This is in response to Matthew Bray’s letter, printed March 30 in the Sun Journal. The author has a problem with professors who “were not in their offices to help students or teaching class where they are paid to go. They were taking their day to utilize their position of power over the students to create anger in our government and our president.”

Let us not cast aspersions on our educators in a state where higher education seems already to be held in low esteem. Professors are paid to teach specific classes at specific times and to hold posted office hours. They are not paid to be in class or in their offices for the entire day.

To insinuate that these faculty members were derelict in their duties is erroneous and uncalled-for.

What were they trying to teach? That there has been a very high cost in human lives in this war.

A position of power? Hardly.

The job of the faculty at any institution is to make students think, not to make them think specific thoughts. Perhaps, in reading the names of our precious war dead, they were helping students to think seriously about the cost of the war.

But these faculty members did not belong in class or in their offices at that time.

They should not be falsely accused.

Grace L. Denison, professor of special education,

University of Maine at Farmington