In Gregory Petsko’s Open Letter to George M. Philip, President of SUNY, he discusses how SUNY decided to throw out the French, Italian, Classics, Russian, and Theater Arts departments because of low state funding. Petsko ridicules President Philip over this, and attempts to persuade readers to think about what the repercussions of losing these departments could be. Petsko’s primary audience was President Phillip, but also reaches a second audience of students and other institutions. He claims that the soul of the university was lost when cutting out the humanities programs. Petsko was effective in persuading the readers, other than the president of SUNY, that humanities are critical to universities through the use of logos and ethos. Although,…show more content… He gets overemotional, disconnecting the reader from the letter, especially if that reader is the president of SUNY. Throughout the entire letter, Petsko references something related to a humanities department, and then says “I’m sure your _______ faculty would love to talk with you about it—if only you had a ________ department” (Reid 300-303). This grabs the reader’s attention at first, but then by the third or fourth time it is repetitive pathos appeal, having lost its effect on the reader. His strongest and most effective use of pathos appeal was when he gave the two examples of “what seems to be archaic today can become vital in the future” (Reid 302). These were hard hitting examples, examples that brought up the harsh feelings of death and pain. By showing that these seemingly “archaic” departments were useful later, and thousands more lives would have been lost without them, it shows the need for the humanities within universities. On page 303, Petsko doubts the cleverness of President Philip, which was very heated for an author trying to get his point across. If Petsko had lessened his use of pathos appeal, he may have received a better response for
