Vest Administration Failed to Handle PBE Incident Responsibly

   First of all, I would like to make it clear that this letter is not
   directed towards the gay, lesbian, and bisexual community. However, I
   am totally displeased with the way that the Vest administration has
   handled two events -- specifically the Phi Beta Epsilon incident and
   the Tau Epsilon Phi incident. An overview of both situations yields
   that there is a disparity in the way in which the Vest administration
   handled these incidents.
   
   On March 14, Tommie Henderson '95 met with President Vest regarding
   the PBE incident. One of his requests for resolving the incident was
   for Vest to write a letter to all students outlining the
   administration's policy on racial harassment. The administration
   declined to do that. However, less than two weeks after the TEP
   incident, President Vest sent out a letter to every MIT student giving
   his view of this incident.
   
   But this is just the beginning of Vest's disparaging policies.
   Although Vest states in his letter that "disciplinary processes need
   to be private," any outsider can see that the administration is
   responding to the TEP incident more aggressively than it responded to
   the PBE incident. The Vest administration has continually been
   slothful in its response to the PBE incident.
   
   I am sure that the MIT community wants to put the PBE incident behind
   it. I am not trying to rekindle this issue because I am totally
   unsatisfied with the way that the Vest administration handled this
   affair. The issue to be dealt with is respect. If the Institute is to
   move closer to its goal of diversity it must first be consistent in
   its policies towards all ethnic groups. It is disrespectful to have
   disparity in the policies that govern the MIT community. It is only a
   matter of time until the African-American community will no longer
   tolerate being disrespected at MIT.
   
   Mark I. Randall '94
   

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Copyright 1993 by The Tech. All rights reserved.
This story was published on  Friday,  December 3, 1993.
Volume  113, Number 62
The story was printed on page  5.
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