LETTER: Roommates aren’t all bad

To the editor:

Normally, I don’t find myself reading The Utah Statesman and today was no real exception. Instead, I happened to hear a classmate discussing an article which sparked my curiosity. I then proceeded to pick up The Utah Statesman for November 14 and found myself appalled at the lack of professionalism by staff in writing the article titled “Roommate drama rages through student apartments.” Though the article seems to be written in an objective manner, I found it to be merely an illusion as the article always portrayed one roommate as the antagonist and the other roommate as the victim of a situation.
   
Though the “antagonistic” roommates went unnamed, the supposed victims didn’t. This way, the portrayed bad guy of the situation can still be identified by using the process of elimination, and humiliated publicly for all of USU to read. In no way, shape, or form should a professional publication such as The Utah Statesman allow this kind of article fly. This is the kind of writing I expect to see on my Facebook newsfeed, not from a university newspaper.
   
Now as an individual with an international parent coming from a very humble background, I found the smelly fish story to be the most appalling. My mother’s family used to live in a hut smaller than the apartments that can be found in The Towers of Central Campus.  For many years, my mother’s family, which was made up of seven people, lived on what they could get. My grandmother, for example, worked at a local fish market selling a variety of fresh fish caught by fishermen who lived like she did. She still works in this business and this is how she makes her living. This fish market may be what one may call smelly, gross, or strange. I, on the other hand, love the fish market as it is a reminder of how hard my grandmother works to better her family. Not only does this market provide such reminders, but it also provides people like my grandmother with traditional comfort foods. This is normal to the culture in which my family comes from, eating “smelly” fish. And by describing a story in which I am sure is very much exaggerated, is in fact culturally insensitive. The fish that this individual eats every day is comfort food to her and she has now not only been ridiculed by her roommates behind her back, texting each other such things as “dead fish.” but is now being ridiculed by a publication such as The Utah Statesman. Written in part by the editor in chief, I would expect much more professionalism in such a publication. I guess I was wrong.

Brian Rozick