Adèle Mercier’s letter to the Toronto Star spurred an intense reaction from Queen’s students. Her depiction of those on Aberdeen as “numbskulls worthy of the Hitler youth at the drop of a beer keg,” is hardly an accurate representation of the student body.
Her letter is offensive on many, many levels. To liken students to brainwashed children of the Third Reich is insulting to all, particularly Jewish students. Queen’s Hillel has asked for an apology from Mercier. She refuses to apologize and remains adamant about her comments. References of this nature point to carelessness, insensitivity and a lack of forethought on Mercier’s part before sending this letter.
If in fact Mercier wrote the letter with her students’ best interests at heart, as she claims she did, she could have found a more tactful, more effective way to express her opinions. Instead, she chose to send this letter to the Toronto Star, the largest daily newspaper in the country.
Moreover, in the same letter, Mercier proceeded to refer to those on Aberdeen as “white, privileged, middle-class kids.” This gross over-generalization misrepresents the diverse student body at Queen’s and is an insult to the many students who worked multiple jobs, took out multiple loans, and essentially saved every penny they had in order to come to this school. For someone who has attested to being “dedicated” to her students, this comes across as a complete disregard for their feelings. The school’s reputation has already been tarnished, and Mercier has simply proliferated a false image of Queen’s as an out-of-control school lacking any structure or morals.
She has subsequently responded by stating that her reference to “Hitler youth” was only meant to draw a comparison to Queen’s students in the way that both groups were “just nice kids that stopped thinking.” Had she made this analogy clear in her original letter and chosen a less offensive group to use for comparison, there would not have been such a flood of responses. We agree that there was a lack of reasoning at Aberdeen, but that in no way could it possibly compare to mass genocide.
Adèle Mercier’s letter has only fueled the continuing saga of Aberdeen. Comparing partiers to “Hitler youth” has done nothing to improve the situation. If anything, it has reaffirmed the media’s untrue stereotypes of Queen’s students, and offended those with painful connections to a Nazi past.
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