Use your right to vote

To the Editor,

I want to start with the moral of my story: Vote and speak out. These rights are precious and sustained by exercising them.

Forty-two years ago, I started teaching at Cuttington University in Liberia a few months after a military coup deposed the previous authoritarian regime. Because the military leaders had concentrated all troops in the capitol, the college campus had no soldiers and the students for the first time had, in effect, freedom of speech—and they used it. One student in my calculus class, Kpedee Woiwor, was particularly forceful in his debates with students and faculty (including me) about what political and economic forms would be best for Liberia.

The military government prohibited all forms of elections, even for student governments. A year later, the college administration appointed Kpedee the president of the student government. He and the student government presidents from the other higher education institutions in Liberia published an open letter in the country’s newspaper addressed to the Head of State. They requested that students be allowed to vote for their leaders. The letter had one true but critical sentence of the government.

The students were arrested for treason, tried and convicted by a military court. They were sentenced to death for writing a letter about voting. The day before their execution, the Head of State pardoned them. When Kpedee returned to campus, we could see he was a broken man. He had been tortured for the previous month and became an informant for the government. The army returned to campus, and freedom of speech died. Torture, like terrorism and other violence, works through fear.

Please vote—in person or absentee. And speak out. We preserve democracy by exercising it fully