Letters to the Editor

I sent my first letter to the Star Ledger, my hometown newspaper in New Jersey. Written in response to "College leaders, mental health advocates gather for suicide prevention strategies at Rutgers University".

Dear Editor,

A college student myself, I am writing to express my concern about how hard it is to actually find counseling at colleges and universities. As an out of state college student I can relate with students who find themselves under considerable amounts of stress due to the strain and emotional grind of college life. Unless a student actively seeks out counseling, it is very hard to find on campus; there just simply aren’t any on-campus public advertisements offering stress and mental health counseling. Perhaps it’s because universities don’t want to publicize the fact that their students contemplate suicide and battle mental issues because that would paint the school in a negative light.

Regardless, Rutgers’ decision to conduct this mental health conference is a step in the right direction, and I hope that all involved will work on facilitating the student’s process of seeking help at each of their respective universities. If universities can get their students to realize that they care about them, then schools will see an influx of students seeking counseling and mental solace, a great thing for all parties.

Stephen Canning
University of Massachusetts Amherst 2012

My second letter I sent to the Daily Hampshire Gazette, in response to the article "Report: Toyota to recall 300,000 Priuses".

Dear Editor,

If Toyota does not recall the production of their Priuses than they better be able to deal with the consequences as I feel that they will see an immediate loss of trust from their consumers. I used to drive a Toyota, and I actually loved the car, but the various problems that that the company has been confronted with recently has got me thinking that I will probably never again choose to drive a Toyota, but rather stick with a brand whose cars do not face recall every few months. The last thing I want while driving is wondering whether or not the brakes on my new car are going to fail me. Driving is already a dangerous activity, and owners of a new car should not have to worry about their brakes failing or about constantly allowing extra room to stop.

If Toyota wants to save face then they have no choice but to issue yet another recall. However, if I were currently a owner of a Prius I would get rid of that car like a bad habit, and lease a car from a company not riddled with production problems…like Honda.

Stephen Canning
University of Massachusetts Amherst 2012


I chose to write my first letter to my hometown newspaper because I figured I would be better able to relate to their articles since that's where I lived for 19 years. It turns out I found an article about the stressful life of college students and what universities are trying to do to help them. Although the article was directed a bit more to students with more extreme depression, I made sure in my letter that I let them know I was a college student, and that I can relate to the stress that students deal with. I made it clear in my letter that it was hard to attain mental health counseling on campus unless a student is really motivated to find it, which most are not. I intended my viewpoint to be supportive of the article, which made it clear that college's goals are to facilitate the counseling process for students. I'm hoping that by letting the editor know that help is difficult to come by on campuses he sees my opinions as valuable and informative.

I wrote my next letter to the Daily Hampshire Gazette hoping that because it's a smaller newspaper the chances of having my letter published will increase. This letter had more of a critical tone than did the other, and I thought that critical tone will maybe catch the editor's attention boosting my letter's chances of publication. I demonstrated my familiarity with the subject by letting them know that I was a previous driver of a Toyota model, and further acknowledged that the problems Toyota has been having have driven me away from probably ever purchasing another one of their cars. I didn't make this letter to controversial, but hopefully it is cutting edge enough that it captivates the editor enough for him/her to deem it worthy of publication.