Editorial April 16, 1990 Issue

No ifs, ands, or buts

Michael D. Rissler

Historicity is not an everyday word. But it's smack-dab in the middle of just about everything that is important to us. If something has historicity, it actually happened—no ifs, ands, or buts.

Yet history itself is an elusive thing. While an event happens, the accurate accounting of events is a complex and demanding discipline.

Take, for example, a student demonstration that happened at the State House here in Massachusetts last autumn. Students from throughout the state had received a permit and gathered to protest cuts in educational funding. Having gone to the demonstration, I was impressed with the conduct, articulateness, and general amiability of some fifteen thousand students. What a contrast, however, between the evening news reports and what I'd witnessed!

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