To the Editor:
I’d like to defend my “lambasting” in the previous week’s letter to the editor by Jim Tatalias’10. I may have been unclear in my earlier statements; I did not intend to portray the Statler & Waldorf as a misogynistic publication. Rather, I was attacking the sentiments expressed by Kat Foley ’10 in the S&W of February 17 as a supplement to her letter to The Poly.
I suggest that readers who want a thorough understanding of the source of my statements and those of Tatalias refer to the letters to the editor by Amy Wieliczka ’10 published February 18, Foley’s published February 25, my own letter to the editor published March 4, Tatalias’s letter published March 25, and the S&W of February 17. Foley wrote in the S&W about Ratio-Induced Bitch Syndrome as a phenomenon at RPI. Wieliczka wrote a letter to the editor expressing disapproval of the plastering of posters on the Darrin Communications Center, which advertised the behavior of women on campus as inappropriate and identified that as why passers-by may be single. Foley wrote a letter to The Poly defending the acceptance of RIBS. I wrote a letter to the editor defending Wieliczka’s opinion and further lambasted the opinions expressed by Foley in her letter to the editor and in the S&W. Tatalias responded on behalf of S&W, “apologizing” for my statements that “accused” S&W of being a “misogynistic publication.”
S&W is a great publication that provides a medium for a variety of opinions. Every issue contains a disclaimer that “Opinions expressed within [S&W] are not necessarily those of the S&W staff [or RPI, etc.],” and I did not mean to imply that the publication itself was misogynistic. I stated that I would have liked the S&W to have provided a “more progressive approach to the idea of RIBS.” In the S&W I referred to, RIBS was mentioned nearly exclusively in Foley’s article, which simply explored the implication of RIBS instead of disputing it. In Foley’s article, it was accepted as a phenomenon and identified women on campus as “RIBS-infected bitches” and sororities as “Petri dishes of the RIBS virus.” Sororities provide many benefits to women on campus and the RPI community, and the idea of RIBS is misogynistic as it promotes unrealistic stereotypes of women on campus. As such, the sentiments by Foley were insensitive.
In the letter, she complained about Wieliczka’s opinion as expressed in her letter as overly sensitive and expressed the opinion that women on campus act promiscuously due to the ratio. I explained in detail in my previous letter to the editor how Foley’s statements were insensitive and how the widespread acceptance of the prevalence of RIBS promotes misogyny.
Elsewhere in the publication, women were portrayed fairly and the unfortunate implications of “the ratio” were covered by the article “Rensselaer: A History of the Sexes.” Overly sensual advertising was criticized in the article “Inevitably Naked” by Nita Padavil ’12. I was pleased on a whole with the publication’s portrayal of women and only took issue with Foley’s article, but more with her letter to the editor in The Poly. Again, I apologize if my statements framed the entire S&W publication as misogynistic; they were only meant to be directed at Foley’s opinion articles in both the S&W and her letter in The Poly.
Timothy Tusing
MATH ’10
