with cancer as a young adult, or sterile, or in agony from endometriosis, you will be angry then. Tap into it now, while it can do you some good.

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