[I, though absolutely through with this school, would like to publish this letter, originally written in October during the aftermath of a Fire Safety raid on myself and my boyfriend, in response to the recent string of attacks committed against Buddhist House, formerly in the charge of my very dear friend.]

Dear Fire Safety,

You don’t make me feel safe; you don’t protect me in any way. I’ve known for a while that you are useless – a branch of authority to be dealt with twice a year by hiding violations from sight. But I found out on Tuesday, as I watched you turn in the person whom I love more than anyone in the world to the Middletown Police, that you are worse than useless: you are evil. I watched you smile as you took your pictures for evidence, apparently taking pleasure in the act of destroying a student’s future (you are so lucky that ze doesn’t receive federal financial aid, because you might have destroyed hir present, not that you care). I heard you lie to me and to the police about opening that drawer; I know you opened it, because we knew you were coming that day and planned accordingly. I heard you ask the police to search our entire house, hoping that they would find evidence with which to crush every one of us, to make all of us suffer – but luckily the police decided to protect us from YOU. 

Why is your worthless department arbitrarily given limitless authority over students’ lives? How can you possibly be acting in the interest of the University by ensuring a criminal record for a University Scholar with a 3.87 GPA, a compassionate, self-sacrificing person who could have been a fantastic politician? More importantly, how can you be acting in your own interest by making every single student on this campus fear and HATE you?

You must know that, according to the Campus Firewatch website, nine fatalities have resulted from fires in on-campus residences (excluding fraternities) across this country since 2000. Do those nine deaths in eight years provide justification for you to search our residences – in which we are forced to live by a money-grubbing administration – twice a year? Are you really thinking about those nine deaths when you open the top drawers of our desks to search for “violations?” When you waste taxpayer money and police time by demanding that MPD respond to “garbage” – for that was the term used by one officer to describe the personal amount of marijuana and the two items of paraphernalia which you found in my love’s top drawer – are you really thinking about our safety? How many students’ reputations must you permanently damage in order to protect us from fire? More than nine? You’ve accomplished that in this semester alone.

You must have some sort of personal vendetta against the students of this school. Is one of your responsibilities as “Safety Coordinator” to act as a police informant? NO! You had no right to search that top drawer! Furthermore, when you discovered the contents of that drawer, you were under no obligation to call the police!!! The Code of Non-Academic Conduct states that “the University makes no attempt to shield members of the Wesleyan community from the law, nor does it intervene in legal proceedings against a member of the community,” but nowhere does it state that you, as a representative of the University, are required to hand students over to the State of Connecticut for punishment. You seem to have completely missed the irony of Orwell’s 1984. Because of you, I consider my own school to be a more fearsome enemy than fire. 

You must be held accountable; Michael Roth should review your actions, because you are a liability. You have subjected an extraordinary human being to humiliation and ruin, costing hir time (court date, community service), money (lawyer’s fees, fines) and hir clean record (which, under the Patriot Act, can never be reclaimed). You are driving away at least three customers of this institution, costing the University $75,000.00 in tuition money (we’ve all chosen the route of Early Completion to escape this engorged bureaucracy) and an incalculable amount in future donations. Finally, you have wasted time and resources of the MPD, for whom busting Wesleyan students in possession of personal amounts of marijuana is certainly not a priority.

Sincerely,

Toni Latimer