Sharp Edges letter campaign

By James Keller

Recently, the Gauntlet received a barrage of letters from a group on campus, all of whom objected to a negative critique in last week’s paper. While we welcome dialogue with our readers, as students we must both appreciate and critically think about all sides of an issue.

The largest criticism attacked our mere suggestion that a campus organization might be flawed. One of the Gauntlet’s mandates is to cover campus events and news, however, we are under no obligation to come out in support of campus organizations, arts or otherwise.

Both as students and faculty of a university, we have a responsibility to maintain academic autonomy and integrity. A critique, especially a positive one, will lose all credibility if we forget this and give praise for the sake of praise. Furthermore, a critique from a writer not particularly well-versed in an obscure subject matter isn’t irresponsible–realistically, it represents the campus audience.