Reading Milton McGriff’s patronizing letter (Oct. 15) could almost give a person the impression that Allan Nosworthy was being held as a prisoner in Catt Hall when he went on his hunger strike.

After all, according to McGriff, Nosworthy walked in the company of Ghandi when he went on his seven- day fast. McGriff implied that because Iowa State students did not support Nosworthy’s hunger strike, we also would not support hunger strikes by, among others, Mahatma Ghandi.

This is one of the classic logical fallacies we all learned about in our writing classes — it’s called a false analogy.

I would have expected something less obvious from a graduate student in the English department.

A quick comparison (perhaps contrast is the better word) of the two men may help explain the lack of support shown for Nosworthy. Gandhi fought to free India from Great Britain. His hunger strikes came after over a decade of passive resistance, numerous arrests, beatings of protesters by police and a massacre of Indian civilians by the British Army.

Nosworthy is fighting to get the name of a building changed. His hunger strike came after two years of the ISU administration “not listening.”

The reason so few students supported Nosworthy’s hunger strike was not a lack of conscience. Instead, it was because they were wise enough to see that when Nosworthy went on a hunger strike to protest the name of a building, he did not walk in good company; he mocked it.

Dan Spielbauer

Graduate student

Microbiology