I must respond to your rather cloudy, ignorant attack on CHANCE Director Leroy Mitchell in your July 27 editorial. The problem, you suggest, is that Mr. Mitchell has stirred some “controversy,” and is perhaps trying to manage “too much” as both administrator and minister. Graduation rates for CHANCE students have declined in recent years, and in some vague way, you ask us to hold Mr. Mitchell responsible for not correcting this problem. Yet you have shaped no arguement to support this charge.

I have come to know Mr. Mitchell as an inspiring and extremely dedicated man: no one has worked harder for these students. No one has campaigned more vigorously to open NIU to the disadvantaged or been more empathetic with their needs. Your insinuation that Mr. Mitchell has been less than committed to his job is so baseless that those who know him must find it absurd.

CHANCE recruits talented, but short-changed students, schedules some special first-year classes for them, provides tutoring services, advice, advising and support. But it cannot give out loans and scholarships to those who have been hurt most by cuts in all financial aid programs. Mr. Mitchell is the man who paid money out of his own pocket to start an awards program for those who, despite the odds, excel. He has put people up in his home, made sure that this person got to the doctor, that someone else found a way back in a family emergency, that another had money to buy books. CHANCE has neither the resorces nor the forum to make the suburban white majority students at NIU more sensitive to the real greivences of minority students and reach our bigots here in town and in the residence halls who pass out racist pamhlets or shout epithets at the quarterback and the Rev. Jesse Jackson alike. These are patently obvious reasons why CHANCE students feel unwelcome, and why so many are unable to remain. To imply that Mr. Mitchell is part of the problem and not of its solution is unfounded and outrageous.

I see no conflict between Mr. Mitchell’s responsibilities here on campus and be a pastor, and I question why you would assume there ought to be. Your smug chiding against “serving two masters” is in this context, reprehensible. If it is fine for a chemistry professor to work on a law degree while teaching full time, if it is expected that many of NIU’s faculty must earn a compensatory income, what is it that makes Mr. Mitchell’s dual role suspicious? There are other ordained faculty on campus; I questioned why you would denigrate only this religious man at this time.

No, I don’t worry that Mr. Mitchell is trying to serve two masters. I do think that his church is lucky to find a pastor with his breadth of administrative experience, and that CHANCE students are well served by an advocate who brings up unselfish dedication and acute moral courage to his work. Your sniping at this man is despicable.

Joseph M. Gastiger

program coordinator

Univesity Honors Program