To the editor,

Rahul Kanakia’s main virtue is his height. It allows him to look down upon and boldly judge the people around him without the slightest understanding of their circumstances. In his piece, [“You’re Not Special: An Ode to Hennessy,” Feb. 20] Kanakia arrogantly criticizes student activists for failing to take adequate risks for the causes they believe in. Unfortunately this article lacks real content and just adds to the litany of anti-activism, privileged nonsense that passes for discourse on this campus.

A student with the most minimal activism experience is aware of Hennessy’s habit of making false promises, passing responsibility on to ditsy university bureaucrats and waiting the issues out. Yes, it is extremely difficult to build institutional knowledge in an organization with a four-year turn-over rate. Yes, we know that the University is motivated by money. Of course, the most effective political actions are ones that are expensive to the University. And, yes, the DSP is essential to the Sweat-Free campaign. Though banal, Kanakia’s insights are true.

His ignorance shines through when he begins to comment on the motivations of student activists. As a participant in SLAC’s fast and Sweat-Free’s sit-in last spring, I don’t know one student activist who thought his/her actions would instantly change the world. We are intelligent people who go to the same elite university as the prodigy Kanakia, take the same history classes and share an informed perspective on history. Perhaps it is Kanakia who needs the history lesson. To suggest that students must flee to Canada or be clubbed by riot police to be taken seriously is ahistoric at best. Movements are not just built on extreme sacrifice but on measured planning, continual struggle and occasional failure.

Why should Stanford students care about workers? Let me make it plain: Much like the African AIDS patients we love to wear a ribbon for or the Latin American orphans we are dying to save, campus workers are human beings. That may be easy to forget as we nearly run over groundskeepers with our bikes on our way to class. But I shouldn’t have to explain that preschool concept.

I know I’m not going to save the world. I just understand that my cushy life at Stanford is facilitated by a fleet of workers who often lack fair wages, benefits and representation. I refuse to quietly comply — even for my short stay at this institution — with their mistreatment. Acknowledging my own limitations as a student, I am proud of my campus activism experiences, even if they were not always the most strategic. Kanakia is welcome to criticize my actions so long as I may condemn him and his ilk for their jaded inaction.

Sheva Diagne

Class of 2008