YCC’s toying with student body went overboard with fake Spring Fling ad

To the Editor:

Just when I thought the YCC had done nothing to entertain me since the departure of AKS, I was pleasantly surprised by their humorous gag with the fake Spring Fling band announcements. It preyed upon that quintessential human emotion of hope with a cruelty I would have thought impossible for a bureaucratic organization.

Not cool, YCC! I had actually gotten excited to see Smash Mouth and Ricky Martin. Perhaps it was that cognitive dissonance thing I learned so much about. Maybe it was a desperate nostalgia for junior high. I never thought to myself it was a joke. I cheerfully accepted your choice for Spring Fling performers, knowing that my write-in campaign for DragonForce had been unsuccessful.

The YCC repaid my naivety by rubbing salt in my wounds. Shame on you guys. Organizing Spring Fling and levying a $50 tax are the only two things I know the YCC does. And I even paid your stupid tax once, trying to be a good sport even though I had voted against it. You guys couldn’t even politely arrange for Spring Fling without getting me angry. I believe I speak for the majority of the Yale community that was in mourning today, knowing that they won’t be able to listen to their favorite songs from “Astro Lounge” live, when I make a simple request from you. I’ll pad my resume without breaking your heart, and it would be nice of you to do the same.

Brian Thompson ’08

March 27

The writer became jaded with student government after losing a close campaign for school president in eighth grade.

Goal of Class Day speaker should be to challenge seniors, not agree with them

To the Editor:

Jared Malsin’s recent column “Class Day intellectual hasn’t show best critical thinking” (3/26) is more notable in its silences than in its sentences. What does Malsin want us to take away from his editorial? It is clear that he disagrees with Fareed Zakaria, to the point of spinning baroque conspiracy theories about back-room conspiracies between Zakaria and Vice President Cheney. I’m afraid, however, that the point of Malsin’s opinion piece wasn’t simply to inform, but rather to imply that Zakaria was a poor choice for Class Day because “Zakaria’s unwillingness to challenge the conventional wisdom on the Middle East and foreign policy places him in conflict with the tradition of critical thought that Yale, at its best, should represent.” I fear that this throwaway suggestion in fact represents Malsin’s purpose in his piece: to imply that the notable Zakaria (Malsin omits most of his achievements) is a poor choice for speaker because he holds different political beliefs.

One question: Isn’t the point of the Class Day speaker to challenge the views of Yale’s seniors and encourage them to apply their intellects to better understand the world? The fact that Zakaria disagrees with liberal orthodoxy, while describing himself as a liberal, warrants inviting him to speak to the Yale student body.

Dave Kasten ’08

March 26

The writer is the speaker of the Yale Political Union.