Working hard to please To the Editor:
Contrary to recent reports in The Daily Pennsylvanian, SPEC Concerts is a highly democratic, "open-door" committee. We currently have over 200 members and we welcome any undergraduate student to join the committee and attend meetings. All it takes is signing up for our listserve and showing up when we meet.
At our meetings we do just what your editorial ("Having our say on Fling," DP, 3/20/02) suggests. We hold open forums where those students in attendance offer the names of the acts they would like to see at Fling. They then rank their top three choices, and these are the performers we pursue in negotiations with agents.
Additionally, there is an e-mail address, concerts@dolphin.upenn.edu, and a link on our Web site where comments and suggestions can be sent, and regularly are.
"Mixed reviews" are impossible to avoid in band selection. With the diverse community that Penn prides itself on, it must be expected that one Fling act may not interest, or even be known by, all students.
Despite this fact, it still remains the Concerts committee's primary goal to appeal to as many undergraduate students as possible by listening to their opinions.
Finally, SPEC Concerts shares the enthusiasm that several Penn students have already expressed for De La Soul's upcoming Fling performance. While we would have no qualms billing this highly respected and established group as this year's headliner, we have not announced "that hip-hop trio De La Soul will headline this year's Spring Fling concert on Hill Field" ("Students have mixed reviews for Fling band," DP, 3/20/02). Rather, we have merely confirmed that De La Soul will be performing at the concert on April 12.
SPEC works very hard to program events that are enjoyable for all students. To this end, SPEC Concerts continues to welcome questions, comments, suggestions and meeting attendance from everybody in the Penn community.
Miriam Ackerman
College '02
Kirk Freeman
College '03
Alistair Meadows
College '02
The writers are co-chairmen of the Social Planning and Events Committee's SPEC Concerts division. No comparison To the Editor:
In an attempt to prove some sort of injustice in the death penalty system, Wayman Newton cites five cases in which males were sentenced to death after a murder conviction in comparison to the case of Andrea Yates ("The line of injustice on Texas death row," DP, 3/20/02).
I myself am not sure how I feel about the sentence she received -- life imprisonment rather than death. But in trying to prove his point Newton overlooked a major difference in four out the five examples.
Four of the men sentenced to death were also convicted of raping their victims, two of them raped children under the age of ten.
This cannot be overlooked in a court of law when deciding upon a sentence, nor do I intend to minimize the horror of Andrea Yates' crime. But in the future, Newton should consider all of the factors before making a claim about something so complicated. It was difficult to agree with his point when there were such tremendous differences in the cases.
Chris Gaus
College '03
