To the Editor:

I was never a student or teacher at Westminster Choir College, but over the years I have attended many a concert there and, as a playwright, I have had the pleasure of working with some of its amazingly talented students. The Westminster student body is relatively small, but every student I have ever met has been seriously, passionately devoted to singing or musical composition or the playing of one or more instruments. These fine young people know why they are there and seem to grow and thrive on Westminster’s beautiful Princeton campus. It is rare that a small American college can fit so harmoniously, as it were, into a quiet residential section of a bustling university town.

There is no doubt that Rider University has the right to pull the students and teachers out of Westminster, ship them down to Lawrenceville, and sell the Choir College campus. Some of the students will go, some will not, but the Choir College, even if it keeps that name, will never be the same school. The quiet and beauty of the campus, not to mention the charming relationship between the College and its neighbors, have had a lot to do with why the College has attracted so many outstanding students. All such benefits will be lost if Rider abandons the Westminster’s campus.

Perhaps the folks at Rider should think about why they wanted to own Westminster in the first place. Surely it was not to make big bucks; rather, it was to acquire a small but enormously prestigious institution that could be a true asset to the Rider family. I gather that there were other schools like Yale and Juilliard that wanted to acquire Westminster, but Rider won out, in part by suggesting that it would keep the Choir College in Princeton rather than move it away. I hope that the management at Rider will remember what was said to the Westminster people at the time of the merger and will honor the spirit in which the merger between the two schools took place.

MARVIN HAROLD CHEITEN

Meadowbrook Drive