Fashion column is so last season

My heart skipped a beat Monday when I saw the fashion column in The Red & Black could no longer soil a good day. Even so, the way Emily Samuels sarcastically bid us adieu still managed to irk me.

The attention she claimed her column garnered was not because her articles were controversial. It was because they were just terrible.

I never understood why you devoted space to a column reporting that the little black dress was making a comeback when it is notorious for never going out of style. And the mustaches and skinny jeans for guys? Really? Whenever her writing had any ounce of accuracy, it was months too late to be considered relevant. “Loyal fashionistas” knew better.

Frankly, I was tired of what felt like unoriginal, regurgitated ideas ripped off from a 6-month-old issue of Vogue. What would’ve come next? As fashion magazine editor Miranda Priestly from “The Devil Wears Prada” would say, “Florals for spring? Groundbreaking.”

Yara Figueroa
Junior, Macon
Journalism

Textbook prices anger faculty, too

(In response to Stacy S. Skelly’s Aug. 27 letter “Publishers’ book costs justified”), publishers are constantly working to maximize profits in many different ways. The method of bundling instructional materials is currently in vogue.

I have no wish to use the extensive – and expensive – multimedia materials that were offered to me. Similarly useless is the separate instructor’s edition of the book – God help you if your calculus instructor needs a book of answers.

The sentiment in Skelly’s letter: “it is important that the texts … be as current as possible” seems phrased so as to be hard to disagree with, but I can do so without qualms: today’s calculus textbooks look virtually identical to the textbook I used to learn calculus in 1992. One year,

I taught from a textbook that was the latest edition of the very book I had learned from, and it was similar enough to cause flashbacks except that the ordering of certain sections had been changed.

Studies done show instructors throughout the physical sciences and in economics think that the curriculum has not changed enough in recent years to warrant new introductory textbooks.

To the students, I say, take heart – the faculty are angry, too. Academics all over the world are furious at the rising cost of journals – which make textbooks look cheap – with the last year having seen boycotts of prestigious journals, entire editorial boards resigning, and so forth.

The current state of affairs will not endure, and the future is entirely free with online access to instructional materials. To those who doubt that the future is coming, try googling “OpenCourseWare,” or for a free online calculus textbook – “Strang calculus.”

Pete L. Clark
Associate Professor
Mathematics