University of Virginia Library

Freedom

The club has invested in
tents and camping equipment
and they try to keep costs
down to $10 per week end.
Other activities include hiking,
volleyball, soccer, bridge, and
chess.

According to Mr. Whitlock
the club would like to add
some new members, "because
if we get new people, then
we're going to get new ideas
coming in."

A major concern of the
Center is the poor condition of
the furniture bequeathed along
with the house. Club President
Kemal Goksel, also from
Turkey, said, "The first thing
we need is furniture. The
furniture we have is in pretty
bad shape. They're falling
apart. From the donations we
try to come up with little items
like curtains and chairs."

"Although we don't have
enough furniture and there are
a lot of deficiencies," he
added, "it's a pleasant place to
be." Much of the furniture has
been donated by the
community. The Club also
receives $1200 in funds from
the Student Allocations
Committee.

The large rooms on the
ground floor of the Center
became crowded and noisy. I
sat with Hasmukh Shah, a
student of nuclear medicine
technology from Kenya. His
comments upon life in the
states were both negative and
positive. "The greatest thing I
enjoy in America is freedom,"
he said. He remarked that he
had accumulated a stack of
visas in Europe and was able to
throw them all away when he
arrived in the U.S. "But," he
said, "it grieves me to see
people abuse their freedom."

Hasmukh's parents are
Indian, his family has British
citizenship, he grew up in
Kenya, but he says "I consider
myself more of an American
than anything else."

Before coming to
Charlottesville, he lived in
Missouri. To compare the two
states he said, "Education-wise
most of the people are very
well-educated here." He
stopped for a moment to ask if
he could be candid, then
added, "This place also is full
of intellectual snobs."

Hasmukh talked about
racism in the U.S. "The black
person in the U.S. has got it
better here than anywhere else
in the world that I know." He
described how he had
experienced more racial insults
in Europe in two weeks than
he had in three years here in
Charlottesville.