Graduates worry about
Kamehameha’s future

Estate offers wonderful
education to Hawaiians

According to your Web site, there is a lot of turmoil regarding Bishop Estate. Despite the turmoil, as a graduate of the schools and on behalf of many Hawaiians, there is still pride and reverence about the Bishop Estate. If not for the many educational opportunities I have been given, I would not be the success I am today.

However, this turmoil is a loud cry from the Hawaiian nation to change the status quo -- to right the wrongs that have happened or will happen. I hope that the Bishop Estate trustees do listen to the people and don't let our cries fall on deaf ears.

Ke Alii Pauahi entrusted the trustees to do the right thing by the Hawaiian people. They should help us, and not just help themselves.

Lisa Noelani Robbins
Kamehameha Schools, Class of 1985
Tulsa, Okla.
(Via the Internet)

Trustees run school
based on its missionary roots

When I was a "cadet" at Kamehameha in the early 1960s (it was a military school back then), I remember gazing up at the larger than life-size, full-length portraits of Princess Bernice Pauahi and her banker/husband, Charles Reed Bishop, that loomed on the dining hall wall.

As I sat there in my starched, uncomfortable uniform looking up at Mr. Bishop in his stuffy Victorian suit, and at Pauahi, corseted and in a buttoned-up dress that covered everything but her face, I wondered why a Polynesian princess married a haole banker and adopted Western values and the Protestant work ethic.

After four years at Kamehameha, complying with and conforming to arbitrary dictates and meaningless rituals, and putting up with stern-faced, sour-dispositioned faculty members, the answer to my question became clear.

Princess Pauahi, as one of the "children of Hawaii," was a "beneficiary" of the missionaries who "educated" her. She couldn't help but act out and pass on all the beliefs and presumptions so forcefully inculcated into her by her "benefactors."

So it seems to me of no great importance just how self-serving or misguided the trustees of Bernice Pauahi's estate may be if the Kamehameha Schools continue to be as conventional and tradition-bound as they always have been.

As long as the emphasis is on ambition, competition, grades, test scores, college and job placement, where does one go to get an education?

Kamehameha has always produced its share of bankers and will no doubt continue to do so.

Chauncey Carter
Kamehameha Schools, Class of 1965
Naalehu, Hawaii

Would Fortune 500 firm
desire such directors?

The answers to the questions of whether the Bishop Estate trustees are qualified to serve as such, and as to whether they are too well compensated, are quite simple. Ask yourself which Fortune 500 company would find the trustees qualified to serve on their own boards. And pay them each in excess of $800,000 per year.

Wake up, Hawaiians. We are still being exploited.

Vincent R. Hinano Rodrigues
Kamehameha Schools, Class of 1971
Olowalu, Maui
(Via the Internet)

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Bishop Estate Archive

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Letters

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Blacks must stop using
slavery as a 'crutch'

I agree with Martha L. Robertson's Aug. 23 article, "Storm at Kalaheo High School." The students in the photo need to rise above this and get on with their lives. I think we can all agree that the caption should not have been displayed. I think we can also agree that an apology should have been in order.

Also, steps should be taken to ensure that this does not happen again. The school should have more staff and students checking the yearbook thoroughly. These are steps that Kalaheo probably has already implemented.

I disagree with Andre Wooten's July 19 View Point column that the students were made fun of, libeled and emotionally damaged. Mr. Wooten, how can this be? We continue to eat these great foods today. If they were so bad, bringing back memories of slavery, we wouldn't continue eating them.

The $28 million lawsuit is crazy. We, as black Americans, need to stop bringing slavery into everything that happens to us. We need to stop using it as a crutch and instead use it as a motivating tool to improve our lives.

As for Robertson's suggestion that we get together and eat some chitterlings, "trash" fish, seaweed, laulau, tripe stew, sukiyaki, adobo, kim chee, char siu, Yorkshire pudding, Jambalaya and assorted dark chocolates, this will be one great luau.

Rueben A. Ingram
(Via the Internet)

Yearbook staff, no one else,
is to blame for caption

Kalaheo High School and the Board of Education shouldn't be blamed for the racist remark in the yearbook. The yearbook staff should take full responsibility. They are the ones who made the book.

Punish them and not the innocent. Pages should have been checked several times before being sent to the publisher. At my school, everyone in the class must check, approve and sign the page before it is sent. This incident could have been prevented.

Mark Bearis
Campbell High School
(Via the Internet)

Voodoo economics
is epitomized by strike

I never fully understood the meaning of voodoo economics until the past year, when the hotel association added a footnote to the declining occupancy rates published periodically, saying that it didn't really matter that occupancy rates were going down because hotels had increased rates to take in the same amount of money.

It was such a new concept to me that I assumed they had taken advanced courses far beyond my experience.

Now it is reported that the Carpenters Union is taking a strike vote, when 48 percent of its members are out of work. And now I know the meaning of voodoo economics.

Thank you, hotel owners and Carpenters Union.

Bob Parker
(Via the Internet)

Hawaii is female-friendly
place to do business

How did I end up on your Web site, reading your special economic report on how bad things are in Hawaii? Because I read an article in the Jan. 2 USA Today that ranked the top ten "female-friendly" places to live in the U.S., and Honolulu ranked No. 9.

The full report was printed in American Health. The USA Today article said "women want to be pro-active. They want to take charge of taking care of themselves."

Honolulu is doing something right.

Claire Fiorentino
Columbus, Ohio
(Via the Internet)

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Same-sex archive

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