Adam Schwartz: What does Bangladesh have to do with Jones Library?

I take exception to Jones Library trustee Farah Ameen’s recent guest column [“Bring back hope to Amherst,” Gazette, Aug. Aug. 29]. She implies that we should ignore how the board of trustees for the Jones Library squanders our limited resources because there are larger issues at stake in the world.

We care about multiple issues on different scales all at the same time. What’s being pitched is a bait-and-switch as the architects “value engineer” away features that were in the plans when 65% of voters approved the project. Each person who made that vote presumably saw things in the project they valued: green initiatives, preservation of historically important building features, and so on.

Why should someone not object when what they were offered is clearly not what they will be getting? My vote wasn’t blind support for any library project at all, but based on the one we were sold. It’s reasonable to suggest we rethink the entire project when it’s clear what was offered cannot be delivered for the price voters approved.

Part of the price of a democracy and public service is your constituents will not always agree with what you want to do and are going to tell you exactly how they feel about it. A dictatorship (in this case at the hands of the board of trustees) is something we should resist.

Adam Schwartz

Amherst