To our readers

TowerView identifies itself as a news perspective magazine. That means our aim is to present a wide variety of informed views on current trends or events--a goal which, for me at least, is ultimately rooted in a belief that the free exchange of information, through a sort of natural selection of ideas, will ultimately lead to the triumph of the best or truest ideas.

The primary way that TowerView contributes to that exchange of ideas is through the different points of view in our articles. But a finite number of pages can never capture the potentially infinite range of perspectives that might exist on the issues we examine.

So, it's important that the magazine present not only the perspectives that our reporters include in their stories, but also the perspectives of our readers. Moreover, a true exchange of ideas has to allow for a forum in which one person can respond to another's idea. And the best way I can think for TowerView to foster that is through a regular section of letters to the editor.

There's only one problem: We've never published a letter to the editor before, nor even a formal invitation to write one, at least not within my recent memory. Unsurprisingly, then, no one's written to us out of the blue. But we want to change that, and so we'd like you to consider this your invitation to send us your thoughts.

This issue discusses some pretty big questions: everything from the political climate of academia to the proper relationship between an undergraduate and a research university. You've probably got an opinion on at least one of those questions, and we'd love to hear it, whether it's 300 or 30 words in length. Or maybe you've got an opinion on something we didn't write about at all. Well, we'd love to hear that too. And chances are we'll print it.

Who knows? You might inspire someone else to write a letter in reply. And that sort of exchange is what a news perspective magazine is all about.

-- Matt Atwood, editor