To the Editor:

The lack of empathy exhibited by community members in previous sound offs is frankly chilling. You talk about these student protesters as if they're flying off the handle, spouting ridiculous demands and making everyone's life harder over nothing, meanwhile, you completely ignore the fact that these students are responding to death threats.

Not just racist and homophobic speech like some recently published articles would lead you to believe, which would be bad enough. Death threats. Someone in our community wants these students dead, or so terrorized that they'll pack up and leave.

When you acknowledge that, you have to see that protesting in town is not punishing us for a crime we didn’t commit, it’s their way of asking us for help. They’re asking us to stand with them, and protect them, instead of ignoring them, or complaining about them, or calling them entitled like many of us have been. It’s not entitled to demand that threats of violence not be tolerated.

As their neighbors, it is our responsibility to help them. And yes, like it or not, these students and faculty of color are part of the North Country community now. They live here, they learn here, they work here, they shop at our local businesses.

That makes us all neighbors. When your neighbor tells you that his life is being threatened, the only appropriate response is to do whatever you can to make him feel protected.

That’s how a community ought to work. So when one of my neighbors is afraid of being murdered in the street, and one is afraid of being a few minutes late to work, forgive me for being more sympathetic with the former. Our neighbors are in danger.

Are you going to stand up and help them, or are you going to keep complaining about the inconvenience?

Kevin Fitzpatrick

Potsdam