Dear Editor,’ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ My letter is in response to the growing consensus around this campus… Dear Editor,’ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ My letter is in response to the growing consensus around this campus and country that because of Sen. Barack Obama’s election, we live in a great country and should be proud. We have always lived in a great country and should have always been proud. ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ We should be proud that a black person is now able to rise and achieve the opportunity to be president like Obama has. It is the opportunity, and only that, which is the key. However, it is erroneous to imply that our country would not be as great, or we should not have been as proud, if the election ended differently. ‘ ‘ ‘ The United States and its founding principles of inherent God-given rights laid the foundation for its own abolition of slavery, equal rights movement and this election of Obama. I know, many of those men were bigots and owned slaves, but they were men of their times. Their ideals and words gave an aspiration, a dream, a goal. They gave a vision to us so that we could one day create a place in which we treat all people with respect, as though, in their words, we were all created equally. Our realities would not have been possible without those men’s dreams, ideals and words. Millions, black and white, have died and suffered in the defense of these dreams, to protect these ideals, to make real the promise of those words. The election of Obama should not be what makes us proud. The opportunity given to him should. Obama did not make this country great. He is proof that it is great. And he is not the cause of that famous change he stands for. He is a product of it. Jeff Abraham School of Arts and Sciences