It could have been some specific journalism assignment on sub-culture. It could have simply been a subject that genuinely interested Whitney Waters. Whatever the reasoning may have been, there was no real intellectual justification for the Kernel’s article on body suspension.

That article was an exercise in the use of mindless shock factor and nothing more. I have never witnessed such an unabashed piece of pointlessness in the Kernel. I learned all of the following: how you can hang yourself from hooks, how much it can hurt and that there aren’t a lot of people who like to do it. It was an epiphany, to say the least.

So I applaud the Kernel staff for approving and allowing the publication of an article that gave me a crash course in how one hangs their body from hooks in various forms and fashions. I’ll try it when the opportunity presents itself. I also applaud the staff for their apparent enthusiasm for graphic images that, in all honesty, made me very uncomfortable.

I know. I did not have to read the article or look at the images. However, the whole thing just happened to appear without warning, giant meat hook and all, on the page right next to my other favorite exercise in mindlessness, the daily horoscope. Thanks! Perhaps the article wouldn’t have been so obnoxious if it were actually thoughtful and well written? Too bad it wasn’t.

John Smolka

biology junior