Editor:

The student body has been taken advantage of by the faculty allegedly devoted to educating them, and all in the name of patriotism.

Something is wrong at Loyola when a department chairman uses the students’ memorial for the victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks as a platform to advance his political agenda.

On Sept. 11 of this year, a lovely memorial was erected in front of the statue of St. Ignatius in the peace quad.

There were flowers and notes laid at the base of the statue.

On a nearby podium there was a prayer, the book with names of the recently deceased and an inconspicuous document mentioning that the memorial was also dedicated to “all those who died in those attacks.”

The document was not referring to the 2001 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, but to the victims of the U.S.-sponsored Sept. 11, 1973 Chilean coup d’etat against socialist President Salvadore Allende.

At the base of the statue of St. Ignatius, among the flowers, lay a picture of Allende that read, “In memory of Salvador Allende, democratically elected President of Chile, and the thousands of Chileans who died as a result of U.S.-sponsored state terrorism on Sept. 11, 1973.”

It was signed “Ed McCaughan, Chair, Sociology Department.”

I am not arguing the merit or the prudence of the Chilean coup, nor do I discount McCaughan’s right to raise awareness for his beliefs.

However, I was offended that someone would put this type of incendiary political message on a simple, patriotic memorial for an open wound of America’s national identity.

What McCaughan did is an affront to the memory of those innocents who lost their lives on Sept. 11.

I hail McCaughan and company for stating their beliefs, but it was inappropriate and offensive to use the bodies of the dead as a stump to state their beliefs.

McCaughan, don’t speak for the students of Loyola, and don’t dishonor the dead by trying to speak for them.

Dodd Newtonbroadcast production sophomore