Brown’s strengths (and its challenges) were clearly portrayed in your March/April issue. As so often is the case, the magazine was warming, argumentative, and encouraging—a mirror of the Brown community.

I hope that readers will especially note “Fitting In,” by Amy R. Ramos ’87 (Alumni P.O.V.). Her description of adjusting to life at Brown was echoed by a Columbia man, Andrew Delbanco, who wrote in the April 26 New York Review of Books about the wisdom behind admitting students from needy backgrounds, and about insisting upon “educating … privileged students for democratic citizenship.”

Alexander Simpson ’52

Pittsford, N.Y.

Amy Ramos’s lament about being poor at Brown was very moving. Unfortunately, such circumstances as “groping your way around an unfamiliar landscape” are not limited to low-income people. One sympathizes with Amy because she didn’t have the money to order pizza in the middle of the night, but one suspects that this is not exactly the most challenging issue facing college students today.

If Amy had all those student debts to pay back, why isn’t she slaving for The Man at some Wall Street investment firm? Instead, she is a freelance writer—which sounds like a starving-artist job to me.

Rachel Nussbaum Wichert ’95

Tacoma, Wash.