Reading Lilly Miller’s recent column, titled “Surveying the Shelves,” left me dumbfounded. As a weekly columnist in our newspaper, Miss Miller is, in theory, a voice of the student body here at Ithaca College. I think it is time someone pointed out that she is sending the wrong message.

What Miss Miller chooses to write about has always struck me as embarrassingly out of place in a news source, even in the opinion section, but “Surveying the Shelves” has gone too far. It is insulting that someone would think this story acceptable for the college’s readership.

We are supposed to be adults. We are supposed to be growing up, gradually at least, and learning to deal with the world around us. And yet, speaking for us is a girl who seems steadfastly to refuse to comprehend anything other than what she already believes — a girl who writes of contrived difficulties founded on tired stereotypes. I want so badly to believe it is all a joke. But even if it is, it isn’t funny.

Really what Miss Miller’s column does is point to a larger problem than “Surveying the Shelves” itself, and that is a fundamental lack of editorial rigor. The real problem, as I see it, is that someone, somewhere along the line, read through a draft of this column and said, “OK.” I cannot understand how this came to pass, because frankly, Lilly Miller is a natural Napoleon Dynamite when it comes to writing. Whatever that means.

Bart Comegys ’12