This is in response to Andrew Criado's recent column ("Liberals' hold over college campuses is diminishing," Dec. 4).

Criado makes much of a comment I made about whether a Harvard University poll finding that 61 percent of college students approve of Bush's performance was evidence that college students were "conservative."

The proper interpretation of this 40-year-old survey question about presidential approval has been widely studied in political science.

After Craido's bizarre rant, I wrote a column for the Collegian explaining how we interpret these poll results. The Collegian editorial staff will not make space for it.

Presidential approval may indicate many things but should not be taken as an indication of ideological preference. Consider the 92 percent who once approved of the first President Bush. Had this been a massive conservative takeover the next president would not have been named Clinton.

So what does it mean? There are clues in that same poll: 58 percent support the war, only 39 percent would vote for Bush and only 31 percent identify Republican; 39 percent are willing to work in Democratic developed national service programs. The jury is out on the conservatism of students based on this poll.

But Criado goes beyond taking my comments out of context. He impugns to me motivations of a hated enemy in the tradition of conspiracy theorists. "Berkman," he writes, "doesn't know what it means when students say they approve of President Bush; caught up in their snobby ideology, liberals never imagined ..."

Oh, he is so clever.

My comments and motives are now those of really bad liberals, the ones who, he notes, kill babies, promote tolerance (oh my!) and fail to connect with their students.

The smear, innuendo, and ill-informed comments by Criado are mere noise. It is a shame the Collegian editorial staff wastes space on it.