Our reader's voices
Personal attacks unwarranted
This is in response to the commentary on my Jan. 7 guest column.
I brought up the point that CMU picks and chooses which offended minorities they care about, and I'm disappointed that some people responded with personal attacks. I made an argument, and you may disagree, but it isn't necessary to make assumptions about my character, my intelligence or my academic career.
William Blond December 2007 graduate
Misleading presentations
Here's a question to ask yourself: If you were shown a slide show that had a few statistics trying to argue a case for something, wouldn't you think the analysis of data would be complete and accurate? Especially one that is put out by a publicly-funded university?
I would have thought so, too. However, that apparently isn't the case when it came to the slide show that was shown during the open forum on diversity issues on Jan. 10. After the event ended, I asked Dr. Mary Senter, the presenter of the Powerpoint presentation, if I might be able to acquire a copy. After informing her that I ran my own independent blog, she declined. The stated reason for declining the request was because the faculty data had not been completely analyzed yet, and permission had been required to use the data in the presentation. I was subsequently directed to the planning Web site to get the student report.
If there would have been an appropriate time for Dennis Lennox to be snooping around with that damned video camera, it would have been then.
If quality of the data analysis was a concern, why was it used in the first place? It shouldn't have been, and certainly a professor at a university such as Central Michigan would know that. So why then did I get the response that I did? Does it have something to do with the fact that the reports require a Central Michigan ID for access? I've subsequently hosted them on my site by the way.
So what's the reason? I imagine anyone with a bit of rationale about them would ask the same thing.
Jason Gillman Jr. Traverse City junior
