Quality of Profiles Favor Certain Tickets

To the editors:

I read with great fascination your feature articles on the various Undergraduate Council presidential candidates, and I was taken aback by what seems a most noticeable difference in the quality of reportage devoted to the different campaigns. It is clear that, while the teams writing about Darling-Patel and Plants-Wikler were quite thorough in their investigations, the articles devoted to the other two-person teams were sorely lacking.

The report on Leonard-Tenney, for example, includes no quotes from people other than Leonard and Tenney. Likewise for Driskell-Burton, where the candidates are the only people quoted--promising, among other things, to keep all their promises.

Contrast this with the profile of Plants-Wikler, where two other people are quoted, as well as that of Darling-Patel, where two opponents are quoted extensively, and the reporters even called up someone at Ohio State. On the other hand, we do not get to find out where Darling or Plants grew up, a clearly vital fact. (Texas and Michigan, respectively).

In all, it is not so much the style of the articles that I am complaining about, but the fact that, clearly, they were not written with equal effort or intent. I can only feel sorry for the Leonard and Driskell camps, whose profiles are exercises in vapidity that can presumably only be rivaled by the vapidity, at least in the view of the editorial board, of all the candidates themselves.

Lev Polinsky '99-'00

Dec 13, 1999

The writer is a member of the Undergraduate Council.

Debate Coverage Lessened By Dreyfus' Omission

To the editors:

Was Undergraduate Council presidential candidate Ben Dreyfus not at the debate reported on in today's issue? We recall seeing him there and were shocked to see that he alone was omitted from your article. Political campaigns depend on the press for publicity, and the Crimson performed a great disservice to Dreyfus by failing to report on his position, or even to acknowledge his candidacy. The role of a news article is to report the facts to the students and let them draw their own conclusions--not to pass judgment on the merits of certain candidates and include or exclude information accordingly.

Greg Y. Tseng '01

Aviva A. Geiger '01

Dec. 14, 1999