Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
When Your Alma Matter Continues to Disapoint…
I just received the following email from my alma matter Claremont McKenna College (I have removed contact information for privacy):
Subject: Travel to Cuba with CMC!
Dear Jamie,
Last March, this enthusiastic group of CMC travelers explored the wonders of Cuba. We had such a tremendous time that the CMC Office of Alumni and Parent Relations has secured another visit to Cuba on a trip we are calling “Rediscover Cuba: A Cultural Exploration.”
The trip is scheduled for April 4 to 11, 2018, and includes roundtrip airfare from Los Angeles (and other gateway cities).
I am pleased to report that the trip complies with all current and future U.S. government travel requirements. Participation is extremely limited; I have only secured 30 places for CMC, Pomona, and Pitzer travelers, and I know that they will go quickly. Full information on our enlightening itinerary, including pricing, is available here. If you are interested, you should contact our agent, Karen Goodrich at Travelstore VIP, by calling xxxxxxxxx or emailing xxxx.
I hope you can join us for this exciting adventure!
Needless to say that after the most recent spate of BLM and AntiFa nonsense on campus I was more than a little annoyed. Hence my response:
Dear XXXX,
Which wonders will we be visiting specifically? The gulags? The political prisons? The torture rooms and assassination chambers? Will we get to personally donate cash to a murderous communist regime or just support them through tourist dollars?
Jamie Lockett ’02
I recently pulled my annual donation over the BLM and AntiFa nonsense and the colleges response was sufficient, I’m seriously considering doing so again.
Published in General
I wrote a response as well:
Yours was better.
My neighbor is Cuban and still has relatives there. Her cousin went to visit for the first time, recently. He and his wife came home without any cash because they were giving dollars out like candy. He told my neighbor how poor they are and the living conditions…..Wonder if your alma matter’s field trip saw any of this? Now he did take some cool pictures of 1950’s era cars. Cause, you know, that’s all they have. Wonder why that is…….
I’ve met too many Cubans who were trying to leave. These “tours” and all just rankle!!
I hate travelling with tour groups, but I’d like to go to Cuba to see it before it changes.
I am troubled by levels of punishment, frequently non-existent, for these behaviors and especially by the disparate treatment when compared to similar acts of violence when committed out in communities not part of the higher education establishment. Another reflection of the benefits of connection to the elite establishment.
I’m so sorry, Jamie, and @tommeyer .
If it is going to change to vibrant, happy, dancing place, wait. It is currently not a nice place.
I’ve been to lots of not nice places. I’ve lived in police states. I know how it works. They were all interesting places to see in their different ways and they all worked differently. I’m just guessing Cuba does as well and is worth seeing.
I had the same reaction a couple years back when an “unofficial” delegation from my state Bar association (which just happened to include the Bar’s President) went to Cuba to discuss “justice” with “leading” Cuban lawyers and judges.
Made me sick.
I wrote a letter to challenge the Bar and the group for their utter silence on important “rule of law” topics such as Cuba’s dead and imprisoned political prisoners, providing a hide-out for convicted cop killer and prison escapee Joanne Chesimard, torture, expropriations still unpaid-for all these years later, and so on. At least it was published in the monthly Bar magazine but doubt anyone paid much mind.
Sounds like these experiences would make for interesting posts.
You don’t need to go to Cuba, try Detroit in the summer.
I likewise experienced a feeling of disappointment in my alma mater the other day when I saw it posted that Noam Chomsky is now a faculty member at the University of Arizona. Sigh.
Speaking of Cuba and the University of Arizona, I remember one of my Spanish instructors there was an immigrant from Cuba. Our textbook included bits about all the different Spanish-speaking countries. I remember when we got to the chapter on Cuba our instructor’s take on the country was significantly less romantic than the textbook’s. I wonder how he would respond to your college’s excursion.
Well, Chomsky criticized Antifa’s violence in opposition to speech, even if the speech is bigoted. I was surprised that he said it publicly even if it is what he believes since it goes against the Left’s narrative.
Okay, props to Chomsky for that.
Well done, lads!
Okay. I have a two minds on this. I’ve been to Cuba. I went, actually, when I was in graduate school. I wrote an extensive paper on Ernest Hemingway which wrapped into the Cuban Revolution.
On this trip, there were several younger graduate students. They were all progressives. But it was very difficult for anyone on that trip to ignore the decay in Havana. Even the lecturer at one event to which we all went told us that three buildings fall there every day. This made an impression on all of them.
Also, I didn’t need to be told that Castro’s regime has hurt the people, but I use the pictures of buildings that we would think are condemned in the United States in my classes. Why? There is laundry hanging out of the windows that no longer have glass on them. That, too, makes quite an impression, this real vision of “guaranteed housing.”
The thing to which I object about @jamielockett‘s letter is not that a university would take students to Cuba but how a university would take tour groups to Cuba.
No. They are not the same thing.
I felt I did important research, and I published part of my paper.
I have always felt guilty about whatever money of mine that went to perpetuating the regime. Fair enough. But I didn’t feel guilty passing out soap to the poor who followed us or learning about what it is really like, something I could not have done without going.
And, yes. I understand that when I say “what it is really like,” I was shielded from much.
The most fascinating person to me on that trip was a professor of Soviet studies who commented more than once that communism was a better system than what we have in the United States. As the progressive students would eat with me and discuss the lack of toilet paper in our rooms or the semi-rancid orange juice put out for breakfast, you could see their eyes roll at statements like this. They would mock this professor without mercy.
It gave me hope that the trip was planting “reality seeds” that would eventually lead them to get “woke” about free markets.
Good letter. Tom’s as well.
did either of you get a response?
did either of you overlap in any capacity with my cousin Craig (same last name as me)? Long shot, but it’s a smaller school…
I did not write a response, just kind of rolled my eyes. I have not donated for awhile.
CMC 75
You probably should have omitted the “for the first time in years” part from your letter.
Let’s face it, the regime would have continued being the regime whether you had gone or not – and provided whatever money. And the “learning what it is really like” is invaluable.
You would have learned more if you had stayed with a Cuban family (which you can do in a situation similar to bed and breakfast). You don’t have to be a group tourist in Cuba. I have a friend who did it (illegally for US citizens) back in 1980s. If you had to do the daily shopping, use the public transportation system, have guarded conversations, always wonder if the person you were talking to was from one of the many secret police forces (secret police to watch secret police), you would have learned more. But the secret police at least where I’ve been are easy to spot. You develop a nose for them. Better dressed. Better nourished. Has a car. Alone.
Absolutely. A camping trip to the Soviet Union when I was younger than you were when you took your trip showed me that. But on the other side, it lets you know there are people on the other side and the idea of war is crazy. Plus things there just don’t work and aren’t working out. And with time it will implode. That’s why I also think contact is a good idea.