To the Editor:
We, students in Professor Sue Roberts’ fall Courage to Know class, are writing to challenge the Sept. 10 Heights article “Class of 2025 Inattentive at Annual Convocation” that described the freshmen at this year’s freshman convocation as “a sea…that spoke over [convocation speaker Sherry Turkle], looked at their phones, and trickled out through the exits.”
Several things were omitted from the article: the audio quality was weak and most of the students in the bleachers couldn’t even hear Turkle. There were interruptions in the feed and, in general, the quality of the exchange was poor.
Instead of opening with proper context and why the freshmen weren’t as attentive or engaged, the article saves that for the last sentence of the piece.
Comparing this to Heights coverage of prior convocations, where no mention is made of student demeanor, we object to this way of characterizing the entire class of 2025.
The generalized statements about our behavior were both misleading and damning. We, members of the freshman class, are unsure how The Heights would have liked us to respond during and at the conclusion of the event. We imagined that such an esteemed student newspaper as The Heights would properly and accurately report on student issues. We are incredibly disappointed to find that this was not the case.
Respectfully,
Julia Alvarez
Benjamin Burke
Lana Chang
Anastasia Coclin
Grace Devane
Katelyn Disler
Keith Fanning
Jenny Fox
Ella Middleton
Kate Miller
Diego Ochoa
Angelina Rijo
Avery Savage
Chris Sheehan
Emily Shi
Gracie Silides
Isaac Tabor
Pengyen Zhu
Alexander Sayfie (TA)
Alicia Stuart (TA)
Susan Roberts, associate professor of the practice
Department of English
