Burial Site Protection Act veto is dismaying
As stewards of lands sacred to the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians, the Delaware Nation, the Delaware Tribe of Indians, the Munsee-Delaware Nation and the Delaware Nation at Moraviantown, we at Historic Huguenot Street were disheartened to read of Gov. Kathy Hochul’s veto of the Unmarked Burial Site Protection Act (“State leaders disregard Native nations’ concerns,” Jan. 20).
In overwhelmingly passing the bill last June, the state Legislature took an important step toward acknowledging and beginning to redress generations of wrongs against contemporary native nations’ ancestors. The governor’s veto only perpetuates the insensitivity to concerns of the first peoples, past and present.
A 10-acre National Historic Landmark District in New Paltz, Historic Huguenot Street has been described as one of the most important Indigenous archaeological sites in the state. Like so many other entities, our coming to terms with our responsibility to right past institutional injustices has evolved over time.
By working closely with Indigenous representatives, Historic Huguenot Street has shown marked progress in three critical areas — committing to undertake only the most essential archaeology, giving voice to Indigenous communities in crafting our interpretation, and prioritizing compliance with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.
We know that important work remains, to which we are committed. It is our hope that the state will demonstrate the same level of commitment, with both houses of the Legislature reintroducing and passing the bill, and Hochul embracing it.
LISELLE LAFRANCE MARY ETTA SCHNEIDER New Paltz LaFrance is president and Schneider is the board chair of Historic Huguenot Street.
AI unlikely to upend writing instruction
Being a retired school psychologist, I read the recent article entitled “AI upending writing in school,” Jan. 27, with great interest. The article cited an artificial intelligence writing program (ChatGPT), with the subtitle stating that it “could become as common as calculators.” Sorry, but the comparison to calculators is totally misplaced.
As the article implies, writing is a linguistic and cognitive process that requires such actions as brainstorming, outlining, first drafts, proofing and revising, while the use of a calculator to accomplish numerical operations has nothing to do with mathematical reasoning.
Interestingly, much recent research into the use of keyboarding/typing versus the process of writing by hand demonstrates that the same neuropsychological processes are not involved and the outcomes differ (such as improving memorization with taking notes by hand, and improved creativity when writing by hand).
So while the use of OpenAI and similar writing programs will have a role in writing instruction, it should be a very circumscribed role (and yes, I did hand write this before typing it).
GLENN YELICH Rensselaerville
Classified document messes quite different
Everyone is aware of the classified documents situation involving both prior former President Donald Trump, former Vice President Mike Pence and President Joe Biden, though his situation also involves documents from when he was vice president. And, as usual, corporate media is pushing their standard “bothsideism” narrative. This is pretty weak journalism that just ignores the underlying bureaucratic factors involved that caused this all to occur.
The National Archives and Records Administration offers expert consulting and manual labor to help the outgoing president to get their classified document management done correctly. But, unfortunately, it does not offer this service to vice presidents. The vice presidents packing and moving is handled by some staffer with basically little experience in this situation and probably no clearance to even review the documents. It’s no surprise that a few random classified documents got stuffed into a box along with other papers.
On the other hand, Trump refused help from the National Archives and took a huge number of documents over a long period of time, resulting in box after box of classified documents being taken and kept at Mar-a-Lago.
There is no reasonable comparison between the actions of Trump’s intentional hauling of box after box of top secret documents while refusing the assistance of the National Archives and the situation of Biden’s and Pence’s staffs accidentally packing a handful of papers. You’d never know it watching the Evening News.
FRED SMITH Ballston Lake