LETTERS: Thursday, November 18, 1999

Tenure clarificationTenure clarificationTo the Editor: The school expects excellence in both research and teaching, and poor teachers will not be promoted. But our standards are not "cruel and heartless," nor do we want them to be. We understand that attracting the absolutely best talent at the assistant professor level requires that we offer junior faculty a reasonable chance at tenure, and we do so. That is why we consistently recruit better assistant professors than Yale or Harvard, where tenure chances are slim. We want to attract the best assistant professors and provide them with an environment that will enable them to demonstrate that they are among the most promising figures in their field. If they do so, they will be promoted. Samuel Preston Dean School of Arts and Sciences Enviro-hater To the Editor: Mark Fiore seems to hold the opinion that all environmentalists are doomsday prophets preaching nonsense about the state of the Earth ("Quiet down, earth alarmists," DP, 11/17/99). But whether the world ends tomorrow or 2 million years from now is irrelevant. What is relevant is whether we are so selfish as to worry only about ourselves and what we in our lifetimes will encounter. While it may be true that many environmental successes have occurred recently, it is due to environmentalists that these changes have become reality, and for more improvement to occur, we must continue the fight. Environmentalists are not out to "limit the creative output of corporations." In fact, we are challenging corporations to be more creative by forcing them to rethink their products and the processes by which they are manufactured. We are out to limit the waste these multi-billion dollar industries create, to limit the impact they have on the environment and to force these corporations take responsibility for their products even after they leave their plants. If Henry Ford only knew how his company impacted the environment today, I wonder if his conscience would let him rest easy. Laura Lai Engineering '02 Missing the point To the Editor: Mark Fiore misinterprets the facts in arguing that environmental activists are ignorantly overreacting: "Major metropolitan areas comprise only 2 percent of the nation's land," he writes. But environmentalists are not against major metropolises; they are concerned with urban sprawl. The suburbanization of America is responsible for the over-consumption of land, increased automobile emissions and wasteful energy use. Fiore's argument relies heavily on recent environmental improvements, such as the 26 percent decrease in air pollutants between 1970 and 1995. I ask Fiore this: What do you think is responsible for such improvements? Again, the irony is that the very activism Fiore condemns has brought about such progress. Reah Johnson College '00