LETTERS/YOUR VIEW: In defense of metaphors

To the Editor: Well, I think I've made my point. In closing, I'd like to apologize to Noble if he was offended by my candidate's statement, if he thought I was making a joke about actual rape. The fact is that I wasn't. So please don't think that I maliciously intended to hurt anyone's feeling on campus through my statement and that I don't have compassion or a soul. And if you still think that words of brutality and human suffering are always offensive regardless of the context, then I wish you luck in trying never to say words like massacred, cremated and mauled in anything but the gravest and most serious sense so as not to appear as a hypocrite. Rishi Bajaj Wharton '01 The 'other' school To the Editor: I am writing to inform the Penn community of a problem which endures at the University. Two weeks ago I attended an on-site tutoring session for a class I'm currently enrolled in. Asked to sign in, I looked down at the clipboard with a pen in my hand to find myself asked which of the following were my home school: the College, Wharton, Engineering or "Other." This is not the first time that Nursing has been classified as a non-entity in my experiences at Penn, although given that it was so classified by a Tutoring and Learning Resources program I was appalled. I find this insulting and degrading error on the part of some administrator to be representative of a greater problem: the School of Nursing remains labeled the "other" school here at Penn, even by those who might seek to encourage students to take pride in their studies, such as Tutoring and Learning Resources. Somehow studying Nursing just is not as legitimate as studying history in the College, finance in Wharton or systems in Engineering. Hidden behind the Biomedical Library yet home to over 200 undergraduates, it seems not to exist. This issue goes far beyond some random form at a tutoring session. For the hundreds of men and women pursuing undergraduate nursing degrees at this University, this is an indignity which cannot and should not be tolerated. I for one am ashamed to be part of an institution which so flagrantly disrespects my course of study. Heather Flett Nursing '01