Segregation, apartheid beginning to bloom at UNM

Editor,

The Israel Alliance was invited to set up a table representing Israel at the annual International Festival, held by the Office of International Programs and Studies. The festival is always fun and interesting, and people work hard to have the event be successful and worthwhile. There are booths with food, information, articles for sale, people wearing national costumes, music and dancers - all representing different countries.

The Israel exhibit shared a booth with Bangladesh and Afghanistan. We arrived last at the booth to set up in the morning, and the Afghan and Bangladeshi students were already setting up their exhibits. When the Afghan students saw that they were supposed to share a space with the Israel exhibit, they refused and moved their table and exhibit away, with much complaining, even saying it was supposed to be the Islamic area. The Saudi exhibit later sprang up a distance away. The Bangladeshi students stayed put and handled the situation with courtesy and good humor, even though some of the Arab students who went to and from the Saudi booth made a point of stopping by and jabbing at them for remaining next to the Israel exhibit.

The Bangladeshi students are to be commended for doing the right thing even under pressure. Thanks to the Afghan Student Association, who bring their national problems with them rather than learning, we have segregation and apartheid beginning to bloom at UNM. The Afghan students were publicly and unabashedly bigoted and basically insisted that their peculiar version of Islamic supremacy and apartheid is the standard by which the University should operate.

Is such behavior now acceptable at UNM? I understand why the organizers of the International Festival gave in to Afghan prejudice. The proper move would have been to tell them they couldn't set up in another location - that to give in to their demands was a violation of University policy and cultural decency, and they would have to leave if they could not handle themselves next to the Israel booth. But you have a staff and students trying to do a good job and make a successful event and not wanting trouble.

They didn't want to fight about it then and in the future, so they said "OK, whatever." As understandable as that is, the road to global hatred and strife is actually paved with these small surrenders and these little failures of justice. Every day, people all across the world choose expediency over doing what's right, over and over again. Millions of times a day across the world, hatred wins and justice loses.

Lynn Provencio

UNM staff