*Econ and art*

Prof Galensen’s theory doesn’t say anything new about art or artists (“Econ Applied to Art,” 2/20/04). All it does is point out something we knew already: that people can be neatly divided into Achilles types and Odysseus types. Calling them “conceptual innovators” and “experimentalists” doesn’t add anything new, nor does using a second-order proxy for criticism, i.e. auction price.

As for the modern novelists, I happen to recall that Hemmingway’s The Old Man and the Sea is late, Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and To The Lighthouse are early.

James Liu

Third-year in the College

concentrating in philosophy

*Police brutality*

As members of the Coalition Against Police Brutality (CAP Brutality), we would like to respond to the Maroon’s February 13, 2004 articles regarding the January 24 UCPD assault on SSA student Clemmie Carthans. Our membership, consisting of students and community participants, was pleased with Madeleine Bair’s and Valerie Curro’s letters to the editor, the first of which compared the exposure of the brutality victim’s past with the exposure of a rape victim’s sexual history and the second of which clarified Curro’s eyewitness version of the events. The police have not offered an explanation as to why they began questioning Carthans. We believe that walking on the sidewalk is not just cause for harassing someone, regardless of his or her history.

At CAP Brutality’s first meeting, the Maroon reporter present seemed annoyed for being asked to leave the meeting. This was done so that people could feel free to express their ideas without fear of repercussions. The reporter remarked on our group’s demands for transparency but lack of willingness to offer it. Has the UCPD invited the Maroon into their internal meetings regarding this event? On February 13, the Maroon also printed, “If the UCPD must be viewed under a microscope, so should Carthans.” The UCPD is investigating itself, and its completed investigation is reviewed by a panel only after the fact; it holds the microscope over its own head and focuses it where it chooses. Someone else, however, is holding the microscope over Carthans and focusing it on matters irrelevant to the events of that night. Who is focusing the microscope through which the Maroon is looking?

In closing, we are disappointed by the actions of the Maroon and by its biased journalism—from Bair’s point about the way the article was printed (Carthans’ criminal history on page one and his account on page three, despite its title) to the fact that the Maroon told Curro that it would print corrections to her story and then did not. Do not contribute to the suppression of this kind of information, do not ask us all to “go home and sleep it off,” the way the UCPD reportedly told Mr. Carthans.

Heather Powers, second-year

SSA student

Gabriel Piemonte, community member

Gladys Mitchell, second-year

Ph.D. student in political science