SODOM AND GOMORRAH

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

I am an Assistant not an Associate Professor and I called the data gathering process of the riot commission neither "slow" as reported in the CRIMSON (April 19) nor "sloppy" as reported in the April 20 correction. What I did say was that with more time the Commission might have done an even better job in collecting its data and in assembling its report. The constraints under which the Commission operated were extra-ordinary and I think it is worthy of note that it did as good a job as it did.

Such sloppy reporting on the part of the CRIMSON can only serve to damage the credibility of the most significant and far reaching statement of a programmatic nature ever made by a governmental unit on American race relations.

In responding to the disorders last summer President Johnson called for a national day of prayer and a study commission. We have the admirable results of the study commission and hopefully will not now be left only with prayer. In the Commission's words there must in fact "...be no higher priority for national action and no higher claim on the nation's conscience," for "to continue on our present course will...ultimately involve the destruction of basic democratic values." As one pundit grimly pointed out, the last time urban change was left to the Lord was at Sodom and Gomorrah. Gary T. Marx   Assistant Professor of Sociology