To the Editor:
As the student representative to the College Committee on Cable and as someone who has invested over 1.5 years to the cable question here at Dartmouth, I honestly shy away from dignifying, with a response, Wesley Lippman's painfully limited and myopic letter to the editor of January 26. However, I feel that a response providing some context should be offered. While I share Lippman's frustration over the cable decision's postponement, I am frankly embarrassed by his provincial use of cable as a politicized administrative instrument. While Lippman criticizes the College for politicizing television as source of "cultural diversity," he hypocritically engages in his own brand of politicization, which sees expanded television options as a threat. My question is: a threat to whom? One of the marvels of the twentieth century has been the invention of the remote control; my advice to Lippman and other televisual phobics would be, assuming cable as a reality one day: change the channel if you don't like the programming Dartmouth has worked for over 3 years to provide. That seems a reasonable choice, hardly the administrative heavy-handedness Lippman wants to project. Many people have dedicated far too many hours to this project for it to be dismissed by someone who does not -- and perhaps refuses to -- see the whole picture.
