Editorial: PC Police Going Too Far

In a typically PC Berkeley move, Jefferson Elementary may be reborn as Sequoia Elementary because certain faculty members feel "uncomfortable" with the fact that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. But instead of trying to ignore a significant national figure and his contributions to the United States, the school should focus on using Jefferson's great achievements-and his darker side-as a tool to spark dialogue on slavery and culture at that time.

While we're considering name changes, what do we do about our own town's nomenclature? Our namesake, Bishop George Berkeley, owned slaves as well. Do the ill-at-ease faculty members feel uncomfortable in a city with such a dark and devious past? Perhaps we should vote to change the city's name as well.

We don't have anything against Sequoia trees. They're perfectly nice plants and are very tall. They're also bland. Thomas Jefferson, on the other hand, was responsible for many of our laws and our westward expansion. He was also a very flawed man who struggled between his ideals of freedom for all and the debts he had accrued over the years, unable at last to free all his slaves upon his passing.

No one is perfect-not Martin Luther King Jr., not Cesar Chavez, not any of the people history has put on a pedestal. There's no real black-and-white, good-versus-bad in reality. You can't dismiss a part of or even a whole person just because he's morally ambiguous or even wrong from our standpoint. In fact, discussing a figure's different facets, introducing students to the complexity of history and its consequences will open them up at an earlier age to understanding it. It may even make history class more interesting. Such a discussion would serve the educational mission of the school.

Either way, Thomas Jefferson deserves to be remembered, respected-and criticized, too. All that making a fuss over changing the school's name does is trivialize his achievements and shy away from intelligently introducing students to the complexity of these social and political issues, something a city with a reputation for open-mindedness shouldn't be afraid to do.