Letters

Dear Editor:

I was shocked and saddened by the content of the Valentine's Day issue of the Herald that came out last week. I am incredulous that anyone could think of writing the kind of utterly cruel, uncalled-for notes that permeated the entire issue. I am even more incredulous that the staff of the Herald could possibly dream of justifying the publication of those notes. If this were the doing of one misguided individual, such an act could be explainable, if not completely understandable. And if only one person had been the target of these insults, perhaps the situation could have been sufficiently dealt with and rectified.

MATT WIEGLE/YH

But the fact is, it wasn't one person who wrote them and it wasn't one person who received them. There were dozens of people on both sides. How so many people could justify going out of their way to hurt people on the one day a year that is supposed to be devoted to love is absolutely incomprehensible to me. How can we protest Yale's not recognizing Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, a holiday about justice and equality, and more importantly, about respect, love, and compassion, when this is how we slander our holiday about love? Valentine's Day might have lost some of its meaning in the overly commercial and sentimental hype that now surrounds it, but this is no excuse for using it as an opportunity for unkindness.

The Yale student body should be ashamed of itself, as should the staff of the Herald. Free speech is important, but allowing the publication and showcasing of this kind of cruelty on the part of the Herald does not fall under the auspices of free speech—it falls into the category of gross misjudgment and irresponsibility that calls for an apology. —Jocelyn Lippert, TD '04

Valentine's issue indicative of Yalies' homophobia

Dear Editor:

Reading the Herald's Valentine's issue as a campus-wide exercise in free speech, I am gravely disappointed. The use of homosexuality to degrade and insult other people, despite its intended comedic value, unmasked remaining attitudes of homophobia on campus.

Although we would like to think of ourselves as educated and tolerant, the Valentine's issue has shown that Yale students are neither above nor immune to hate speech. I hope we come to acknowledge not only this overt form of bigotry, but also the more subtle (and potent) expressions of racism, sexism, and classism that still infiltrate things that we say and silently listen to all those other days of the year. —Ann Thai, DC '02

The Herald publishes the Valentine's Day issue to help the student body celebrate the holiday. We do not endorse the content and sincerely apologize for any hurt or ill-feeling it may have caused.—Ed.

Corrections

In the article "Scholarship, events, to honor black history month" [YH, 2/16/01], the caption incorrectly identified the picture as Courtland Van Rensselaer Creed, an 1857 School of Medicine graduate, the first African-American to graduale from the Yale School of Medicine. The person in the photo is actually Edward Bouchet, an 1874 Yale College graduate and an 1876 Graduate school graduate, the first African-American to receive a Ph.D. from Yale.

The Herald apologizes for this mistake and any inconvenience it may have caused.

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