On April 13, I presented my undergraduate research project at the MSU Board of Trustees meeting.

The presentation was entitled "Memoirs of Genocide: Polish Jewish boys and Southern Sudanese 'Lost Boys,' (Exploring the experiences and narratives of child survivors of mass violence)."

In an infobox about the meeting, from "Trustees vote to lift housing prices" (SN 4/16), my presentation was said to have "compared the Holocaust to the Sudanese 'Lost Boys.'"

This is simply incorrect.

I'm not sure if this misrepresentation of my project was due to the reporter's misunderstanding, or a desire to simplify the description. As a student of the Holocaust, I would not presume to compare it, as a whole, to anything.

The focus of my project is comparing memoirs of survivors of these atrocities who were children at the time of their experiences. Those two words, "memoirs" and "children," were the key elements of my project and should have been mentioned by The State News, however briefly, for clarity and truthfulness to my clearly stated thesis.

These distinctions matter.

My research on the experiences of these two groups of boys, which occurred within vastly different contexts, was to emphasize the magnitude of their individual traumatic experiences — not to equate those experiences. I emphasized as much in my presentation. Had I been asked to provide a statement about my project, I would have been happy to oblige. I hope that in the future, this paper will be more meticulous about the information it presents. Details matter.

Jasmine Angelini-Knoll
anthropology and political science junior