We were delighted that your reporter, Courtney LaBenne, reviewed our public discussion of the controversial "Confessional" art piece by Chris Rzomp, which engaged a partition wall in the architecture department men's washroom.

While this publicity in the Collegian was welcome and the essay very well written — with an appropriate edge of humor — it missed the main points of the entire symposium and left readers with the impression that somehow Prof. Mussotter and I condone vandalism for the sake of art.

There is no question that we both defend artistic freedom to the maximum and, in particular, Chris Rzomp's right to create this intervention. What got lost in the LaBenne review was the intriguing and multi-faceted audience response to issues of property destruction, intrusion on people's privacy and the reluctance of the artist to accept the consequences of his actions (a bottom line qualification for any involvement in the avant garde). Ms. LeBenne didn't even mention the symposium context at all; so the architecture department's entire effort to resolve the controversy and give voice to contrasting opinions was missing.

Finally, the most compelling aspect of the public dialogue was a series of proposed solutions to remove the "Confessional" and restore the violated toilet stall partition to its former pristine state. The preferred approach is for the artist to create a "new intervention," in the form of a trompe d'oeil insertion. This calls for filling in the offensive hole and then re-creating the speckled surface treatment by means of hand painted detail, to perfectly match the rest of the panel. You must admit, this is the stuff of true art!!!