Dear Editor,

What the public gets to know about UMass students is often dominated by sports news, or accounts of undergraduates behaving badly. Scott Merzbach’s article, “Drug, alcohol Illnesses tie up Amherst ambulances in the Daily Hampshire Gazette on pages. B1-B2, published April 6, 2011 characterizes the latter type very well, when 29 students had to be taken to Cooley Dickinson Hospital last weekend.

But little is generally written about students in the midst of demanding classes and jobs quietly trying to make the world a better place.
Such a story arises about the officers of Phi Kappa Phi, the nationally known land-grant honor society which has been at UMass since 1904. With no fanfare, five of the organization’s student vice presidents, all seniors, organized a bone marrow registration drive during the fall semester. It involved setting up and manning tables in the student union, distributing information, talking up the project and convincing 180 students to register as potential bone marrow donors by swabbing their mouths with a Q- Tip and registering the critical genetic information in a national database. A month ago, one of the marrow donors matched a critically ill patient whose life may be saved by a UMass student’s generosity and the efforts of the seniors.

A few weeks ago, the same five students organized a drive to enroll students in signing a pledge agreeing never to send text messages while driving. (Recent studies show that texting while driving causes a 400 percent increase in time spent with eyes off the road.) Their campaign has resulted in over 100 students deciding to forego texting while driving and is continuing.

These are not earth-shaking events, but rather show UMass students’ quiet but unheralded determination to do something concrete to improve the world.

John R. Nelson,
Professor Emeritus

UMass Amherst, English Department

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Dear Editor,
Dear Collegian Editor,

I am not positive of who is in charge of the crossword in your paper. However, I noticed something funny when I opened to the crossword in the March 31 issue. Strangely enough, the crossword is exactly the same as the Daily Hampshire Gazette’s crossword on March 31. The citation on the Gazette says Tribune Media Services, Inc. Do you have the same source as the Hampshire Gazette? I hesitate to even consider that the crossword may have been plagiarized. If you do have the same source, I think it would be a good idea to cite it, so people don’t get the wrong idea.

Yours truly,
Sarah Klein

Editor’s note: Our crosswords come from the McClatchy Tribune Newspapers wire services, of which we have a paid subscription.