To the Editor:

The Yale Daily News should reject professor Valerie Hansen’s call to pre-screen the postings made to the paper’s online discussion board (“News should reconsider its online postings policy,” 12/5) . While I agree with Hansen’s goal — namely, to disallow out-and-out hate speech — her recommendation is simply impractical. Speaking from experience, I can’t imagine that any Yale Daily News staffer has the time or inclination to constantly monitor all the paper’s online discussion boards. It’s more than sufficient to delete the inappropriate postings a few times a day. I doubt that any professor is so thin-skinned that he or she would suffer irreparable harm from the short-lived existence of a few anonymous, intelligence-free, online pot-shots; especially when it’s so obvious to thinking people that that’s what they are.

Blair Golson ’01

December 5, 2002

The writer is a former managing editor of the Yale Daily News.