Dear Mr. Leo,
I was just wondering whether, in the course of your Google search for all things Wesleyan, you actually came across the following items or whether you just willfully ignored them?
1) The winning of an international Rhodes scholarship by a Wesleyan senior from Malaysia,
2) The opening of the Green Street Arts Center, sponsored and paid for and staffed in large measure by Wesleyan faculty and students for the benefit of kids in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Middletown,
3) The fact that there are after-school programs in Middletown that could not exist without Wesleyan student volunteers,
4) The Internet sale of a student produced music CD, the proceeds of which are dedicated to the relief of Sudanese refugees?
I’m just curious.
Maybe you did overlook these things (all of which appeared in the media within the last 12 months) in your mad rush to update the public about a six-year-old New York Times article about a so-called Naked Dorm (one that for all its prurient winking and clucking of tongues never featured an actual nude person) and, the pornography course that, contrary to your assertion, was ended well before the professor’s death, and at the behest of the Administration (which is how the media found out about it in the first place).
Wesleyan may not be perfect (it could use a lot more money), but it’s pretty good at what it does best, which is to educate some of the brightest, most talented and courageous kids in the country. Since its transformation from a tiny all-men’s college in the 1950s to a co-educational, small university of the arts and sciences in the 1970s, Wesleyan has seen its graduates take their places at the forefront of some of the most competitive (and diverse) arenas of American society, including AIDS research, civil rights litigation, professional football (Bill Belichick is a member of the Class of ’75), motion pictures, the arts and communications. Hopefully, in the long run, it will be Wesleyan’s track record in these areas (and more) that count, rather than it’s Google search results.
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