Managing Arts & Living editor Yuan En Lim's commentary on the recent production of "Candide" puzzles me. Does one ever go to the opera, or to a musical, much less one based on a satiric work, for the plot? Think of Gilda at the end of Verdi's "Rigoletto" reaching those high Cs while suffering from stab wounds; think of the Stone Guest at the end of Mozart's "Don Giovanni" or various consumptive heroines singing their hearts out with what's left of their lungs. Opera plots can make daytime soap operas look like Supreme Court arguments, and surely that is part of the absurd fun of "Candide."

But beyond that fun, we also have the music and the words-surely the heart and soul of an opera, comic or not. The performance of "Candide" my husband and I saw on Friday, Feb. 3, was marvelous: the singing superb, the playing likewise; the ensemble work beautifully done. We were only a small part of an audience that loved the show; every day since I have overheard praise for the energy and craft of the singers and the beauty of their voices.

I'm sorry Yuan En Lim chose to pay attention to "narrative incoherence" instead of to the pure pleasure of such words and such music.

Susan Snively

Director of the Writing Center

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Student's typo reflects a commono misconception

In the Feb 8. issue of The Student, a serious error was made in reference to the Latino culture theme house La Casa. Throughout the entire article about the renovation of Hamilton and Porter, La Casa was consistently referred to as La Causa. La Causa is the Latino culture organization on campus and La Casa is the Latino culture theme house. The word La Casa in itself means "the house" in Spanish and La Causa means "the cause."

But this mix-up isn't just a typo in the student newspaper, it reflects a common occurrence on the Amherst campus. As Co-Chair of La Causa and Co-President of La Casa I find myself encountering this misconception frequently. Some may think that La Causa and La Casa are one single organization. Although there is a lot of overlap in our events and ours aims for the campus, they are still distinct organizations that serve different purposes for the campus. It is not only important that information is double-checked for accuracy when being published, but moreover, that the campus cares enough to understand their fellow student groups and the functions they serve at Amherst.

Tahnee Tangherlini '08

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Olver criticizes Bush's raids on education funds

In his State of the Union speech in January, President Bush emphasized the need to keep America competitive by investing in education. He stated that "We must continue to lead the world in human talent and creativity." He declared "Our greatest advantage in the world has always been our educated, hardworking, ambitious people." I whole-heartedly agree with the president's sentiments, but unfortunately his rhetoric does not match his policies. While the president touts the importance of American competitiveness, his actions have just produced the single largest cut to the federal student aid program in history.

The recently passed Budget Reconciliation legislation includes roughly $12 billion in cuts to federal student aid programs to finance the president's tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans. Seventy percent of the savings generated from the new cuts to student aid programs are achieved by forcing student and parent borrowers to pay excessive interest rates on their loans and by assessing new charges on parent borrowers. The Reconciliation legislation raises the interest rate cap that parent borrowers pay on their college loans from 7.9 percent to 8.5 percent. It also requires lenders to collect a one percent "insurance fee" on all college loans-a fee that will likely fall on the borrower. This legislation continues to require that student and parent borrowers pay excessive interest rates on their loans and further allows the federal government to utilize the overpayments to continue to offset big tax breaks.

The president's actions speak louder than words on education in other areas as well. For four years in a row, he and his congressional allies have failed to raise the maximum value of the Pell Grant scholarship even though it is worth $900 less in inflation-adjusted terms than it was worth in 1975. And less than one week after his State of the Union address, the president, in his Fiscal Year 2007 official budget submission to Congress, laid bare his unwillingness to invest in education by cutting the 2007 Department of Education funding by 28 percent. The president's proposed '07 budget limits eligibility rules for Pell Grants, cuts total funding for student loans and eliminates programs that help low-income children prepare for college, like GEAR UP and Upward Bound. This is not how we should invest in our future.

At a time when the price of tuition has risen 40 percent over the last five years, the Republican-controlled Congress and the administration's policies have placed college even further out of reach for millions of Americans.

We should, as the president said, "Continue to lead the world in human talent and creativity." However, we cannot achieve this goal by approving cuts to student loans and eliminating other much-needed education programs.

Rep. John W. Olver (D-Ma.)

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Esty '54 addresses the doubts of Pritchard '53

The following letter is Dave Esty '54's response to Professor William Pritchard's Nov. 2 letter to the editor:

Robert Frost and I were very, very close. If the weather was good, he and his scraggly mutt would wait for me to finish my Campus Guide duties, in the lazy late summer afternoons, and we would mosey on down to Barsi's for a slow pitcher of Ballantine's skunky tap beer. Our shared love of the Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine outdoors was a constant center of our continued conversations. He was a shy man and a lot of folks (mostly faculty) thought that he was an aloof, distant and, yes, disagreeable guy. He surely had sharp opinions about some of his fellow teachers. He had a short fuse about some of them. Later on, when the college was in session, he and that mongrel would drop by the Psi U house, sit by the big living room fire and, between naps, would tell stories to us-and ask endless questions. He always had a stub pencil and small pad to take notes on the passing parade of the then small town and our comparatively peanut-sized college below UMass. I was also his occasional chauffeur-he loved my open Jeep-and some of those drives were aimless countryside tours. "Let's try this road, Dave." The man had very few friends and, in me, he placed his trust-he was not a trusting man. He wrote me nice, short letters when I graduated and entered the USAF (with shiny new second lieutenant bars that came with the diploma) until I was discharged. Mr. Frost expected me to reach "a certain height" in the Air Force and I did. Since I was a townie, it was easy to catch up with him when I visited my South Amherst parents as a civilian.

Also, my esteemed class, 1954, was the lucky, initial, college-military experiment. Our uniformed instructors, all carefully chosen for role-modelling, cheered on by our parents and President Charlie Cole, Dean Bill Wilson, etc., instilled a palpable patriotic sense in our ranks. I know that the ROTC experience for all of us was a big factor in getting and keeping us close. Avoiding the draft was certainly a factor in our enlistment, but it soon became a distant rationale-we became very gung-ho. And, I believe deeply, that our USAF experiences made us better people. During all those years as president of the class, I can attest that is was easy to muster my classmates for any college or class roll call. We are still spirited, proud, ex-military, Amherst guys.

Dave Esty '54