Letters To Arts

Read your article [Scoop A. Wasserstein’s “David Lynch Meditates on Peace”] off the internet last night. You got some great quotes there and the piece moved along nicely. I liked it. Good journalism!

—Ken Chawkin, Media Relations, Maharishi University of Management





Thank you for Henry Seton’s review of the recently distributed student essays on the curricular review (“Student Curricular Review Essays Stack Up Favorably to Profs,” 10/7/05). While I think Mr. Seton did an admirable job summarizing most works, he read my work too narrowly thus distorting my argument.

He wrote, “I believe Gray and Wolf make the error of assuming that (the) only way to create self-directed graduates is to allow students to direct their own studies.” This misses the ENTIRETY of my argument. I do not believe that students should be allowed free reign to direct their studies. I believe that students should be encouraged to design their own courses of study in the context of a nurturing and challenging relationship with an adviser or mentor. Students are not free to take the easiest route for they must gain the approval of a faculty who I believe, deserve more responsibility in shaping students academic trajectories. The question is who or what legitimizes students academic choices. I think that legitimation from faculty who are charged to know and care about the students is infinitely better at guaranteeing the relevance of academics than the Core or concentration requirements.

I agree with Mr. Seton when he says, “Ultimately, students....need greater direction from Harvard in order to find our own self-direction...Left to our own, there are too many pressures that can lead us away from confronting our deepest assumptions and developing our minds to the fullest potential.” Without giving my essay a full reading and recognizing that I call for the very structure that he values (albeit in a different place), he has over-simplified my argument, suggested that I mean something that I do not, and made a counter-argument that is totally unnecessary. I encourage him to read my essay again more closely, and I worry that without clarification or retraction other students will be turned away from reading my essay because of his misunderstanding.

­—Ethan Gray ‘05-’06







While each person is allowed their opinion, the article on the video for “The Ghost Of You” by My Chemical Romance, was seemingly unresearched. They didn’t even bother to learn the band members’ names nor anything else about the band before going and attacking their music video. They are musicians, not directors and unable to spend millions of dollars on a music video. The video in itself, is very well done and put together, not getting wrapped up in special effects and in your face symbolism and obvious surface level meanings that so many music videos these days are. It has concept, depth and does not fail to touch those who watch it. Even those who see the video daily, still are touched by the song and its meaning.

The band is not a typical “let’s shoot a video that is us playing at a high school,” nor are their lyrics’ meanings always on the surface, but rather, take thought and understanding into the band’s lives and pasts to get, while still being able to be adapted and used to comfort the listener in times of need and pain.

Considering the budget and the band’s schedule, which is almost non stop world wide touring while trying to record their third album, the video is amazing and a breath of fresh air from the cookie cutter videos that are put out by the masses by artists who all sound the same in the first place.

—Aly Bock