Dear Mike et al,

I think that it is time we, as Whitman students take a stand. Groups like the SPCSP are going around and trying to regulate our lives on the most personal of levels.  What in our lives could be more personal than Math?  Are we going to allow these groups to stifle any innovation and divergence from the norms?  I remember the days when math was unique to each individual, a time when eleventeen, and forty-twelve were commonly used by individuals seeking to express themselves, and now our number set is a rigidly defined set of "natural numbers" with rules about not being impossible and such nonsense.  Next thing you know, others are going to be telling us that there is a universally correct "answer" for the problems that we compute individually, and that 4*3/2 cannot possibly = Q.  This is a violation of not only our freedom of speech, but of our freedom of thought.
These changes have powerful precedent behind them, and many accept these "thought laws" as inevitable, or even beneficiary!  To change the momentum of these forces would require that someone first take a stand, and assume some risk.  If even one group can get a favorable ruling against the SPCSP, we can overturn the precedent, and bring their power down like the segregation laws of the 60's after Brown Vs. Board of Education.  Of course, getting that ruling would not be easy in todays politically oriented court system, but if nobody is ever willing to assume the risk of failure, than we have no one to blame but ourselves when we wake up, and all the math has been "standardized" to be run by computers and calculators, in a cold, heartless, and especially artless methods that emphasizes product and answer over the beauty of Math.

Sure it will be difficult, but Whitman already is trying to break paradigms in other difficult areas.  Getting the country to switch to reusable power, and convincing everyone everywhere to recycle are goals that will be much more difficult to realize than simply retaining our freedom to be individual.

I encourage you, and to use whatever connections you have with other mathematicians to fight against this grave threat to our art and to not cave into the power that has threatened us.  With any luck we can turn the tide of oppression against originality, concurring the standard convention and ushering in a new era where individual answers are not right or wrong, but all answers are beautiful.  I suggest that we take this ideal to heart in our classroom. Adopting it may not seem to do much but risk lawsuit, but such simple acts of rebellion and refusing to compromise values have led to enormous changes in the past, and if we aren't willing to take up this challenge, then who will?

Sincerely,
Will Laxson