In today’s Wespeak “In Response to ‘The Price is Wrong,’” Nina Wasserman argues that Mytheos Holt’s Feb. 26 critique of Melanye Price’s appointment to the University’s new Internship Coordinator position is mean-spirited and unnecessary. I fully agree with both of those assertions; however, I’d also like to point out several other holes in Holt’s argument. First of all, Holt asserts that Price will be “vested with the dangerously significant power of deciding which internships Wesleyan students can undertake for credit.” If Holt had read the Feb. 19 Argus article reference the new position more carefully, he would have seen the sentence that reads, “As coordinator, Price will help students navigate a variety of new internship options,” and “advocate on behalf of deserving students to various departments,” not divvy out credit as she pleases. It is the academic departments themselves that determine which internships merit credit.

Holt also argues that academics should not be charged with the job of helping students find jobs because “[a]cademics are strongly incentivized to seek tenure, which often means publishing as much as possible without regard to the content, whereas businesses in the real world are utterly indifferent about how much effort one puts in and care only about the content of one’s work.”  He then goes on to say that Price does not deserve this position because “given that Dr. Price could not even master the basic requirements of her own industry, it is foolish to think that she could advise students on how to master requirements of other ones.” If Holt really thinks that tenure is achieved by publishing as much bullshit as possible, then doesn’t it speak well to Price that she didn’t succeed in this empty endeavor?

Next time Holt takes the time to write a 1,000 word diatribe, he should make sure his argument is at least mildly legitimate.