Professor Joanne Cornwell attempts to link the threatening hate note found on a library copy machine to Proposition 209. She claims, “The passage of 209 is making people feel like they are not wanted while at the same time providing an atmosphere where racist individuals can come out and exclude others” (The Daily Aztec, Nov. 22-24, 1996). It does indeed seem understandable that some may “feel like they are not wanted” in the post-election climate.

But Professor Cornwell should consider an alternative hypothesis as to the origin of that climate and the cause of such feelings. Perhaps they are a consequence not of Proposition 209’s passage, but rather a year’s worth of lies, distortions, personal attacks and hatemongering by the anti-209 forces. Certainly there is nothing in Proposition 209 itself or in the literature of the pro-209 campaign that suggests or implies the rejecting or excluding of anyone. On the other hand, the steady drumbeat of charges by ministers, politicians, professors, university presidents, NOW, NAACP, MEChA, CFA, ACLU, etc., that 209 is deceptive, unfair, unjust, racist, sexist, xenophobic, etc., cannot have failed to influence some impressionable individuals who did not have the time to study the issue carefully and independently.

We can forgive or at least ignore the puerile antics of “brownshirt,” flag-burning students so long as they do not violate the fire code. But adults who use inflammatory demagoguery must be held responsible for its consequences. Vocal participants in the anti-209 campaign should accept responsibility for the climate that their rhetoric has created as well as for the asocial behavior stimulated by that climate instead of attempting to blame these things on the public’s resounding reaffirmation of the letter and spirit of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Campus authorities apparently have no evidence of a connection between Proposition 209 and the hate note found in the library. The sort of person who would write such a thing certainly has, however, a lot in common with the persons who paid a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan $4,000 to come to CSU Northridge. So maybe there is a connection.

Stuart H. Hurlbert

Professor of Biology