HV staff lost out on teaching opportunity
Shame on the Town Crier for running the article “Hidden Villa cancels all camps after key staff quit, citing structural racism” on the June 15 front page without running the letter in the same issue from Lee Shahinian Jr., M.D., alongside it (“Key to understand Duvenecks’ mission”).
Hidden Villa has social justice as part of its mission statement and has provided camp scholarships for years. The staff that resigned said they couldn’t bear to have children near the swastika symbol. A more mature and educational response would have been to work for the removal of the symbols, while educating campers on the historical and religious context of the swastika and how it has since become an offensive symbol. This was a lost teaching opportunity, and as a result of “cancel culture,” hundreds of children will miss out on a wonderful camp experience. How unfortunate for everyone.
Christine Vieira Sellers
Los Altos
HV staff guilty of ‘cultural imperialism’
I was saddened to read the story about claimed structural racism at Hidden Villa.
First, about the symbol itself, the swastika: It is used not only in Asian religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism, but in ancient European cultures and in African and Native American cultures. It is used all over the world.
It is sad that the staff could be so ignorant, narrow-minded, self-centered and, yes, culturally insensitive. By insisting that what the symbol means to them is the only important or acceptable meaning, they are engaging in a typically American form of cultural imperialism.
I hope they will learn, grow from this and get on with their good work serving the public.
Robert Franklin
Mountain View
Ignorance besmirches Duvenecks’ legacy
The tiles on the Duvenecks’ house at Hidden Villa are oriented in a counterclockwise direction and are called sauwastikas.
The same symbol flipped and oriented in the clockwise direction is called a swastika.
It saddens me that the kind-hearted Duvenecks’ home was defaced and their legacy besmirched over modern-day ignorance.
Kathryn A. Tomaino
Los Altos
