I would like to applaud the Tribune for publishing Carlo Giombi's "Open letter to the white Marquette Community." As a white student who grew up in Milwaukee and has gone to racially diverse schools for all of grade school up until high school, I have grown up with many friends of color (I would just like to point out I'm not trying to be that stereotypical white kid who flaunts his black friends). Throughout high school and into college I have worked with the Wisconsin ACLU in their Other America Tour program that works to bring together kids form urban inner-city schools and suburban schools to talk about various forms of oppression that are often masked by society.

Sadly to say, a common complaint I have heard in terms of race relations from my fellow white students at Marquette focuses around the issue of affirmative action and other forms of perceived "reverse racism." In discussions in and outside of the classroom, I have heard many students rail against the "injustice" of underprivileged people of color getting scholarships and educational opportunities as an all too-late attempt to reverse our nations centuries of institutionalized racism. The students who carry this view often come off as arrogant, ignorant and carry a huge sense of entitlement. It is disheartening for me, at a school that clings to Jesuit ideals of social justice, to see that amidst the undeniable extreme privilege of many of its students, very little is done to bring up issues of racial and class inequality.

Like it or not, our school has a reputation for arrogance. I've heard fellow college students from UWM and MATC describe our school as composed of a bunch of "arrogant rich white kids." At times it is very hard for me to disagree. Last year, I had the unfortunate experience of serving a 9-month sentence in the Milwaukee Community Correctional Center on 10th and Highland, just blocks from campus. My entire freshman year, I was in a work release facility where during the day, I was a college student at a well respected university and at night, I was a convict, literally locked up. Many of my fellow inmates viewed me — the white college kid in a sea of inmates, the vast majority whom were not white — very skeptically and when they found out I attended Marquette, their attitude sometimes became down right hostile. I too had a similar experience to Carlo's when I was asked by an older black man "when I started to talk to black people." I did not know how to answer him because for as long as I can remember, I have had friends of all different races; in fact, my best friend of five years is black.

His attitude, as Carlo articulated, seems to not be uncommon, especially in regard to the way Marquette students interact with the wider community and, more directly, the surrounding neighborhood. I realize many students here have come from backgrounds where they may not have been exposed to the harsh realities of urban life and being at Marquette, especially surrounded by so many *gasp* black people, may be a shock to their system. But if this school is to truly live up to the standards it sets for itself, we as a community must be more attentive to the way we are viewed by the larger community. We must be mindful that we are a part of the privileged few in this country and be mindful of the way we carry ourselves in the world.

Josh Del Colle is a sophomore in the College of Arts & Sciences