Fred Gavin
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Please join with me in condemning the new GVSU president – “leftest/Marxist”. Trump would condemn he based on his Jule 4 speech!
July 1, 2020
Dear MS. Megan Sall
Chair, Grand Valley State University Board of Trustees
Subject: Civil War statute – Apology by the GVSU Board of Trustees and reprimand for the university’s president’s letter to Allendale Township
I was raised on a dairy and fruit farm on a gravel road in Ottawa County and somehow obtained three degrees without the assistance of history or sociology professors’ expertise. I fully support leaving the 22 year old statue of Union and Confederate soldiers in its longstanding location as described in this Mlive article:
https://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/2020/06/gvsu-president-urges-allendale-
township-to-relocate-confederate-soldier-statue.html
I think this new GVSU President doesn’t understand the rural “roots” of conservative Allendale Township, Ottawa County and West Michigan being from liberal New York. I suspect she lives in Cascade, East Grand Rapids or the Lake Michigan shoreline and not Allendale Township, as does most of the GVSU executives and board trustees. I suspect none of you ever planted a half mile row of corn straight or hauled cow manure to be recycled into last year’s wheat field.
I reviewed GVSU President Philomena V. Mantella letter to the township last week, urging the board to relocate the Civil War statue it was condescending, rude and just so sophomoric and she needs to be disciplined.
Example: “In an effort to increase understanding of the issues stirred up by the statue, Mantella also offered to provide the support of university experts in fields such as sociology and history.” If she was offering a computer science, physics or taxation professor would be one thing, but a PhD in history or sociology are good for only perpetuating teaching and one
can be easily self-taught in those subject matters.
Below are two national figures that demonstrate knowledge and maturity:
Cardinal Timothy Cardinal Dolan, the Roman Catholic archbishop of New York, stated Tuesday that the desire to take down monuments and statues honoring controversial
figures from history is “dangerous.”:
https://www.foxnews.com/media/cardinal-dolan-dangerous-removal-monuments-
statues-tradition
• “And secondly, I’m coming at this as an American historian who knows the old quote that those who are not familiar with the past are — guess what? — bound to repeat the mistakes.”
• “We’re into book burning,”
• “We’re into a cultural revolution like Mao tried to do in China. We’re trying to cleanse and erase the past and that is very dangerous … The experts tell us if we’re going to have an enlightened, civilized society, we need a memory and we
need dreams … We’re not going to have any dreams left if we erase the memory.”
• “If literature that depicts prejudice, or words or scenes that are today rightly abhorred, is to be banned, I don’t know if even the Bible can survive,” Dolan wrote in the Wall Street Journal this weekend. “If we only honor perfect, saintly
people of the past, I guess I’m left with only the cross. And some people would ban that.”
I am not necessarily a fan of George Will of late, but he does hit the nail on the head with this one on our current state of disarray … listen to George Will on Current Events:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/hiU20QjKPCo
Stay safe and don’t be pushed around by the liberal academia.
Fred Gavin
Walker, MI
(616) 485-1911