Letter: Unethical Fire District Maneuver

Letter to the Editor04:00PM / Monday, February 06, 2023Print Story | Email Story

To the Editor:

The Williamstown Fire District recently released a "Comparison of Size of Proposed Williamstown Fire Station to Other Fire Stations" chart on their official website. The purpose of this data was to educate residents about the sizes of fire stations recently built in the region compared to what Williamstown is proposing to gain support.

During the Jan. 25, 2023, Fire District Prudential Committee meeting (recorded by willinet.org) I asked the District if they knew the information on their data chart was incorrect. For example, under the section "Station Size," the communities of Holden (36,450 square feet), Sharon (42,460 square feet), Medfield (41,022 square feet), and Plainville (43,644 square feet) are combined police/fire buildings, (in the case of Plainville, a police/fire/town hall complex), not a stand-alone fire station as suggested by the District.

District Building Committee member James Kolesar answered the question indicating the District was "indeed" aware the numbers were not accurate, stating in part, "... not meant to be overly precise or a formula, its meant to give a general sense of the size, square foot ...", I responded to Mr. Kolesar by reminding him that nowhere on the District's website does the District provide such a disclaimer.

It is remarkably disingenuous for the District to publicize false information. The District has a responsibility to the taxpayer to provide accurate information when asking them to support a $20-plus million project. Regardless of the reason, the Williamstown Fire District has obliterated its credibility.

Scott McGowan
Williamstown, Mass.

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Discrimination Against Muslim Americans Persists 25 Years After 9/11

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
07:00AM / Saturday, September 12, 2026

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Dozens of Muslim Americans were among people killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Untold numbers of Muslim Americans have suffered countless acts of discrimination in their aftermath.

"Of course, you'll find several accounts of Muslims from all over the U.S. describing how they went from the unknown kids in the school to being stereotyped or ridiculed for their Muslim names," Sidra Mahmood recalled recently. "However, many Americans forget that the victims of 9/11 were also Muslim Americans.

"I can't forget the time when a classmate broke down in sobs when 9/11 came up in our classroom at the Islamic seminary I went to in Texas, because her father's best friend who was like an uncle to her, died on 9/11."

Today, Mahmood is a chaplain at Williams College. In 2001, she was growing up in Karachi, Pakistan, when terrorists forced two passenger jets into the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan and another plane into the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C. A third plane, which terrorists hoped to crash into a D.C. landmark, was brought down in western Pennsylvania after passengers and crew fought back against the hijackers.

The attacks, which ultimately claimed 2,976 lives, horrified people around the world, including in Mahmood's native land.

"I remember being aghast like anyone who witnessed the fall of the Twin Towers in real time," she said. "However, even as a child, fear gripped me about the possibility of war, especially once we learned that Afghanistan, right adjacent to Pakistan, would be attacked by the U.S. My mother had told me about the 1971 war between India and Pakistan when she remembered hiding in the dark after bomb sirens would go off in Punjab after intentional blackouts.

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