Murder Coverage Biased

To the editors:

I agree with Michael Colono’s relatives that Alexander Pring-Wilson’s connection to Harvard has biased the coverage of Colono’s murder (News, “Loved Ones Remember Colono as Devoted Father,” April 24).

Few people have seemed to notice that Pring-Wilson is an enormous man and he stabbed his victim five times. It is up to a jury to decide whether this constitutes self-defense; however, I hope they succeed at being less biased than local news outlets have thus far. Alexander Pring-Wilson is not the victim in this situation. His background of incredible privilege and natural talent may make some less sympathetic to his “mistake” in killing another person, and that bias would be unjust. However, I fear instead it saddens some people more, as though a man with more degrees and medals deserves a fuller life—perhaps better deserves a life at all—than his peers.

Shame on anyone in the Harvard community who thinks this way. And shame especially on the friends of Pring-Wilson who try in The Crimson article to pass off his killing another human being as another manifestation of the pride and determination that has helped him achieve so much. If this is the kind of fruit his good qualities have the potential to yield, then we at Harvard certainly don’t need Pring-Wilson in our community.

Elizabeth F. Janiak ’03

April 24, 2003