The ironic call made by the authors of “Occupy HBLL (10/18)” for grade redistribution for the laziest students neglects the subtlety of the financial situation underlying the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Imagine, if you will, a small but connected group of BYU students was able to lobby campus administration for top marks at the expense of the rest, who found their grades dropping more and more every semester regardless of their effort.
We would justifiably criticize this preferential treatment and a protest occupation of the library might then be in order.
Anybody proclaiming the hard work of this one percent would be rightly regarded as deluded.
Right now we have a corporate/political revolving door of favors and appointments that puts any semblance of fair competition to shame.
The big banks made bad decisions and gambled with the American people and because they were too big too fail they were given trillions, much of which migrated upward to the pockets of executives after subsequent record profits to which they solely seemed to benefit.
The American people and workers, on the other hand, who are apparently not too big to fail, saw their wages continue to stagnate and continued struggling for mere comfort, let alone wealth.
The protesters are deluded, yes, in looking toward the same government that caused the problem to provide its solution and in painting all of the wealthy with a broad brush, but this is more than an issue of lazy riffraff opposing hard work and industry.
Dustin Steinacker
Provo
