Petty complainers lose sight of true suffering
Letter to the Editor
Please forgive me for the reactionary nature of this article. Please forgive its seemingly ad hominem appearance as well. It is not intended as an attack on any one individual author. Nor is it an attack on an entire student body. It is simply an expression of my concern for and dismay at the superficial and ungrateful nature of writing that I have often seen elicited from members of a student body that is so blessed to be at this school.
Though I have often been angered and even disgusted by what I have read in our school's newspaper, I have seldom felt that an article so strongly warranted rebuke as "Who needs an Alarm Clock?" by Maureen Smithe on Tuesday, August 31. This article typifies and epitomizes everything that has disturbed me about a certain type of narrow-minded writing in The Observer. I'm tired of hearing over-privileged college students ridicule the wonderful and pleasant women in the cafeteria for the way they look. I am tired of hearing them scoff at the food we are all so blessed to have. And I will not stand by as an idle witness to an assault on the work of men and women making an honest living by keeping this campus the beautiful place that it is.
As to Smithe, I'm sorry to hear that each morning she is torn from her cocoon of suburban luxuries by the rude grunts and groans of waking reality. Unfortunately, we on this campus live under the constant barrage of harsh realities like the beeping of concrete trucks. Much to our dismay, "slate-roofed and marble floored buildings" don't just materialize out of thin air like a pink-ribboned Mercedes on the driveway for Sweet 16.
There are good reasons for such an early start for construction work, not the least of which is to minimize the harsh effects of the "generous and abundant August heat" in which these men and women labor. Smithe of all people should sympathize because it is the same heat in which she so loathes to sleep. Imagine spending the rest of your life doing eight hours of backbreaking work, six days a week, just to make ends meet. Then perhaps premature awakenings by these "piercing" intrusions would not seem so insufferable.
I have no air-conditioning in my home. This summer there were four different major construction sites within a single block of where I live. My windows remained opened as the screams of jackhammers and concrete saws shook me from sleep each morning. While she was enjoying the "comfort of my own fluffy bed and the security of my pink painted room,'' I was listening to hard working men and women making a little bit of noise in order to hold the structures of our society together. My antidote to this slight disturbance was an understanding that we live in a world that requires constant maintenance and often times the casualty of this reality is our convenience.
Moreover, I was most grotesquely appalled by her conscription of the word "suffering" to further her message. Using it as she does, "We are suffering here," she blasphemes the very meaning of the word and insults all those in the world who are truly in pain. If the loss of a few precious minutes of sleep justifies the usage of so grave a term in her mind, then I truly pity her. I can only hope that this was written in jest.
For too many of us, when confronted with the facts of life after two decades that have been draped in luxuries and conveniences, we have built no immunity to them and recoil at the their "jagged" manifestations. However, I believe the problem at hand is not so much the lack of "respect for the community and the needs within it" as a gross lack of perspective. So, to all of you past and future authors of assaults and pronouncements of grievances upon the imperfections and inconveniences of campus life at the University of Notre Dame, buy some earplugs (I've got plenty of extras), shut your windows, go to bed a little earlier, or put a pillow over your head. But next time you feel like haranguing your readers with the excruciation of the inconveniences that plague your existence, please stop and consider those in the world who are truly suffering.
Chris Donovan
All Viewpoint Stories for Friday, September 3, 1999
