I’ve never felt compelled before to write in to the Argus, but I feel there are many misconceptions and half-truths in Mytheos Holt’s latest column (“Mytheology: Where is your Vanguard Now?,” September 9, 2008, Volume CXLIV, Number 3) on the incidents at Fountain Avenue that occurred last May. My father was a professor at Wesleyan for over 30 years [Professor of Theater Fredrik deBoer], and I grew up on campus, so I have some insight into both the college and the community.
Holt’s portrayal of Middletown and its relationship with Wesleyan are both flatly wrong. Despite Holt’s implication that there is a contrast between liberal Wesleyan and conservative Middletown, Middletown is an extremely liberal community by any standards. Middletown is a Democratic stronghold in perhaps the bluest state in the country. Middletown was a union town before the manufacturing industry collapsed in the state, and remains a very diverse, progressive community. The town has a proud record of service to minorities and to the protection and support of artists and nonconformists, as a little basic research into the legal and municipal history of Middletown would demonstrate. Holt might also be served by doing a little research into the socioeconomic status of Middletown, which would contradict his notion that Middletown is a poor community. I take it, though, that research is not Holt’s forte.
What’s more, Holt’s portrayal of the police doesn’t fit the reality. Holt says that the conflict at Fountain Avenue was really about class conflict and resentment from the “proletarian” police towards the affluent Wesleyan students. Setting aside the fact that Marxist orthodoxy would never regard police officers of any stripe as proletarian, the average Middletown Police officer earns more than the national median income. All of them have college degrees. If Holt actually got to know some of them, rather than rendering them as crude stereotypes, he would learn that very many of them are in fact liberal, and quite accepting of nonconformists. They do have uniformly low opinions of people who break the law.
The fact of the matter is, Holt’s portrayal of a simmering “town versus gown” conflict is simply fantasy. I, like many Middletown residents, am indeed very often irritated by the way in which some Wesleyan students tend to view Middletown as a playground. But that is genuinely as far as this conflict is taken: irritation. Again, a little research into the history of Middletown/Wesleyan relations would show that, in context with other campus/community divides, the one between Middletown and Wesleyan is extraordinarily minor. The large majority of unrest on Wesleyan’s campus has historically been the product of students (like the 1990 firebombing of the president’s office).
To be blunt, Holt dramatically misrepresents both Middletown and Wesleyan to leverage his political position. We may all be working class proles here in Middletown, but I think some of us possess education enough to identify intellectual dishonesty when we see it.
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