To the editors:

“A dead body” as an example of “the sketchiest thing....”, wording of the question offered up in print by Roving Reporter Jenifer L. Steinhardt ’05 in last Friday’s Crimson was offensive to me, as I think it might be to anyone who has lost a member of their family, a close or distant friend or a stranger to sudden unexplained death, to death by old age or to illness.

Whose job is it at The Crimson to pick up on unacceptable social gaffes? Certainly there are many ways to ask the same question.

There is no need to dehumanize what was recently an active person, a professor at a university across the river, with colleagues, friends, family in the area and a member of the local community.

Victoria A. Kent

April 21, 2003