Letters to the Editor

Eating clubs should be held responsible for pickup disturbances

Last Sunday night, some of the hallways in Forbes College, where I am an RA, were vandalized by groups of students during pickups. I urge the administration to become aware of the process of eating club selection to understand what exactly happens to our university and our students during this time.

When students are sent to McCosh for drinking excessively during pickups and are treated in demeaning, derogatory ways during bicker simply to be accepted by their peers, the university should step forward and draw the line between decent conduct and inappropriate action. When custodians in Forbes have to spend extra hours cleaning up messes that eating club members created after overturning trashcans throughout the hallways, the administration should take action. And when freshmen throughout my residential college lock themselves in their rooms as club members pass by their rooms, banging on doors, the administration should make a statement.

Clubs should be held liable when large groups of members storm through residential colleges during pickups, overturn trashcans, spray silly string on doors, bang on doors and create a mess on the residential college hallways, as Quadrangle did to the Forbes hallways. This is vandalism, and the clubs should be held responsible. Sean Cameron Class of '05

Reactions to Summers stifle debate

Regarding "Few women in the sciences? 'It's the culture, stupid'" (Jan. 31):

In politics, there's nothing like a good stifling of debate and inquiry, and based on reactions of scholars to Larry Summers' hypotheses, academia is apparently no different. We don't want to trust science unless it's telling us what we want to hear. Pseudo-scientific studies have been used for centuries in support of racism and sexism and all sorts of other bad "isms," so now that we are an equality-obsessed society, we've instead chosen to tar and feather anyone who makes even the slightest suggestion of innate biological differences to explain intellect and ability at the expense of a productive debate.

[Summers] could be right or wrong but he certainly wasn't stupid for saying something. What I see in [Carter's] article more than anything else is a stubborn defensiveness that causes a targeted group to ferociously attack characters like Summers without paying any attention to the potential merit and value of his statements. Pig! Bigot! Sexist! These actions are against the spirit of scientific inquiry. I am not about to lionize Larry Summers. I just don't think a public flogging is in order. Debate must always remain open; culture should not dictate science. Freddie LaFemina Class of '06 Mentoring important for women in science

Regarding "Few women in the sciences? 'It's the culture, stupid'" (Jan. 31):

In my own humble observations, I've witnessed that men and women learn in different ways. As it has been studied in books like "Unlocking the Clubhouse", many teachers and institutions don't teach in a way that helps women learn best, nor do they encourage them to pursue science and engineering, nor do they provide role models for them.

I truly believe that the women in science and engineering that want it can be the top of their fieldsit's just a matter of getting more women to want it. Julia Chen Electrical engineering