I SHARE student trustee Jason Pramas's concern over the threat to the University of Massachusetts at Boston's traditional mission that could come from building dorms and spending millions to "raise its profile" ("UMass-Boston plans dorms, more traditional campus," Page A1, Dec. 14). This country, and especially Massachusetts, has a diversity of higher-education institutions, each with a distinct mission. UMass-Boston has a proud tradition of educating Boston's working-class, minority, and immigrant students, and using its institutional resources to serve the urban community. Administrators should resist mission drift by honoring UMass-Boston's historic and vital mission.
DAVID SOO
Philadelphia
The writer is a doctoral student in higher education at University of Pennsylvania.
IT IS a disservice to all working-class, minority, and immigrant students to imply that they would not seek out or need student housing if residence halls were provided at UMass-Boston. I am a child of immigrants and a graduate of the City College of New York, an all-commuter, free-tuition public college in Harlem in the 1960s and '70s. I rented an apartment across the street from the college in my junior and senior years, and was pleased to no longer commute two hours a day from New York's Lower East Side. This allowed me to take advantage of the library, study longer with my classmates, and improve my grades to enter graduate school. CCNY finally recognized this need, and opened its first residence hall in fall 2006.
LAWRENCE A. CHAN
Cambridge
The writer, a principal with Chan Krieger Sieniewicz, is master planner for the UMass-Boston campus.
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