Gauntlet immature

By William Buchan

Editors, the Gauntlet,

Re: “AP Reader Survey Results,” Nov. 18, 1999

Reading the survey, I was sadly disappointed at its childishness. What could have been an insightful work for campus organizers on how services should be run, turned into a display of idle, and potentially hurtful gossip. By including categories such as “least attractive staff,” and “worst looking faculty,” the survey degrades the Gauntlet to the low level of student as snob. Writers of the survey need not rejoice alone in their gossip games, those who responded to such questions in a public forum are equally to blame, or is this condemnation premature? Exactly how many students were surveyed? Two? Strangely, the article selects this one point as the occasion to invoke its right to silence.

If information on the best place for “you know what we mean,” is what is so desperately needed for students and staff, you have my blessings. If what the hell does SU stand for?” seems like an intelligent question, fine, ask it. Surveys that deliberately go out of their way to ridicule specific groups, however, is where the line should be drawn. No, I am neither employed in the food court, not am I studying in one of the faculties ridiculed by the article, but the people who are not there for the lure of a beauty contest, or the amusement of the individuals who wrote or responded to the AP survey; they are there to earn money and learn for the future, something the writers of the survey will never do unless they intend to gain a position at the National Enquirer. At present, the AP survey is rooted only in, and soaks willfully, the petty gossip so plentifully supplied at the U of C. Please, in the vein of decency and professionalism, grow up.

William Buchan