Based in Sydney, Australia, Foundry is a blog by Rebecca Thao. Her posts explore modern architecture through photos and quotes by influential architects, engineers, and artists.

Glad to see racial and social justice addressed

To the Editor,

I am writing in support of Rachel Pastan and Satya Nelms. With Rachel’s leadership as editor and Satya as associate editor, the quality of The Swarthmorean has reached a new and impressive level for which they deserve praise. The articles have been well written, informative, diverse, and always extremely interesting. I have been excited by the many new types of columns that have been featured, the many new contributors (including Stefan Roots, Andrew Bunting, and Madelon Basil), and the numerous excellent articles researched, reported, and written by Rachel and Satya themselves. I look forward every week to the trusted regular features, as well as to the very compelling articles that address more difficult topics within our community, such as race and social justice. Unfortunately, as I have come to learn, there has been pressure to curtail these possibly more controversial articles, and that pressure has led both Satya and Rachel to resign, which is clearly an immense loss to the paper and to our community.

I have been so glad to see issues of racial and social justice addressed in The Swarthmorean. The point of a newspaper is to inform. We can wish that Swarthmore and environs might exist as a uniquely post-racial society, but, in fact, we need to be knowledgeable about the history and reality in our own community. A newspaper such as The Swarthmorean needs to keep us all aware of issues of social equity so that we can work together to be an inclusive community. Therefore, I am writing to stand up for Rachel’s and Satya’s vision of what the paper could be and the importance of continuing to publish articles on topical, potentially controversial, and sometimes discomforting issues, such as racial and social justice within our own community and beyond. I expect no less of my neighborhood paper, The Swarthmorean.

Andrea Belasco
Swarthmore

Awareness is the first step

Good intentions are not enough