I’ve got a bit of a bone to pick with whomever sets out the letters to the editor.
As some of you long-time students may know, I’m a pretty frequent contributor to this section of the paper. As such, I’ve had some of these concerns for some time.
The first concern I had was the titles. It may surprise some of you to know that the writer of the letter has no input on the title of their letter. None. In fact, they usually seem to be chosen to make a letter seem more confrontational than it is. I remember having discussions with a friend of mine who also used to write in somewhat frequently, and how it kind of annoyed both of us; we’re more fans of civil discourse than shouting matches.
But I write in today to speak about timing. Today (Oct. 11, by the way), I was complimented in class on a letter that I had written, and the person seemed a bit confused by my response to it. I thought he had been referring to a letter I had written the day before in response to the political column.
In fact, it turned out to be another letter I had written the week before complimenting the writers on the improvements they had shown since last year.
Now, if the letters to the editor are supposed to be a form of public discourse for the student body, I feel that it is imperative that they be published in a relatively timely manner. Today I not only read a letter from myself that was about a week late, but another two letters that were also referring to topics that had died down (the gun range ad and the ENGL 102 students).
I’m not entirely sure what is to be done about this, but I would hope that we could find space among all the full and half page ads to print the letters to the editor (the actual voice of the students in the paper) in some sort of timely manner that would allow a real timely debate to occur.