Learn, Live With Others

To the editors:

The point of the Houses isn’t to make everyone feel comfortable. Sometimes, the point may be to make you feel uncomfortable, to force you to learn to live with and accept people whose ideas, beliefs, and values are different from your own.

The Christians, Muslims, and atheists in Leverett have to eat in the shadow of, and pay for, a “kosher dining station,” which is unquestionably an expression of religious observance. Can I assume that Shira Kieval, who feels so strongly that no student should “be forced to choose between eating and being in the same room with a religious object,” supports the removal of these stations?

If the Houses are paying to display the symbols of one religion while denying that support to others, that’s unfair. But as long as the House Committees provide equal funding for all traditions, religious symbols in the dining halls can provide an unique opportunity for mutual acceptance and celebration. What could be a better expression of what’s right about Harvard, and about America, than symbols of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and other religions peacefully sharing space in our dining halls?

Hanna L. Stotland ’99

Dec. 4, 2001