To the editor:

I don’t know Steve Hedden, the dean of the School of Fine Arts. I have very little interaction with KU’s School of Fine Arts. But I have to express my dismay at the Saturday Column writer in which he first smears the current dean (“Whether … he was ‘encouraged’ to resign is known only by the retiring dean and a few others”) and the provost (“Is this the work of KU Provost Richard Lariviere…”), goes on to lecture the university about what questions and procedures go into a dean’s search, states that the chancellor, provost, Board of Regents and “overall university community” must have “the genuine desire” to achieve excellence (thus implying that they don’t) and ends with a bizarre series of sports metaphors: winning records, winners, Big 12 championship (in the arts?), the need for a search committee composed of “heavyweights,” and a final question: “Why not shoot for the best?” (implying, once again, that KU doesn’t).

I believe the editor owes an apology to professor Hedden, to the chancellor, the provost and the Board of Regents, to the faculty, students and alumni of the School of Fine Arts, and, indeed, to the overall university community.

Judy Roitman,

Lawrence