By Angela Whited

Not all of the 98 students whose names appeared in the pages of The Mac Weekly on Nov. 17 with an open letter to President Rosenberg that called for him to reinstate need-blind admissions or resign were aware that their names would appear. Some say they never even signed the letter.After the publication of the open letter, Maggie Thompson ’07 sent a letter to The Mac Weekly stating that while she does believe that need-blind admissions is a critical issue that needs to be addressed, “My name was attached to this letter without my consent. I never signed it.”

Luke Franklin ’09 spoke for Max Sirianni ’09 and himself, both of whom unexpectedly found their names on the letter.

“We actually declined to sign the letter as we thought it went way too far and was ignorant and self-righteous to an extent that we could not overlook the few good points it contained,” he said.

Some of the names included on the letter are misprinted or do not belong to students or members of the community included in the college directory. In a search of the online directory, The Mac Weekly did not find the names Daniel Beach or Terry Jurek, even though both were included on the petition. While there is no Lara Williams in the directory, there is a Tara Williams.

“I’d definitely like to say that I didn’t know at the time that by signing the letter I was calling for Rosenberg’s resignation,” Katie Harger ’09 said. “I think the effectiveness and credibility of the letter was greatly damaged in asking Rosenberg to resign. There is no reason we can’t try to work with what we’ve got.”

Brendan Rogers ’10 found his name listed as Brenda Rogers in the letter, although he did sign it.

“I signed the letter and distributed it to several people,” he said. “I came to Macalester because it was a school with a reputation as socially responsible. It seems like this administration is determined to make the college into an elitist pseudo-Ivy League institution and I’m really disconcerted by that.”