“Adding insult to injury.” That’s my reaction to Erich Reinhard’s March 19 cartoon about the apartment building scheduled for demolition to make way for an optometry school building. Yes, it’s true that the old structure has to go, for the greater good of the greater number, blah, blah, blah.\nBut there’s no need to make it look rundown and ready to be condemned; doing that shows ignorance of why anyone would care about saving it. Before the apartment-building boom downtown, there were only three architecturally interesting ones near campus – that one on Third Street, another at the corner of Second and Fess, and a third near the intersection of 10th and Indiana. The rest of them – for example, the ones immediately south of the optometry building – looked like the 20-unit motels you used to see all over the country off U.S. and state highways in the pre-interstate era. Boring! I understand that editorial cartoons are often caricatures, but a caricature, like the ones of President Bush’s ears, ought to exaggerate a feature that actually exists. So, if anyone thinks that apartment building looks anything like the cartoon, go take a second look. Then, if you still think it does, don’t wait till the new optometry building replaces it – you need your eyes examined right now!
Betty Rose Nagle\nElm Heights Neighborhood resident
