Dear Editor,

The recent parading of homophobic power at UTech frightens me. I am not only shocked at the wide student consensus that unleashed violence on a male student, but I also worry that a place positioned to develop minds intellectually shows more promise in cultivating deadly activist homophobes.

It is well known that Jamaica possesses a unique monopoly on manufacturing violence, yet all this while I assumed the hard-working producers within the Jamaican violence industry were uneducated folks trying to make sense of scriptures their pastors had revealed to them. Indeed, I’ve been in churches in which pastors told members the world is safer without homosexuals. And how do you think members responded? Do not be surprised when I tell you that they beat tambourines, danced, and shouted in one accord: “Amen!”

I have long held that some pastors have been swallowing tithes and offerings as compensation for their vitriolic sermons, which have created a violence-loving Jamaican class. Certainly, I have always believed that the problem of violence facing Jamaica represents harvesting from decades of churches farming hate. What I had obviously missed is that the violence crop also feeds the appetites of those claiming to be intellectually ambitious.

Clearly, UTech has opened my eyes. The student activism makes the university appear like an “intellectual ghetto” – words from my favourite talk show host, the late Wilmot Perkins. But I know that college has produced some brilliant minds. I hope that will remain the same.

Dadland Maye

New York, USA

dadland@gmail.com