What happened to all sides? By Dominican Republic RPCV Elizabeth Yehaskel
What happened to all sides? By Elizabeth Yehaskel
Mr. Carollo's suing of PC seems highly questionable to me - he's been having a grand time throwing it into his articles as a way to further attack the organization. Yes, PC was slow to respond to his requests, simply because there were so many and PC simply didn't have the resources to respond as quickly as he would have liked. After he got the lawyers, they hired a full-time employee just to handle him and his questions. I am not justifying any incidents when volunteers or family had trouble getting more information - simply that I doubt Carollo's motives were sincere. The big problem is that Carollo has illustrated so clearly how slanted his storytelling is, so I have a hard time taking anything he says without a few thousand grains of salt. The big Kosher kind of salt. And that is what happened with irresponsible reporters - faith gets lost, and the truth gets lost.
My pain lies in the fact that Carollo's tactics have only covered up honest issues that really do exist. In my opinion, PC handled the death of my friend and another friend's assault wonderfully. There were a couple other incidents that could have been handled much better. But rather than get people to focus on these real issues, many of us find ourselves defending the fact that Carollo is using the exceptions and claiming they are the rule. I am so busy filling in the blanks for my friends who weren't in Peace Corps and read all these facts and freaked out that I haven't even had time to talk about the problems that ARE there, the ones Carollo buried under all his half-truths and shockers. I've heard people on the street who know nothing about Peace Corps except what Carollo wrote saying - "I don't understand why they don't just shut the organization down! Is this true? What an outrage!" I'm unsure what Carollo's motives were, but it seems to me that a lot more harm than good was done with this series. I totally think these stories need to be told and heard, but they can't be portrayed as the "norm." While there have been incidents, most of the 170,000 volunteers had positive experiences, even with illness and injury. What about our voices? Would any of us be happy if the organization did get shut down, or lost funding? Wouldn't a focus on pooling our stories and experiences to provide PC with some valuable guidance and goals be more productive?
