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Sir: Those of us who tried to edit Shillington High School's Chatterbox after he left felt that the feature page should be permanently edged in black. And thanks for the picture and mention of his parents. Anyone who studied math under Wesley Updike may no longer remember how to calculate compound interest, but they will never forget the wonderful experience it was to know this big, surprising, kind, humble and completely unique human being.
(MRS.) JOAN P. KRONINGER West Chester, Pa.
Confrontation at Columbia
Sir: The recent sit-ins at Columbia University [May 3] are just one more instance of how absurdly far we have gone in our homage to youth. If administrators and faculty of the nation's colleges can't keep a semblance of order in their schools, for the sake of pur survival let's keep them out of politics where all problems aren't neatly catalogued and solved within the covers of a book.
JAMES S. HOWLEY JR. Upper Darby, Pa.
Sir: Nothing raises my anger more than being sold ideals by force (since I lived and fought 20 years of fascism and twelve of Nazism). This is exactly what the students who occupied Columbia University tried to do. If anyone must close doors to sell ideas, shouting them from the second-floor window for acceptance, there can be but one reason: at street level such ideas are too void to inspire.
(MRS.) JACQUELINE P. MARCAULT Saugerties, N.Y.
Sir: What could ever have prompted the New York City government to let those cops with their hoodlum tactics loose among so many naive kids? Now Columbia knows what every Harlem kid has known all his life—the hard truth about police violence.
MORSE HAMILTON Graduate Student Columbia University Manhattan
Sir: Your Student Protest Essay [May 3] was right in pointing out that the way "to deal with student power is to anticipate it, to initiate changes before the students demand them"; this latter approach was definitely not implemented at Columbia. But more basic to the very root of the problem, student unrest and rebellion stems from the sometimes appalling slowness if not indifference displayed by university officials to come to grips with the burning issues of the day. Some would rather dismiss the whole problem as a temporary sign of spring fever, hoping that time will take care of things. This "spring fever" blossomed into one of the largest police raids that ever took place on an American campus.
J. P. DENS Ph.D. Candidate Columbia University Manhattan
Over There