To the Editor:
In last week’s Editorial Notebook, The Polytechnic’s composing editor, Dan Harris, wrote about the Senate’s plan to bring the Ruckus music service to RPI students. This editorial was nothing but slanderous nonsense. Dan intended the article as an attack on Grand Marshal Max Yates, not an expression of his opinion of the Ruckus music service, the Senate’s plan to bring Ruckus to RPI, or any other related matter. No, Dan intended his article as a personal attack against Yates, and nothing more.
I won’t even mention my stance on the Ruckus issue, because my opinion on that matter is about as important as Harris’; it amounts to about 1/8000 of the group who stands to suffer or benefit from it. Instead, I would like to refute his ignorant and unwarranted attacks on Yates. Dan accuses Yates of negligence and/or lying about the results of the Senate’s music survey. Dan used the same numbers in his attack of Yates as Yates used in defense of the music service plan; they merely represented the data differently. While Dan is right in saying that only 14.7 percent of the students, professors, and staff who were asked to take the survey answered favorably, he fails to mention that only about a fifth of the students, professors, and staff solicited actually responded to the survey. Dan is assuming that the other four-fifths of the students, professors, and staff would not support the music service, which is a claim that he is not authorized by those students, professors, and staff to make. Thus Yates’ statement was not, in the words of Dan, “either negligent or a huge lie.”
On the other hand, Harris’ statement that the survey results were not published and are unattainable is either negligent or a huge lie. Well, I don’t think that the word “negligent” is applicable to statements so much as people, but Harris certainly neglected to point out that the survey results were published in the July 1 edition of The Poly, and the text of the article is still available on The Poly’s website. Also, there are other articles published even more recently by The Poly that refer to this survey, such as the article published at the end of September, entitled, “Agreement with Ruckus in works.” This article cites the survey when it claims that, “In general, the results seemed to widely favor getting a music service.” Therefore, there are published results from the survey available, published by the same organization that employs Harris’ editorial skills.
Harris should be ashamed. He intentionally skewed information and made unfounded accusations against Yates. I understand that this was an editorial, and therefore intended merely to present Dan’s opinion of the matter, but he did not limit himself to opinion. He presented incorrect and misleading information and slander as fact. In the future I hope The Poly will take greater care to prevent such dribble from making it to press.
Nick Lesniewski-Laas
ELEC ’06
