More Honors for the Students of John Slaughter

I am in no position to comment on the criticisms swirling around John Slaughter (“Great Expectations,” by Carol Lynn Mithers, May 2). But the timing could not have been better for some firsthand elaboration on one of the more impressive achievements the profile cited about the outgoing president of Occidental College in Eagle Rock: the large number of students who have won significant scholarships on his watch.

The day before the story appeared, the board of the Donald A. Strauss Scholarship Foundation--a relatively new organization that annually awards 10,000 public service scholarships to 15 California college students--met to select this year’s recipients. While typically there is no more than one recipient from each of the participating universities, nine scholarships were awarded to two Occidental students, Fernando Cazares and Eduardo Gutierrez. (The only other schools with double recipients this year were UC Berkeley and Stanford.) By the way, we couldn’t help but notice that the first Occidental student quoted in the article, Sandra Gallardo, was last year’s winner of a Strauss scholarship.

Duncan Strauss

member, Donald A. Strauss Scholarship Foundation

Mesa

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I was deeply moved by the article on John Slaughter. I once lived in a hilltop house that overlooked Occidental but moved away before it was time for college. The “Piano Lessons” essay (by Michael Tolkin) brought on more tears of joy with its account of father-daughter relationships, learning, perseverance and multiculturalism. And then I moved on to the Rambler piece (“The Return of the Pink Rambler,” by Amy Alkon), only because my late mother was an aficionado, and found myself laughing so hard that more tears flowed. I would have made the ricciarelli at once (“Eat ‘Em and Weep,” SoCal Entertaining, by Nancy Spiller) if I had had the ingredients at hand, and I plan to cry over them when I do.

Laura Larsen

Malibu