Cartoon Lampooning ECHO Crosses the Line

To the editors:

Eating Concerns Hotline and Outreach (ECHO) volunteers—and those members of the Harvard community to whom eating concerns are an uncomfortable reality—deserve an apology from The Crimson for running the insensitive and unfair editorial cartoon by Collin W. Blackburn ’04 (Oct. 15). Indeed, it’s unclear what to call this piece, as it has no political message and serves no apparent purpose except to stigmatize those who staff campus helplines and those they serve. Peer counseling groups such as ECHO and Contact provide an important service even to those who never call them. With their posters and information sessions, these groups inspire positive dialogue about the issues of mental health that people like Blackburn, with his grade-school potshots, demean and marginalize.

Kate G. Ward ’05

Oct. 16, 2002