Mr. Jordan O. Dy fears that the prestige of Mindanao State University will confer some credibility of the off-beat ideas of Dr. Rolando M. Gripaldo, chairman of MSU’s philosophy department (Letters, June 28-July 4).

I would share Mr. Dy’s concern if Dr. Gripaldo’s opinions concerned areas of knowledge in which ordinary readers had little experience or competence. If Dr. Gripaldo, for instance, says that Husserl’s influence on Jaspers is overrated, I would be disposed to accept the claim.

But if Dr. Gripaldo advocates policies which are as obviously cruel, unworkable, and immoral as the compulsory castration of the poor (Letters, June 7-13), ordinary readers will contemptuously reject Dr. Gripaldo’s proposals, MSU or no MSU. In this regard, I have more faith than Mr. Dy in the common sense of the readers of this magazine.

In fact, many readers may well lower their regard for MSU for having hired a person like Dr. Gripaldo and raised him to a department chairperson.

Ruben Muego