Dear D.O. Editorial Board,
The editorial column on Vice President Joe Biden's visit and speech at Syracuse University failed to grasp the relevance of the VP, Treasury Secretary, and Education Secretary's message given from Goldstein Auditorium. The column suggests that giving a speech on the importance of education at an affluent university would simply be preaching to the choir and would at best inspire some students to enlist in some volunteer organizations. The importance of the speech was in fact far more wide in scope than this.
The column actually hits the problem on the head without knowing it. The fact that SU is made up of primarily affluent students is indicative of some sort of educational inequity. Shouldn't a top university draw the top students in the country from all income brackets? This certainly seems to be a problem. But who is supposed to solve this problem? We rely on the media to report underperforming schools and we look to policy makers to provide effective policy solutions for the education system. I get no prize for stating this fact, we hear about it enough as it is: the Newhouse communications school and the Maxwell policy school are perennially tagged with top national rankings in their fields. If the education system is to be made more equitable we need these students to be at least aware of the problem, if not actively involved in solving it.
It clearly follows that the affluent have a responsibility to ensure educational equity. And make no mistake; with two billion Chinese and Indians salivating at the thought of an uneducated America incapable of solving the world's many problems, quality education for all Americans is most imperative for the nation's future.
Terance Walsh Senior economics and history major
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