To the Editor:

Students in Ethics, Politics & Economics program aren’t really like the five-year-olds Roger Low amusingly portrayed as scrambling for whatever they think is competitive (“Exclusivity: Yalies’ not-so-secret fetish,” 9/22), but many of our students did face unprecedented course-enrollment snafus this fall because other departments failed to clear signals with us properly. A new pre-registration policy initiated by an affiliated department, along with unprecedented number of leaves among the teaching faculty, sent EP&E students scrambling for courses during registration. The problems have been identified and any remaining confusion will be cleared up during our mandatory meeting for majors on Oct. 10.

I’m sure that all who chose the program for the right reasons will get past the shopping-period frustrations and flourish in it because, as Low put it, “the major is a rigorous one, the courses are said to be superb, and the program is clearly a magnet for some of the most intellectual students at Yale.”

Seyla Benhabib

Sept. 23, 2005

The writer, a professor of political science and philosophy, is director of the Ethics, Politics & Economics program.