In regard to Michelle Kann’s plea for financial handouts, I can only hope that I missed some brilliantly deep layer of sarcasm nestled throughout such “average” prose.

While I am far from naive enough to believe that hard work always yields rewards, I do suggest that if you cannot support your grades while drinking three times a week (or working for the Daily, playing Diablo eight hours a day, and so on), you make a mature decision and spend that time (and evidently much-needed money) on your school work to help your waning grade-point average.

I also suggest anyone who applauds scholarships for a person based on the name her parents gave her, town she hails from or one that evidently supports stereotypes of the “skinny sorority girls of America” and “fat people” rather than her scholarly abilities carefully re-examine the word “biased” before using it so loosely. Ms. Kann seems to making the implication that all honors students receive scholarships as some sort of birthright, as well as the outright claim of bias against the “dumb.”

As difficult as it is to believe, many of honors students have to work for their grades like “the rest of us.” A fair amount of them even pay to come to Iowa State.

In retrospect, perhaps the honors program is in fact “anti-dumb.” Judging by Michelle Kann’s column, I get the impression they didn’t let her in.

Thomas McLaughlin

Sophomore

Computer science