Piece on Patkin Wonderful

To the editors:

Very rarely do I read anything that justifies writing a letter to the editor. However, William P. Bohlen's piece on Max Patkin (Sports, Nov. 3) was a delight. Bohlen depicted Patkin and his antics in a vivid and nostalgia-provoking manner. Even those who had never seen his performance--which I consider myself fortunate to have done on several occasions--could truly picture one of baseball's "greats." I wish mainstream media sources had taken the same time that you obviously did. Nice work!

Lee a. Knuti '69

Wheat Ridge, Colo., Nov. 3, 1999

Dissent on Gay Rooming

Policy Makes Valid Points

To the editors:

Even though I'm bisexual, I think the point raised in the dissent ("A Thinly Veiled Bias," Nov. 2) is valid. Tossing a homophobic straight kid from the Midwest into a living situation with a queer roommate and forcing them to live together isn't likely to do anyone any good. In my opinion, a queer kid should have just as much right to demand that he be removed from a living situation with a straight person because he is not comfortable having to co-habitate with a homophobe, even if that person is mostly civil.

Your roommate is a crucial component of the college experience. I dropped out of school, partially because I had a very bad roommate experience my second year. I think the likely result of this policy will be that students will leave or develop alternative living arrangements that allow them to relieve their discomfort. In fact, I suspect that if the issue were researched, it would be found that in almost every situation where there was discomfort and a change request was denied, some arrangement of this sort occurred. You can't force people to live together.

Furthermore, the privacy analogy between being forced to live with a member of the opposite sex and a queer member of the same gender is correct. We are raised, in this culture, with a very strong personal privacy taboo around the opposite sex, and a queer person fills that role. I can't imagine how it could have been productive when I was in college to force me to live with a woman who wasn't comfortable with the idea of disrobing in front of me or me changing in front of her. Fortunately, my roommate did not have a problem with my orientation (it was public), but if he had, I would not have wanted to live with him!

Thomas Leavitt

Santa Cruz, Calif., Nov. 3, 1999

Liebert Misses Distinction Between Rock, Top 40 Music

To the editors:

I am writing to protest Hugh Liebert's column ("The American Invasion," Oct. 26), where he laments the way American Top 40 music has corrupted global culture. Indeed, Top 40 music is often idiotic and profoundly uninteresting; however, Liebert makes the mistake of conflating Top 40 with rock music in general. Top-40 is produced and promoted by a few profit-seeking major record labels like RCA, Columbia, and Warner Brothers, which release same-sounding music in hopes of discovering the next big hit. This "rock star" approach is deeply at odds with a more vital function of rock music, that of political, social and cultural protest. As Liebert observes, it's a shame that Germans have dropped Schubert to adopt Fiona Apple. However, the true shame is that Germans (and Americans, too) listen to the inane drivel pushed on MTV and Top 40 stations instead of listening to music which would express their frustrations or increase their sensitivity to beauty or pain. Rock music is as adept at this function as Schubert.

Nora B. Morrison '00

Oct. 28, 1999