Letters to the Editor: Spring 2024
Winter 2023 issue
Your Winter issue was absolutely delightful. In such a toxic world, this paper copy arrived just in time for my Christmas gift to myself! The Sweet Potato Pot De Cremes recipe from alumna Tanya Holland was a treat. I also thoroughly enjoyed President Ryan’s letter and reminisced with my college roommate Deborah about the stacks in Alderman Library before ChatGPT and Google! Cheers to Bennettball and your excellent magazine. Wahoowa!
Shawn Grain Carter (Col ’82)
South Orange, New Jersey
Bennettball
Coach Bennett’s pingpong competitiveness has been mentioned in several articles. Would he be able to compete against some of UVA’s Table Tennis Club members? They recently won all three groups of the Virginia Division of the National Collegiate Table Tennis Association. How would he fare against veterans of the Charlottesville Table Tennis Club like myself? I taught the UVA intramural class for 25-plus years. I hope he would win; that indeed would be impressive!
Lewis Bragg (Col ’77)
Charlottesville
Tony Bennett is an excellent coach, but why does a public academic institution have sports teams that pay coaches millions of dollars a year?
Neil O’Donnell (Col ’76, Law ’80)
Anchorage, Alaska
I agree with Ed Miller (no relation, I think) that Tony Bennett is probably the most recognizable individual associated with UVA. I was quite disappointed that Miller chose to describe Tony as having a “strong religious faith” based on “five faith-based pillars.” Tony has been totally open about his Christian faith, so why didn’t Miller just state that fact? Miller did refer to the five pillars of Tony’s beliefs (humility, passion, unity, servanthood and thankfulness). There is another world religion based on five pillars (not the same), and it is not Christianity. One might read Miller’s words and conclude that Tony is religious but not Christian, and that would be an incorrect conclusion.
Jim Miller (Engr ’68)
Southlake, Texas
So Tony Bennett declined to be interviewed by the alumni association magazine of the publicly funded university that employs him. That struck me as beyond unfortunate. It’s especially galling given Bennett’s multimillion-dollar annual compensation.
The article noted that Bennett rarely grants interviews. But the piece then described a podcast he’d done with former UVA football coach Bronco Mendenhall and also quoted from a “Locker Room Access” podcast.
Alumni publications like Virginia Magazine must exercise a certain amount of deference when dealing with muckety-mucks at their respective universities. But Bennett’s one national championship doesn’t give him a pass or merit kid-glove treatment.
I’ve worked as a newspaper reporter for 35 years. Bennett is a public figure. Turning down an interview with the UVA alumni magazine is akin to botching a last-second, game-winning layup.
Duncan Adams (Col ’76)
Butte, Montana
Letters to the Editor
I was very surprised and disappointed by the letter in the Winter issue lamenting the fact that the vast majority of letters to the editor in the Fall edition were from alumni who graduated before the year 2000. Perhaps the writer did not mean to be condescending toward alumni from the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, but I read his desire to “see more letters that don’t originate on a typewriter” that way. I can’t speak for other recent alumni, but I know I very much appreciate hearing from older alumni in these pages, and I often find their perspectives valuable, perhaps most especially when it comes to the controversial issues covered by this magazine in the past two years.
My assumption has always been that the reason that the majority of letters are not written by recent graduates is that very few recent graduates write letters. The desire for proportional representation by class year could be fulfilled only if fewer letters were published overall, or if more alumni who graduated in the past 20 years wrote letters. Perhaps he expects that younger alumni would express more displeasure at the way this magazine has covered the battles over affirmative action and the Honor Code. I have been very pleased with that coverage. In particular, Richard Gard’s story “Honor Up Close” from the Summer/Fall 2022 issue did a masterful job of exploring a charged topic.
Thank you for continuing to provide alumni of all ages with insight into our beloved alma mater, and thank you for bringing us a diverse set of alumni perspectives in the letters.
Ben Connelly (Engr ’18)
Charlottesville
’Hoos a Good Boy [Fall 2023]
I love this recent issue highlighting the working dogs of the University.
I would also like to recognize one other facility dog in the School of Nursing, Ella. She is a black Labrador, and her owner/handler is Tracy Kelly, an assistant professor. Ella comes to classes and special events. She also provides immense comfort to the faculty on the fourth floor of McLeod Hall.
Barbara Reyna
Associate Professor,
UVA School of Nursing
Thank you for introducing us to the great dogs at UVA in “’Hoos a Good Boy.” What a great story about wonderful dogs who give us so much and expect so little in return: belly rubs, sticks, balls, Frisbees, pup cups and a romp around Grounds in exchange for the serious work of tracking people; detecting bombs; and being wonderful greeters and a source of joy, love and comfort to those on and around Grounds.
I have always marveled at how keen and intuitive our furry friends are, how they help to keep us grounded and inevitably appear at the right place at the right time. They know when to work and when to play. If only we humans would be so wise!
Please keep us updated about these very special animals. I had no idea UVA had literally “gone to the dogs.” I could not be more thrilled!
Susan L. Stephenson (Nurs ’80)
Richmond, Virginia
No Ifs, ands or Bots? [Fall 2023]
The discussion of AI in Virginia Magazine roused one of my pet peeves: misleading labels.
There are many things that get picked up and propagated in the media that are misleading. The naming is often made this way on purpose to manipulate public sentiment and emotion. Currently the world is in a dither about artificial intelligence. This makes it sound like something alien and suspicious. Actually, intelligence is the same regardless of whether it is generated by a human or a computer. A more appropriate handle would be “machine intelligence” or “computer-generated intelligence,” identifying the source rather than using a misleading and incorrect adjective.
James “Will” Haltiwanger Jr. (Engr ’71)
Columbia, South Carolina
I’m preparing an article on the use of large language models, like GPT-4, in data science education, so the article “No ifs, ands or bots? How to control AI” was very timely for me. It is very balanced and expresses the dichotomy of opposing views in higher education. I sincerely hope that other universities will also adopt an approach like UVA’s Generative AI in Teaching and Learning Task Force. In medicine and, I suspect, other fields, I see faculty and students underleveraging this technology or the opposite, overusing or abusing it.
Whether we like it or not, generative AI is here to stay and will continue to evolve at breathtaking speed. I agree with the quote “Student learning will take place in a world where AI is undetectable, ubiquitous, and transformative.”
Robert E. Hoyt, M.D. (Col ’67)
Pensacola, Florida
New Honor Code restores expulsion [Summer 2023]
When I attended the University, the Honor Code was respected and fair. I had to report a student once. I was required to tell the person first, to give that person a chance to confess to the Honor Committee; the person complied. I like to think the threat of expulsion meant that graduates of UVA were more likely to be honest and trustworthy.
Sallie Hickok Spiller (Educ ’61, ’73)
Roanoke, Virginia