Daniel Webster’s speech on the Bunker Hill Monument has something to say to us about our resistance to OneLIU. In his remembrance of the fight on Bunker Hill, he told how the empire of Britain closed the port of Boston. Some people in the day expected to benefit from this closure. “The temptation to profit by the punishment of Boston was strongest to our neighbors of Salem. Yet Salem was precisely the place where this miserable proffer was spurned, in a tone of the most lofty self-respect and the most indignant patriotism.”
I now think back to the OneLIU change that rightly offended and upset so many good athletes and students. The football players might be expected to rejoice at the Division I change. But I hear that many are upset on behalf of their fellow athletes and realistically feel that they may not be able to sustain the level of intensity needed to be a Division I player. If that‘s true, I think it speaks well of them. They care about their fellow athletes and are clear-sighted about the spuriousness of this new “benefit.”
I speak as a student senator, a reporter, and, first and foremost, a student who has developed bonds of friendship with faculty and fellow students.
I am not an athlete, but I perceive this change as but one in a long line of questionable consolidations and retrenchments and mergers that I have witnessed. And the timing and the assault of the announcements are odious.
It is out of my bond to Post and to the green and gold that I speak.
Athletes, I stand with you. Your professors stand by you. Your fellow athletes from other teams stand by you. The students, who have developed friendships and relationships with you, stand with you.
You are not alone. If you stand strong, you will endure.
Sincerely,
Anand Venigalla
Features Editor of The Pioneer
Senator-at-Large of Student Government Association
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