n Carl Woog’s letter to the editor Thursday (“Cartoon was offensive,” pg. 14) was absolutely appalling. His self-righteous tone and assumption that it is his responsibility to chide The Daily Free Press for its editorial decisions is sickening – or would be if that were really the point of the letter.

Let’s not mince words. Carl Woog is less concerned with the content of Rume Kragha’s cartoon than he is with scoring a petty victory against the paper that held him accountable for the Student Union Executive Board’s reprehensible behavior this year. The Daily Free Press took him to task for the lavish purchase of a new Union logo and the alleged check forgery perpetrated by a Union official. In addition, The Daily Free Press printed Brendan Cavalier’s scathing and masterfully worded letter about Woog’s predecessor and attention-starved dancing sidekick, Ethan Clay (“Clay’s dancing hated by all,” pg. 6, Feb. 6). No wonder Woog takes issue with the paper’s editorial choices.

But Carl Woog is by no means in a position to pontificate about the “decline of sensible editing practices” at The Daily Free Press. Union officials should either advance an agenda or stimulate a productive campus environment – Woog does neither. His condemnation of The Daily Free Press for not allocating enough pages to “the truly noteworthy ideas our community has to offer” is ironic. If the Union were really a champion of student ability, it would have asked a Boston University student to redesign the Student Union logo, rather than hire an independent company to do it. The Daily Free Press has yet to shun a student letter in favor of paying cold, hard cash for a third party’s perspective. Hypocrisy: partially funded by your Undergraduate Student Fee.

While Woog demands that The Daily Free Press take notice of “recent calls for apologies to the readership,” he has arrogantly ignored the calls of the student body for a productive Student Union. And Woog still feels that he has the professional high ground to criticize The Daily Free Press. It is simply amazing.

It is honorable that The Daily Free Press chose to print Woog’s letter. If they were really as devoid of journalistic integrity as Woog insinuates, they would have discarded his and every other call for an apology. But no matter how much hate mail they get, The Daily Free Press never hesitates to print it. For the benefit of Woog and the Union, that is called “accountability.”

Although the independently funded Daily Free Press bears the name of our university, the university-funded Student Union bears much more. Yet, while The Daily Free Press continues to win awards in the collegiate journalism world, the Union shuffles through another year of resignation and scandal. Personally, I am much prouder to see our university’s name on The Daily Free Press.

Inevitably this letter will be whored by Woog’s Union accomplices as further evidence against the ol’ Free Press. No doubt, Woog’s League of Junior Bureaucrats is hard at work crafting a volley of responses that will defend him, praise him and recommend him for canonization. Such letters will only bolster the fact that Woog and the Union are better suited for irrelevant squabbling than working for the students.

Grant Myers

COM ’04

The author is a former columnist for The Daily Free Press.