SPEAK OUT MIX UP

This is a little thing, but it really bugs me—in the September Speak Out, you ask the question: “Should colleges retire the early admission option?”

The “Yes” person was for early admission, and the “No” person was against it—which is exactly backwards (“Yes” should be “yes, retire early admissions,” not “yes, keep it”).

If you wanted to keep “yes” for early admission, and “no” against it, you could have reworked the question, to something like, “Should colleges keep the early admission option?”

As a computer scientist, misuse of negations and other Boolean connectives bothers me to no end. Yes, this is a nit that I’m picking, but On Campus’s target audience is college faculty—the one population guaranteed to nitpick.

David Galles
San Francisco, Calif.

SLY TEST? NO

Reading comprehension would indicate a YES vote to Dannenberg’s opinion that early admissions should be retired, as it does more harm that good. Also a NO vote would describe Goodman’s support for the early admissions option.

Hopefully, this was a sly back-to-school test for the teachers and was noted by them as well as this registered nurse.

Kathleen Duffy, R.N.
Haddonfield, N.J.

Editor’s note: As our correspondents noted, we goofed in our placements of the “yes” and “no” boxes on last month’s Speak Out page. Our apologies for the confusion. The arguments are posted correctly at www.aft.org/pubs-reports/on_campus/sept06/speakout.htm.