Fence posts

Your article on fencing at Boston College (“On the Strip,” by Tim Czerwienski, Winter 2009) needs a correction. I don’t know when fencing began on the Heights, but I do know that it wasn’t in 1991, as stated. I was co-captain (with Joe Delaney ’44) of the fencing team in 1943, and I also fenced during my junior year. The Sub Turri yearbook from 1943 contains a photo of the team.

Yale Richmond ’43
Washington, D.C.

A review of Sub Turri shows that the Boston College fencing team existed as far back as 1930. Meanwhile, there’s fresh news to report: On February 22, 2009, the BC men’s fencing team won the New England championship, beating MIT 85 to 82. Boston College women placed second to MIT’s women, scoring 92 points to MIT’s 96.

I was on the fencing team all four years at Boston College, and was happy to see the informative article in BCM about the sport and the photo essay from the Fencing Beanpot. I flew out from Chicago to attend the meet, as I had not seen Coach Syd Fadner in several years. There was fan support for the athletes, and it was nice to reconnect and reminisce with other fencing alumni.

Seeing our team continue to have success makes me proud to have represented Boston College as an athlete. I wish Coach Fadner, the team, and the rest of BC athletics the best of luck. Go Eagles!

Richard T. Klein, III ’02
Chicago, Illinois

Thank you for your recent article on the BC fencing team. It is good to know that this fantastic sport continues to flourish at Boston College.

Corban Rhodes ’04 (men’s foil)
New York, New York

Many of my fondest memories from BC are from my hours spent practicing, traveling, and competing as a member of the men’s fencing team. Fencing is one of the few sports in which men and women regularly practice and travel together. This created a unique dynamic and camaraderie, and our team truly felt like a family.

Coach Fadner has a style of leadership that is at once quiet and motivating (Syd doesn’t need a whistle). She inspired each of us to practice longer and harder, and taught us to believe in our ability to win, even if our opponent was an Olympian (as many were).

While captain of the team my junior year, I had the pleasure of accepting for the team the sword that served as the New England championship trophy. I am proud that it will always be part of Boston College’s collection.

Sean Sinclair ’99
Arlington, Virginia

Reading the article about BC fencing brought back memories from the time my classmates and I, with no fencing experience, formed a fencing club out of a class taught by Lillian Aylward. Coach Syd joined us and transformed us into a varsity team my senior year. Since then, BC fencers have won individual and team awards at tournaments at many levels. What’s even more amazing is that Coach Syd looks no different in the picture on page 27 from when she coached me.

Geoffrey Chan, MD, ’92
Malvern, Pennsylvania

It’s elementary

Discussing the Boston Connects program in “Couterpoint” (Winter 2009) William Bole said, “There’s no case . . . of a major school system taking such a program system wide after the pilot project has run its course.” Evidently, Mr. Bole is not aware that in 1989 Boston University took its program of enrichment system wide in the Chelsea, Massachusetts, schools, regarding medical care, dental care, nutritional support, the launching of an early school system for children age three and above, and an intergenerational literacy project for the benefit of parents in that largely foreign-speaking community. Every public school and every public school child in the system was included.

Boston College should be complimented on the benefits accruing to children through the Boston Connects program. It is splendid.

John Silber
Boston, Massachusetts

The writer is president emeritus of Boston University.

Once upon a time, long ago, BCM touched the sides of the well-known piece “Why Johnny Can’t Read” [published as a book by Rudolf Flesch, in 1955]. You know what? Johnny still can’t read, in 2009. You know why? The nonsense that passes for public education in America—look no farther than the Boston Public Schools. It is not about programs lacking, or money lacking. It is simply the gross inadequacies of teachers to import what was once being done quite successfully until the generation of the 1970s.

I was taught by nuns who refused to accept student failure. They were paid miserably, worked unbelievable hours, handled all kinds of extracurricular assignments and taught me how to read, write, think critically and analytically, and master math and science.

Dan Sullivan ’67
Bedford, New Hampshire

Tough love

I would like to suggest to Mark Massa, SJ, author of “Born Again” (Winter 2009), that Catholic kids have a simplistic view of whom and what they believe because the Church isn’t teaching them.

The Sisters of Mercy educated me during my formative years. They told me clearly and often that God expects me to live his Word and continue his work of redemption.

Instead of serving as an opportunity to encourage Catholics to follow Christ’s example and confront the moral decay in the world, Sunday Mass has become a “feel good” experience. “Vote your conscience” is the closest the Catholic clergy comes to reminding us of our responsibility to make the world a better place. But without providing Catholics with the values upon which to build an informed conscience, those words are meaningless.

The Church seems content with preserving the institution regardless of whether it is fulfilling the purpose for which Christ established it. After all, if Catholics are challenged, their financial contributions could dry up.

My parents were my toughest critics, but my mother always ended with, “I am only correcting you because I love you.” The Church has thrown in the towel on parenting, and Catholics, like spoiled children, hold to any value system that is comfortable. No wonder Catholicism is in trouble. Any system will fail when the children are in control.

Liz Madden, NC’63
Chester Springs, Pennsylvania

Mark Massa, SJ, wants to find ways for Catholics to have a born-again experience because he knows it would revitalize the Church. After years spent as a Catholic, something was missing from my connection with God, but I didn’t know what it was. I did not want to leave my Catholic roots, but the Church did not offer spiritual growth. I wondered why there was no Bible study, no evangelical preaching, no fellowship—all things that were present in the early Church. I found the Catholic Church had become a place of empty rituals performed by clergy lacking fervor, and I could not stay.

God finds you in the midst of your spiritual crisis, which is what happened to me, and I became born again. To become born again, one must want God in one’s life and ask God to come and take over that life. Just as St. Paul told Timothy to stir up the faith that was in him, Catholics need to stir up their own faith.

Joan Dahlen, NC’60
Bridgeport, Connecticut

Mark Massa, SJ, writes,”to be Catholic between 1800 and 1960 in America was not unlike being Amish in Pennsylvania or Mormon in Utah.” Later, Massa refers to “the dissolution of the American Church ghetto.”

I must be missing something. Is not the Catholic Church universal? Is there a separation of some type between the American Catholic Church and the rest of the Church?

Vito Tamboli ’56
St. Louis, Missouri

Storm surge

During my sophomore year at Boston College, my French professor, Jeff Flagg, gave a writing assignment on the topic “Qu’est-ce qui rend un gouvernement valable?” What makes a government valid? This project was one of the high points of my undergraduate years. Unfortunately, I did not keep my paper; I wonder how
my response at that time would reflect (or probably deflect from) the current global situation.

Alan Wolfe’s superb article “Disaster Plan” (Winter 2009) is a refreshing perspective on the role of the state. Just as the Lisbon earthquake shook the basic tenets of morality, Hurricane Katrina shook the political tenets of conservatism and the concept of limited governance. Professor Wolfe describes, with some irony, President George W. Bush’s treatment of the federal government as just another “business,” rather than as a true state—the valid government that Professor Flagg asked his students to define some 30 years earlier.

Wolfe reminds readers that Bush and his officers followed the conservative script of “supplement[ing], not supplant[ing], state and local efforts.” The nub of the massive failure of the federal government to respond to Katrina’s aftermath was, he writes, “a form of planned incompetence.” In essence, Bush’s passive-aggressive approach to this natural disaster, which was predicted many days in advance, rendered our national government invalid.

As Professor Wolfe puts it, “the moment one begins to picture a society in which human needs are met, there one will find the state.” Wolfe provides ample evidence of the role of the federal government as a builder of our national defense and infrastructure. He also argues, correctly I think, that a cleanup after a large disaster such as a hurricane requires the large financial and human resources that only a national state can provide. It is in the liberal state that citizens can live freely without fear of having their lives upended by crises or disasters. It is a national government reaching out during times of trouble that Professor Wolfe wants to validate.

Thomas Alton ’80
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Professor Alan Wolfe’s “Disaster Plan” misdiagnoses the problem and prescribes the wrong medicine. As disappointing as the federal government’s response was to Hurricane Katrina, it is simply wrong to attribute the failure to the supposedly “conservative” philosophy of the Bush Administration—an administration that was far from conservative in its approach to federal spending.

Katrina was not the first instance of the federal government coming up short in response to a major hurricane. The federal responses to hurricanes Alice in 1973, Hugo in 1989, and Andrew in 1992 were also widely and deservedly criticized for being too little, too late. This pattern is clear evidence that the problems Professor Wolfe attributes to Bush’s philosophy have deeper roots. Moreover, Wolfe misspeaks when he says that conservative philosophy caused the Bush Administration to delegate responsibility for responding to Katrina to state and local governments. This delegation was on the books decades before Katrina’s landfall. The Constitution, federal disaster relief acts, and several generations of federal response plans have made clear that states have the lead responsibility and that the federal role is to supplement their efforts, not take over. On March 9, the Obama Administration announced that it supports this division of labor.

Professor Wolfe is right that the help that the federal government offered to Louisiana and, to a lesser extent, Alabama and Mississippi was inadequate, but the flaw is not in the conservative ideology that he opposes. We have never handled catastrophic hurricanes well. The problems after Alice, Hugo, Andrew, and Katrina were caused by the inability of the local, state, and federal governments and the private sector to collectively meet the humanitarian needs the storms left in their wakes.

Along these lines, it is sometimes argued that federal disaster programs had a “golden age” under the Clinton Administration, when there was indeed a philosophical shift toward a more expansive federal role. Yet during that era the disasters were much less challenging than Katrina. There were no disasters then that stranded tens of thousands of people without food or shelter and in which entire regions were without electricity and telephone service.
Wolfe suggests that the solution is for the federal government to assume a greater role. This approach might not actually improve things because states and localities would compensate for an expanded federal role by trimming their own investments in preparedness. We need to look at disaster response as a system in which all of the parts (private, local, state, and federal) function effectively. It is not a problem that can be solved by throwing a philosophical switch in Washington.

James F. Miskel ’68
Portsmouth, Rhode Island

The writer has taught courses on terrorism and international relations at the U.S. Naval War College and the University of Maryland, among other places. He is the author of Disaster Response and Homeland Security (2006).

By invoking the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 and quoting Rousseau, Voltaire, and Kant as to the meaning of natural disasters, Alan Wolfe implies that the damage done by Hurricane Katrina was somehow just as confounding. However, as documented by the American Society of Civil Engineers, more than two-thirds of the flooding in New Orleans would not have occurred but for the negligent design and faulty construction of the levees by the federally controlled U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Individuals who, like Wolfe, seek a government that is “bigger,” “more fully financed,” and “more comprehensive” may find more political traction in framing the disaster debate around governmental prevention instead of response.

Joe Schott, MA’02, JD’07
Brighton, Massachusetts

Conservatism didn’t failed New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina; inept politicians are to blame. The Democratic, liberal mayor called for a mandatory evacuation far too late, and amazingly placed an evacuation fleet of city buses in a staging area in a part of town that floods regularly. The Democratic, liberal governor of Louisiana refused to release her power over the state’s National Guard to the federal government, thereby delaying the availability of troops to restore order and bring supplies to suffering citizens. A Republican, conservative FEMA chief delayed or denied the distribution of supplies until long after the governor yielded her control. A Republican, conservative secretary of homeland security and a Republican president yielded to the FEMA chief’s ideas, even though by simply watching the news on television one could see that the relief effort was failing.

My family and I were in New Orleans for the duration of the storm and for four agonizing days following it. We had “vertically evacuated”—a practice we followed for years—to the third floor of a very strong old hotel located downtown. We felt the incredible heat, saw the madness occurring outside our window and inside the halls and lobby of our hotel, and nothing—I repeat, nothing—felt worse or scared us more than the feeling that our part of the world had been abandoned by our country. We knew the city was mostly poor, uneducated, and black, but surely food and water were on the way! We knew that every time a disaster struck anywhere else in the world, basic supplies such as water, medicine, and simple food always appeared, courtesy of the USA. So what was going on that permitted rampant death and thirst, hunger, and violence to thrive in the aftermath of this storm?

I guess my message is simple: A lofty intellectual response is the worst approach to human suffering, whether on November 1, 1755, or August 29, 2005. Far more practical is a strong, visceral conviction that no one, nowhere, should have to suffer when the forces of good are readily available.

Ryan Harper ’96
New Orleans, Louisiana

Alan Wolfe’s portrayal of federal administrators’ incompetence is confirmation of the necessity of having local, then state, and then federal assistance in disaster relief. The relief and reconstruction following Hurricane Wilma in Florida is an excellent example of the effectiveness of this procedure. To denounce conservatism while ignoring the local ineptitude of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin is unwarranted.

James J. Derba ’51
Osterville, Massachusetts

New Orleans and Louisiana, no strangers to hurricanes, have primary responsibility for a disaster plan, but the local governments’ utter and miserable failure draw little criticism from Alan Wolfe. Most of the loss of life that occurred from Katrina would have been avoided if the local, Democrat-run, government had had a rehearsed evacuation plan. Florida’s assumption of primary responsibility for Hurricane Andrew (the most recent category 5 hurricane prior to Katrina), resulted in only 65 deaths. The people of Louisiana know the source of the disaster and the necessity for change; they elected a conservative Republican, Bobby Jindal, as their new governor.

William D. MacGillivray ’65
Hingham, Massachusetts

The political and philosophical question raised by Alan Wolfe can be debated forever. Each side can make valid points.

I live and work in New Orleans and experienced Katrina and the government responses, or lack thereof, firsthand. In those days of the first responders, government failed on every level. The federal government (under conservative administration) did for sure, as noted by Professor Wolfe. State government (under a liberal administration) failed too, absolutely. Governor Kathleen Blanco was asked by President Bush shortly after the storm if she was willing to accept federal assistance. She requested 24 hours to think about it—to assess the potential political damage of giving up control to the feds.

Locally, who can forget the irresponsibility of Mayor Ray Nagin, a liberal (“This city will be chocolate . . . the way God wants it to be”), and Aaron Broussard, the conservative president of Jefferson Parish, whose Meet the Press interview, aired on September 4, 2005, was overly emotional and laden with inaccuracies?

Even the Catholic Church (which is liberal or conservative, depending on whom you ask) was a no-show when it came to leadership. No one heard “boo” from the archbishop for weeks.

At the risk of making my state look like a bunch of incompetents, my humble opinion is that, given as much stress, we might have this confluence of incompetence anywhere—in Florida, for instance, after the 2004 presidential election, in Illinois with an impeached governor, in New York with a resigned and disgraced governor, and so on. Imagine Katrina hitting any large U.S. urban center. What would the federal, state, and local response look like?

Care, compassion, and relief came from individuals and small groups with no political agenda (BC volunteers included). THANK YOU to all those generous souls. Forget liberal and conservative philosophies. Forget the debate. Find a way to work together and fix problems.

Eddie Connick ’84
Metairie, Louisiana

Alan Wolfe responds:

My thanks to all who wrote letters on my essay. I meant to provoke but to do so with ideas, and I am pleased that my essay was taken in the spirit I intended it to be, even if not especially by those most critical of it.

I see three points of disagreement among the more critical letters. Let me respond to each.

First, I disagree that all administrations, whatever their ideology, fail in equal amounts to deal with emergencies of the sort that Katrina represents. In fact, Bill Clinton’s choice of James Lee Witt is widely regarded as bringing a high level of professionalization to FEMA, and Witt showed his stuff during the Los Angeles earthquake.

Second, state and local governments did handle the situation badly, but they also lack the means and talent to have handled it well. New Orleans and its flooding problems have had a long history of transcending state and local boundaries. It is a federal responsibility, and it is the federal government’s failure, mandated by rigid ideological thinking, that deserves most of the blame.

Third, the idea that we should take politics out of the blame game surrounding Katrina is a moving one, but in a democracy we have a responsibility to evaluate competing political philosophies and how they perform. Conservatives love to criticize liberals—and vice versa. That is how democracy works and also how it should.

At last count

Re “Data File” (Winter 2009): As a Boston resident and father of three BC graduates who worked all kinds of jobs to scrape for tuition payments, I read in the March 1, 2009, Boston Globe that there are now 356 students attending Boston College from the City of Boston out of 8,900 undergraduates. Perhaps when you publish data files about various classes, you might want to include such a statistic among “states sending the most students,” “lone ranger states” (sending the least), and the “percent of freshmen from public schools.”

Joe Galeota P’98, ’00, ’07
Boston, Massachusetts

Light on

Boston College has undertaken a most ambitious campaign in Light the World (“Headway,” Fall 2008), at a very precarious time for institutions throughout the country. But the University’s alumni are a special group of people who have responded generously at other difficult times.

President William P. Leahy, SJ, spoke eloquently of the light that Boston College has shed on its students and alumni. He envisioned the University as “a gift to the nations, a Boston College that will truly light the world.” What I would have liked to have read further was a reference to Boston College being a gift to the Church. I view that as one of the top priorities of a Catholic institution.

St. Paul, who is being honored this year by the Church, is a good model for Catholic universities. In Athens, a center of learning, he called attention to the one true God.

Bernard J. Zablocki, M.Ed.’85
Ridgewood, New York

Editor’s Note: On April 27, 2009, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino officially dedicated Edgar Allan Poe Square, at the corner of Boylston and Charles streets near the site of the 19th-century author’s birthplace. The ceremony was the brainchild of Paul Lewis (see “Forevermore,” Winter 2009), a Boston College English professor and Poe scholar.

BCM welcomes letters from readers. Letters may be edited for length and clarity, and must be signed to be published. Our fax number is (617) 552–2441; our e-mail address is bcm@bc.edu.