Summer 2003 volume 99 issue 3 : letters

Re: Securing the Homefront

I was pleased to receive the newest edition of the Quarterly at my new Tucson, AZ, address. “Finally!” I thought, “Media I can identify with.” However, when I opened up to the cover story, I was dismayed at the Quarterly’s glorification of our nation’s brutal “homeland security” tactics along the US-Mexico border. I am saddened to see that the Quarterly so unabashedly glorified the United States' border policy, policy that I am working to help United States citizens understand is part of a greater system of oppression of Mexicans and the Global South in general. The surveillance systems on the border are part of Border Patrol’s euphemistically named operations, “Hold the Line” and “Safeguard.” These are operations that directly force migrants to migrate north in the desert, risking death, dehydration, and serious injury. In fiscal year 2002, 163 bodies were found in the desert. Having traced the path of migration myself, I can tell you that these are people who were forced from their homelands by free trade agreements and falling prices for agricultural products, scorned as they traveled northward in their own country, and then turned out in the desert, perhaps after paying a coyote, or people smuggler, thousands of dollars only to then die on their journey. Essentially, the Border Patrol has not stemmed the flow of migration with its high technology and vigilant surveillance, only shifted the flow into the deadly West Desert.

While Lurita Alexis Doan is no doubt an intelligent woman on the cutting edge of technology, I feel that the Quarterly’s praise of her work was absolutely inappropriate. While our government is playing on our fears of terrorism to justify further militarization of our border, I expect more from the Quarterly.

Holly Hilburn ’02
Tucson, Arizona


When the Spring 2003 issue of the VQ arrived, I was dismayed to read the cover article profiling Lurita Alexis Doan '79 and her "high-technology company."

While I was certainly encouraged by the success that Ms. Doan has had as a minority, female owner of a business, I'm appalled to see the VQ devote so much attention to a business that helps to further our government's increased amount of domestic surveillance. As a quote from the article itself states, "big brother . . . has arrived." Quite frankly, I'm embarrassed to see that a fellow Vassar graduate has helped make this happen.

During a time when our government has attempted to institute a myriad of assaults on our civil liberties in the name of "safety," my resistance to these measures has certainly come in part from the foundation of learning and reading I received at Vassar. I find it a shame that Ms. Doan has uncritically played a part in our government's increasingly restrictive policies, and that the VQ has uncritically publicized her business.

Jason Weinstein ’95
Brooklyn, New York