letters to the editor

Posted by admin on Mar 8, 2006 in Issues & Ideas | 0 comments

Dear Editor,
While enjoying the first signs of spring on our morning walk earlier this week, my friend and I stumbled upon the Issue Awareness Contest posters in the Cafeteria. Unfortunately, we weren’t entirely pleased with our discovery.

In the past, I’ve put up with the unnecessarily brazen photographs of aborted babies, but this year, it’s suicide that takes the cake: the poster boards for this issue, adorned in dead leaves, feature distastefully hung photographs of suicide victims. And I mean ‘hung’ quite literally.

While I applaud the individuals who have chosen this very prevalent topic, I pose this question: are these photographs necessary? I think we all are aware of what happens in suicide; the photos quickly become just another cheap means of getting attention and winning a contest.

The media often throws disturbing images in our faces of people getting shot, people getting blown up. Death, death, death. This “news” is getting a bit old. I’m not sure how to read the intentions of the people putting out this stuff: is gratuitous gore the only way to raise a numbed consciousness? Are we even capable of differentiating the ‘real’ from, say, the same images we see on CSI?

As someone who’s had very close friends deal seriously with suicide, I did not appreciate this display. When raising awareness, one must serve everyone, including those with the lowest threshold for shock. I’m sure someone else who’s also dealt with this issue could contest my argument with the opposite: “This is real life. People need to see it.” But if this is the only way we have left to raise awareness, call me choosedly unaware.

Linnea McNally, Leah Albertson