I would first like to commend The Campanil on an eloquent, well-stated opinion piece in its Feb. 11 edition. You really captured many of the sentiments floating around this campus.
As president of the Mills Students for Barack Obama, I would also like to extend a special thank you for acknowledging our role on the Mills campus. Though not “official,” that Mills and the Obama campaign can remain unhindered by fiscal laws, we still form an important body on this campus. We encourage the Fem Dems, but respectfully decline to join due to many of our members’ identification as Independents and our sole purpose of supporting the Obama presidential campaign. We ask that these differences be respected, celebrated, and supported by both the administration and student body.
I was, however, disheartened to read the opinion piece, which discussed our extensive activities on campus, but then see absolutely no pictures or mention of them elsewhere. We were interviewed at our tabling on Jan. 30 and had our photos taken, as well as at our Super Tuesday Party, but no mention of those events was ever made. We hope to have more equal representation in the future.
Our group has experienced the tension alluded to in the opinion piece, but would simply like to state that it is time that we are recognized as a large consensus on this campus, and whether or not we are considered “official” has no bearing on that whatsoever.
I am calling on all students, pro-Clinton or pro-Obama or pro-anyone, to let their voices be heard equally, responsibly, and without the constraints imposed by our refusal to recognize that people in this country can and should be allowed to remain loyal to their racial group, gender identification, and class.
We in the Obama camp feel that this impulse to vote off of race or gender is mostly media-created, but I myself am voting off of these issues and have no qualms in sharing this: I don’t like Sen. Clinton’s rhetoric toward illegal immigrants and we are of very different economic backgrounds and Feminist schools. Each of these identities defines our political preferences and much of our perceptions of the American Dream. Celebrating these facts is, after all, the American-and Mills-way.
