Elizabeth Morrison is a junior majoring is general arts and sciences and a Thursday columnist for The Daily Collegian. It implies contradiction or paradox, instead of sanctimony or judgment. I have realized more and more that things are not black or white, but a huge expanse of gray. They complicate things. It is much easier to be the propagator of a dogmatic point of view than to acknowledge the complexity of most people, places and things.
Contradictions are apparent everywhere, but in Alaska they seem to be obvious in their extremity.
Alaska is a staggeringly spacious state, most of which is untouched wilderness and wildlife, yet 80 percent of its revenues come from an oil industry that exploits the land, disrupts migratory animals and pollutes the ecosystem. Working in Prince William Sound cleaning up the Exxon Valdez oil spill, I struggled to overcome my perceptual blinders and see things as they really were, not as I wanted them to be. The hypocrisy was palpable. Every worker, myself included, complained pointedly about the total lack of honesty in Exxon's operation, their absence of any real concern for Prince William Sound and the public relations sham they were pulling on the nation. Meanwhile, every week we received our astronomically huge paychecks from Exxon.