Don't forget to write

• Like Lenin, [Yale president Kingman] Brewster was a social engineer who indeed changed the environment under his jurisdiction. And like Russia after its revolution, Yale after Brewster took on a drab, austere lifestyle.

  —Frederick Robertshaw ’55, March 2000

• FOR THE FIRST TIME IN FIVE GAMES WHICH I ATTENDED BRIGHT COLLEGE YEARS WAS SUNG STOP WHY ABANDON SO PRECIOUS A SOUND … AS … THE HEART STIRRING FOR GOD FOR COUNTRY AND FOR YALE

—Joe Carson ’11S, January 1956 (by telegraph)

• Long ago I was petrified being almost the only girl in that rollicking reality of great endeavors, the Yale School of Art and Architecture.

—Isabel Montgomery Wallace-Staehle ’36Art, December 1985

If there is any single thing, beyond their shared experience of Yale, that unites the extraordinarily diverse body of Yale alumni, it is that they hold strong opinions and express them well. Anyone who has ever worked at the Yale Alumni Magazine can attest to that. We serve a readership that spans virtually all ages, political views, professions, and interests. But they all know their minds, and oh, can they write. Just look at our Letters to the Editor.

Given the quality of our reader-writers, the fact that we’re an independent alumni magazine is a godsend. As I’ve noted here before, though most alumni magazines are run by communications or fund-raising departments, this one is run by a small alumni-based nonprofit. This means we can provide our readers with a wide-open channel for expressing their views. We do have our limits: we frown on libel, inaccuracies, and the ad hominem, and we can’t (much as we would like to) put everything into print. But otherwise, we take all comers.

Over our 121 years, we have published letters that we proudly believe to be the most eloquent excoriations of university presidents and policies ever printed—and the most eloquent encomiums for same. And we have printed almost everything else: righteous anger, poignant memories, dry wit, deft historical footnotes.

Some writers turned out to be on the wrong side of history—for instance, the alumni who were appalled by the idea of admitting women to Yale College. Others were only temporarily athwart history, like the alumni who decried the end of Yale’s ROTC program in 1969; their demands for a reinstatement were fulfilled 42 years later. Working at a 121-year-old institution does expand one’s understanding of time and change. A Yale history professor once begged me never to discard any letters, but to have them archived in Sterling Memorial Library, because they are an invaluable resource for research: a way to analyze the flow of history through the deeply felt opinions of thoughtful observers.

But, looking at our Letters section today, we don’t feel we’ve done you justice. The biggest problem is that our website—ludicrously behind the times!—doesn’t provide a comment function. That, we’re working on: our revamped site, with many new features, goes up later this year. But the Letters section in our print edition also needs change. It’s too short, for one thing. And we’re toying with adding a summary, or statistics. Perhaps a contest. Or …

Ideas? Do send us a letter.