I wish to share with you my disappointment regarding last week’s letter to the editor from Ken Girardin. First, let me begin by explaining my political position: I am a registered Republican voter who takes this election year very seriously. Never before has the United States found itself in such a precarious position as it is in now. Now, by no means do I vote strictly based on what party I belong to. In my view, a political party merely reflects your voting tendencies and it should not influence your vote. That being said, I would like to ask all registered and unregistered voters to make all possible efforts to vote for their candidate of choice in the upcoming election.

Taking into consideration what I have just mentioned above, Girardin’s tone in his letter last week does an incredible disservice to the Republican Party. During this election year we should be concerned with looking better than our opponents instead of smearing them in return for the deeds they have done to us. For this very reason Girardin’s hinting towards a URL that will supposedly smear Andrew Tibbetts, managing editor of The Polytechnic, is completely inappropriate and distasteful. Anyone who ventures off to read them will quickly find that the comments found there were written, quite obviously, with personal bias. Hardly “evidence.”

I would also like to point out that Girardin does not need to flatter the president via impersonation when writing his letters to the editor. After being instructed to look up “slander” as requested in last week’s letter, I found that these words refer to “oral communication of false statements injurious to a person’s reputation.” However, when I researched “libel” I found: “A false publication, as in writing, print, signs, or pictures, that damages a person’s reputation.” Quite clearly, someone did not visit http://www.dictionary.com/ and follow his own advice.

Finally, I would like to know why The Polytechnic is being threatened with a subpoena. Using dictionary.com once again, I found that a subpoena is “a writ requiring appearance in court to give testimony.” What court are we taking The Polytechnic to? What testimony will they be ordered to give? This statement sounds completely ludicrous and only serves to give campus Republicans a bad reputation.

I will conclude by saying that I, too, do not support the showing of Michael Moore’s propaganda with student money—he is notorious for telling half-truths (worse than lies) which further his political agenda – but there are better ways to express concerns about inaccuracies in previous news articles than by issuing retaliatory personal attacks. These opinions having been presented, I wish to offer my advice to the chairman of the RPI College Republicans: You are fighting an uphill battle, on an increasingly liberal campus, in a liberal state. Get your details straight before you speak out and preserve our party’s dignity. Letters hastily written in anger are less credible than those logically thought out. In the end, actions such as these ultimately turn public opinion against you and your goals.

Jacob D. Hunt