'Prince' article unfair to Isenberg's book

Regarding 'Isenberg case reveals discord, controversy' (Monday, March 29, 2004):

I am distressed at the Prince's misrepresentation of at least one of the reviews of Andrew Isenberg's first book in the context of his tenure case. Any serious review of a scholarly work will contain criticism as well as praise, but your journalist chose to quote only the very few critiques to be found in Mark Knox's piece in the Journal of American History. It is only fair, then, to cite Knox's conclusion as well: "The real beauty of Isenberg's scholarship lies in his ability to illuminate the differences between native and non-Indian societies and to find the consistent parallels that shaped all peoples on the Great Plains in the nineteenth century. In the process, Isenberg integrates complex social, economic, and ecological analysis and brings new understanding and relevance to an important subject." Rachel Gabara Assistant professor of comparative literature

Hi-tech tools are needed to safeguard clubs

Regarding 'Of course the Street isn't like Wheaton College' (Adam Kopald '05, March 30) and 'This grad student sure does know his stuff' (Zachary Goldstein '05, March 30):

We would like to thank Kopald and Goldstein for helping to preserve Princeton's eating clubs as the safest places in America. We must, as they suggest, keep the graduate students out.

Kopald draws a seamy picture, of "sketchy grad students sneaking into our eating clubs." But Goldstein seems to think that there is no imminent public threat because "in most cases, admittance to the eating clubs requires an undergraduate PUID — not a graduate student one."

Goldstein's faulty intelligence, however, has blinded him to a clear and present danger: Graduate student PUIDs are virtually indistinguishable from the authentic undergraduate proxes. And all too often, graduate students look like normal people. We hate to cause a public scare, but it's true: The eating club borders are porous. Far too porous.

But there is hope yet. We are confident that the University can find a surer method to distinguish graduate students from undergraduate students once and for all. Different-colored IDs are a possibility, but the risk of counterfeit is too high. We suggest subcutaneous tracking chips, à la "The Island of Dr. Moreau," that could instantly detect grad student penetration into the "liberal environment" of the eating clubs which Kopald describes.

The technology is out there. The resources are available. The threat is real.

It is time to ask: Does the University care enough about its undergraduates — and the safety of their eating clubs — to protect them? John Lombardini GS, Susan McWilliams GS and Andy Rachlin '04

More lessons from Kaufman's movie

Regarding 'Lessons from 'Sunshine' (Julie Park, March 30):

We are all familiar with the classic romantic comedy: boy and girl meet and instantly fall in love. Then they do everything wrong, make all the mistakes despite our screams at the screen, and things fall apart. In the Hollywood version, some cute deus ex machina, like a favored dog or a savvy kid, comes in to save it all in the end. And we cheer, leaving the movie theater with renewed commitment to that greatest of all muses: Eros.

In appropriate pomo style, Charlie Kaufman's "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" turns the deus into a scientific-medical procedure of safe brain damage, "on the level of a long night out drinking" the doctor advises his angst-ridden client. In her recent column, Park identifies the crucial question posed by the movie as that old Shakespearen rut: to erase, or not to erase?

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I think her sharp question might also require a Nietzschean twist: to return, or not to return? If so, then the pivotal scene comes much later in the film. Of course for Nietzsche, the challenge of the eternal return was no question. It was certain. Joel and Clementine were bound to fall in love again — because it was true love. The challenge is whether they would have the strength to do it again knowing how heartbreaking it turned out the first time. It must have been uncanny to listen to themselves bemoan the worst characteristics of the person they had only just met and had that inexplicable and intoxicating "first date" connection with. Is it doomed to fail again?

We have all got that one ex who we would love to erase given the opportunity. This is not "the one who got away." This is the one that said that terrible, unspeakable thing to us. (Or, horribly, we said it to them.) But we go on loving them from afar nonetheless.

In searching at the hurtful memories, we also melt when recalling the good ones. Perhaps in wanting to erase them, we are not choosing to remove them from our life, because they are bound to eternally return to us. Perhaps this movie is providing us with a much longed for way out (or way back), which cannot be made without a little fantasy, or at least a little whimsy. Because, in saying the unspeakable, we are saying something that cannot be forgiven, not even by the most saintly of souls among us. And what is Love if not: forgive and forget?

Park asks what we would be if we had spotless minds. Boring, comes to mind. But the movie provides an alternate answer. We would be the same; bound by the same inclinations to want to same things and possibly commit the same errors. In a less fantasic world, we must be content with our lot, learn from our mistakes and relieve our childish desires to take it all back by going to the movies ever so often, hopefully with new loves and sympathetic friends. Amy Shuster GS