It is disconcerting to see the column by Edward Delp titled “Defending Dow” (March 1) in the Indiana Daily Student.\nIn his concern for vindicating Dow, he has failed to assess the complete nature of the situation as is today. Amnesty, in its recent assessment of the situation in Bhopal, has made a detailed claim asking Dow to clean the mess they have directly or indirectly helped create. True, Dow and Union Carbide had nothing to do with each other the day the event happened, but the reality of the fact is that, to date, the site, the very plant where the tragic event happened, has not been cleaned. The drinking water, a basic necessity for any human, is completely polluted due to the seeping of the waste into the ground, and there has been nothing done about it.\nDow can and definitely is in a position to do something. They completely own UC, and even if they have no say on UC’s individual problems, they cannot refute the fact that their executives sit in the same boardroom as UC and they are in a position to ask them to clean up their mess. Dow by itself has no great environmental record and its poor history has been the debate of many protests in different places across America. Time magazine has run an article on it.\nThe protest against the invitation of the CEO to the conference was to send a message. The aim was not to take on the CEO personally but the organization he represents. It was to make people aware, that beside the two “e’s” of “environment” and “energy” that there is something else that we need to take stock of – the third “e” of “ethics.” For it is these students who go on to become CEO’s and entrepreneurs of bigger corporations in the future and the future needs to be different from the past. It would not compromise IU but enhance its reputation for setting a stance on the kind of companies that it will associate with and pass the same on to the students who will carry the torch of such values and ethics on their climb in the corporate ladder.
Harini Gopalakrishnan\nGraduate student
