Letters are a reader's best friend

Few issues get readers riled up like the Street and alcohol. Cullen Newton's column two weeks ago and a graduate student's letter set off a letters and columnist war that has only just now died down.

I wasn't surpised that an argument over the Street produced such strong responses. It's a central part of many students' social experience here. When the letters got personal, I knew I should still run them.

The first response to Newton's column, from grad student Jonathan Eastvold, called on the University to intervene before the Street's debauchery turned deadly. The next day's letters from juniors Zachary. Goldstein and Adam Kopald said Eastvold didn't know what he was talking about and probably couldn't know what he was talking about, since clubs generally require undergrad proxes for entry. Kopald took a swipe at Eastvold's alma mater Wheaton College, an interdenominational Christian college in Wheaton, Ill.

The exchange went on, with more letters and columns from Chris Berger, Joseph Barillari and Michael Frazer, occasionally including personal attacks as much as issue critiques.

Over the last week, I've been asked the same question about almost all the letters and columns written. It is a question that has also cropped up regarding some of the exchanges on homosexuality: What were you thinking when you printed that?

At least a few of you thought that some of what was said was simply not fit to print.

Apparently, the letters and columns were at times anti-Christian, ill-reasoned, mean-spirited and just plain dumb. Or at least that's what I've been told over the last few days.

I'd be the first to acknowledge that all of those criticisms have merit. That's the whole point of a letters column. It's to let readers vent — to let you speak your mind about what's wrong here, what's wrong with people who say what's wrong and what's wrong with those people.

The publication policy the 'Prince' follows is very liberal. The primary requirement for letters is that they express a thought that someone can react to. They need not express what I think is a good point, nor agree with what's been written in the paper. Frankly, letters of praise are rather boring to read. The letters column is for dissent — be it from an editorial, a column or our coverage.

While sensitivity is certainly a virtue in public conversation, it shouldn't be a requirement. Maybe Kopald was wrong to bring up Eastvold's school in firing back at his letter, but I'd rather print it and have peole say he's wrong (and that I'm wrong for having printed it) than stifle the viewpoint. Same with Eastvold's original letter. Just as it irked some people to read the letters, I know their criticisms resonated with others. This page is not a ideological policeman. It is a conduit for campus debate.

But there are limits. We don't print letters whose facts we can't verify. We stick to a 200-word limit except in extreme circumstances. We try to keep points from being repeated. And conspiracy theories — which I have to admit are pretty fun to read — don't make the cut, either.

Generally, though, the letters column is open to all viewpoints, whether I agree with them or not.

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These next few weeks will show if grades can compete with alcohol in controversy. I'd imagine you'll have ample opportunity to wonder what on earth I'm thinking again.

Sometimes I will, too. Editorial Page Editor Jonathan Williams is a religion major from Charlotte, N.C. You can reach him at jlwillia@princeton.edu.