Soft Reserves Does Not Deserve Stigma

Dear Editor:

As the manager of A.S. Soft Reserves, I would like to clarify some of the issues brought up in your Jan. 23 article, “Professors Groan Over Class Reader Embargo.” There were comments in the article regarding our “lead time.” We set a deadline that is one month before the start of the upcoming quarter. This deadline guarantees the readers’ availability on the first day of classes. This month is necessary to properly obtain permission to photocopy as well as compile and print the readers.

Materials submitted after our deadline are often available early in the first week, if not the first day — we just can’t guarantee it. Any readers that are turned in during the first week of the quarter, barring a large copyright problem, are ready by the second week.

It is very important for us to receive copyright clearance prior to reproducing articles for a reader so that faculty authors receive the appropriate royalty credit from the publisher.

Another issue concerned our availability during breaks. A.S. Soft Reserves is open during breaks to prepare readers and to work with professors for the upcoming quarter. The student staff is required to work “break hours” so that the course materials are completed by the start of the upcoming quarter.

A.S. Soft Reserves is committed to providing professors and students with the best possible service and keeping the prices at the lowest possible price. If we are out of stock, by using our campus location and Imprints, the campus copying service, we are able to guarantee students a reader within two days. If the reader is urgently needed for a midterm or test, we can usually have it available the same day.

Now that other companies are required to follow the same cash-handling policies that A.S. Soft Reserves is required to follow, the playing field is closer to being even.

— Jennifer Mancano

Business Manager,

A.S. Soft Reserves

Nietzsche’s Thesis Misinterpreted

Dear Editor:

Marianne Madden, who frames much of her argument in “When Paternal Administrators, Ignorant Alumni and Hedonistic Students Rumble” (Jan. 26) around Nietzsche’s “The Birth of Tragedy,” might do well to re-read that work.

Her simplistic summary traduces the text and glosses over its ironies, its self-deconstruction and its highly problematic positions. Her own text, we might say, in its apparent “Dionysian” enthusiasm for philosophical words/concepts, completely unravels in the reading. It is, we might say, a “maddening” miasma of misinterpretation. Still, she does turn a nice phrase, and her opinions are certainly provocative; they provoked me.

— Bill Howe

Director, L.E.A.D. Center