I’ve noticed lately that a lot of the people responding to my last two columns (the ones on my friend who committed suicide and the Cassini mission) are either really stupid or illiterate.

I don’t say this out of spite; some of the criticism about my last column has been really intelligent and thought-provoking (not to mention correct, depending on who you ask).

I say this because I’ve noticed a pattern of ignorance that needs to be addressed. It is important to respond to what you read in the Daily.

Not only is it a constitutional right, it is also a means to develop an issue or topic to its fullest. But in responding to what has been printed in this paper, it is important to read it first.

I’m amazed that I’ve gotten over a dozen e-mails regarding the death of my son. Say what? I certainly wasn’t aware that my son died. If Erik is dead, why wasn’t I informed? Yet a dozen people sent me sympathetic letters about his death.

The responses followed the column about a friend of mine committing suicide after battling heroin addiction. This friend, whose name was Katie, bears no resemblance at all to my infant son, other than both of their names have the letters k, i and e in them.

I don’t understand how these readers misunderstood my column. Obviously they didn’t bother to read it, or they would have known Erik was never mentioned in it. Not once. But this isn’t the only example of ignorance I have encountered lately.

A letter published earlier this week pointed out that I was angry about a “radioactive cocktail” being used to help my son’s reflux problem. Excuse me? It is painfully obvious that the letter’s author didn’t bother to read my column either.

If he had read my column, he would’ve known I brought that point up to prove radioactive substances do have beneficial uses in our society. Nowhere in that column did I express anger that this procedure was used. However, I did point out that I had biased feelings about radioactivity because of nuclear weapons.

But it was perfectly clear that I was not “acting like they forcibly grabbed [my] son and shoved this radioactive cocktail down his throat,” to quote directly from the erroneous letter. But thanks for responding, anyway.

I’ve also run into a lot of people on campus who hold wild views of Rhaason Mitchell and me. One person asked me if Rhaason was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. He based this opinion on the first paragraph of one of Rhaason’s columns, in which he called himself “a nigger, a coon and a spook.”

This person formed an opinion of Rhaason based on those three words. This person didn’t bother to realize Rhaason was using these words to portray negative attitudes toward his race. This person honestly believed Rhaason was an angry white man who was extremely prejudiced.

Unfortunately, many other people missed the point Rhaason made in his column. They chose to focus on those three words and ignored everything else. I pointed this out to the person who accosted me, and then I showed him the picture of Rhaason that runs with every single one of his columns. This man was amazed to find out that Rhaason is black. Now I ask you, how could this man have read Rhaason’s column as he said he did? It’s obvious that he didn’t.

People come up to me all the time and complain that the only thing I ever write about is drugs. How on earth did they come to this conclusion?

Since the semester began, the only column I’ve devoted to drugs was the aforementioned column about my friend who committed suicide because she was sick of being a junkie.

I wrote a column about drugs last summer; that is the second and only other one. I don’t understand how people could tell me that all I write about is drugs when only two out of more than 20 columns dealt with that subject. Does this make any sense to you?

None of it makes any sense to me. We are all students at a state university. Shouldn’t we all be able to read at this point?

Shouldn’t we all possess the ability to remember information after it is presented? Of course these questions are easy to answer, almost laughably so. Of course we should. Then why am I confronted with blatant ignorance and illiteracy every day?

But the more I think about it, the more it all starts to come together. There has got to be an overwhelming level of illiteracy on this campus.

It would certainly explain a lot. It would provide a reasonable answer as to why people remain uncertain about or opposed to the renaming of Catt Hall.

It would explain why people remain unconvinced that there is a lack of diversity on this campus. It would also explain why the letters page and my email account is littered with fabricated and ignorant responses to things in my columns that weren’t there to begin with.

And if you still don’t believe that people form half-baked responses to columns they didn’t bother to read, keep a watchful eye for letters concerning this column.

Sit back and laugh with me as these illiterate people send letters condemning me for daring to dispute the contradictions to last week’s Cassini probe column.

What?! You missed that in this column? Good, because those refutations weren’t there.

But I’ll still get email accusing me that this was exactly what I was doing. I’m looking forward to it because I enjoy a good laugh every now and then, especially at the expense of others.

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Ben Jones is a sophomore in English from Des Moines.