Point Of View

They've taken to the streets in Paris because of such educational concerns as class size and a shortage of teachers, and it occurs to me they should do the same in Bridgehampton, given the second defeat of a proposal that would have provided the students of Bridgehampton with what all other students here have.

To say the "no" votes were mean-spirited is perhaps putting too good of a face on it. Essentially, we're talking equity here, about giving the Bridgehampton School kids a decent place to eat, a decent library with a decent number of books and computers, an elevator so a young boy confined to a wheelchair can get upstairs, and, yes, a decent gym for, among others, a boys basketball team that has won an unrivaled number of state championships and certainly deserves a regulation-sized gym in which to practice and play.

But outcomes - whether or not the school's graduates attend Harvard or whether or not the Killer Bees win a state championship - should not be the issue. Other schools here have cafeterias, other schools here have regulation-size gyms, other schools have decent libraries and computer rooms. And so should Bridgehampton.

Yes, renovations and additions cost money, and still in every other community here, despite the mostly disingenuous grousing about "high taxes," renovations and/or additions have been approved. Why is this not true in Bridgehampton, a school whose physical plant has apparently remained unchanged since 1930?

Schools are the focal points of the communities here, or ought to be inasmuch as our children are our future. To write these children off, as Bridgehampton seems to have done, is an act truly worthy of censure.

But, while this neglect is shocking, it mirrors apparently what obtains in this world where, according to the United Nations Human Development Report, less than 4 percent of the combined wealth of the world's 225 richest people, $40 billion, could "achieve and maintain universal access to basic education for all, basic health care for all, reproductive health care for all women, adequate food for all, and clean water and safe sewers for all."

I can think of no other school out here that is more deserving of a grand gesture.

Jack Graves