The issue about the Native American English classes that are offered seems a bit trivial. Why are they needed? Here is what one of the staff writers wrote in the latest article ["Inclusion defeats class purpose," Oct. 11], and I quote, the class is needed "to make Native Americans feel more comfortable and less isolated from students due to their ethnic background."
So let me get this straight. East Asians don't come from just as different of an ethnic background as Native Americans? Or anyone from the Middle East? Or even Europeans? Why don't we just tell the Native Americans they are different, put them in a group together in order to segregate them some more, and promote it as a class to help them feel comfortable in college while away from home?
If I remember correctly, part of the college experience is learning to deal with life partially on your own, with limited or no help from your family. It's called growing up. By putting these students in a "comfort zone," and allowing them to take a class specifically made for Native Americans, these students will find it even more difficult to assimilate into the college lifestyle.
Adam Thomas
-ASU Student
Professor of English class under FIRE speaks up
Of late, much ado has been made about my first-year composition courses offered for Native American students. Aided by the wisdom and insight of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, I have now come to see how very wrong I was in ever offering such a class.
With the help of FIRE, I see now that non-Native students were deprived of being in such a class, and I grieve for them. Never mind that our department offers literally dozens of sections of first-year composition each semester, I know that many non-Native students wanted desperately to be in these two Native American themed sections. And I wrongly deprived them of that right.
I have also been helped to see that such classes are totally unnecessary. I foolishly thought these classes might help those Native American students who chose to be in them to feel less isolated and alone on a huge campus. Silly me. In my ignorance, I did not understand that ASU has fraternities and sororities for that very purpose.
And finally, I did not understand that, after 500 years of this nation's brutal history of unforgivable treatment of Native Americans, my little composition classes were dangerously discriminatory and unconstitutional.
I stand humbled and corrected.
G. Lynn Nelson
-ASU Associate Professor/English
If you have an opinion you'd like to make heard, e-mail a letter to the editor. Just type "Letters.Editor" in the subject line and send it to letters.editor@asu.edu.
