Andrew Lindsay 123 Home Rd.

Gastonia, NC 28120 (704)123-4567

To the Director of GCS School Nutrition, I am writing on behalf of every person who is or was part of the Gaston County School system. Every student, or teacher, that has ever eaten in the schools cafeteria has experienced the discomfort of having to eat spaghetti from a styrofoam bowl. While this may be acceptable, as all school food in this county is a little unsettling in the way that its presented, the spaghetti is simply unbearable due to the fact that it doesnt have cheese on it. If you want your students to discon tinue living in torment and fear of the lunch period on Wednesdays, and possibly perform better academically (and this county certainly needs it), then it would be in your best interest to start having cheese put on the spaghetti. The largest and most prominent reason to make such a change to the school food is that it is simply unethical. Not only are you degrading the students by forcing them to eat it out of a styrofoam bowl, you continue to disrespect them by not even gracing them with so much as cheese for a topping. How you choose to treat your students effects how they choose to treat your education system. If you dont care to put cheese on their spaghetti, they might start to think if they dont already that you dont care if they take class seriously. I think the recurring pattern of having no cheese and then making low grades is enough evidence to support this hypothesis, as the two are completely correlated. I was going to make fancy graphs detailing this correlation, but I spent all my money on expensive school spaghetti without any dairy toppings in high school. Another reason, and possibly the only one you care about, is that the financial aspects of adding cheese to spaghetti really wouldnt show a negative turnout, nor will it cost you more money than alternatives. When considering the option, dont think of it as How much will this cost? but rather What kinds of things will this effect? Is this cost effective? If you spend money to increase the students happiness, then you wont have to spend greater amounts of money on things like festivals or activities that have the same effects. These are completely unnecessary as the schools usually force you to attend during the school day, which in result lowers the happiness level of the student body. Also, realistically, cheese isnt that expensive. You could just take more money out of the teachers salaries to pay for it. Im sure they wouldnt mind, since theyre almost at the minimum wage point anyways. Whats another one hundred dollars out of their salary going to harm? This will also prevent them from spending that money on unimportant and potentially harmful things like drugs or groceries for their families. Although the choice is ultimately yours (you may need an OK from your higher-ups), if you fail to comply or make this change, I will be forced to take alternative action. Believe me, I have many plans to get cheese on the spaghetti in our countys school system. The first thing I will do is file a lawsuit against you for crimes against humanity. After that lawsuit has been thrown into the trash by the court, I will continue to press guilt onto you by shaking my fist in the air like an old man at you on my way out of the courthouse. This will surely be too much for you to handle and you will make the change anyways. If this plan should fail which it wont, because my fist-shakes are very intimidating then I guess I will have to charge up my personal army of Daleks and, instead of having them exterminate you, I will have them follow you around everywhere chanting EXTERMINATE! until you are driven to the point where you are declared legally insane and wish you were exterminated. Since I assume you dont want this to happen, I wish you the best of luck in making this change to the schools lunch system.

Analysis Memo If you couldnt tell, I had a lot of fun with this paper. Writing in a silly-but-serious way is hilarious to me. The fact that I was instructed to use rhetoric which meant I was allowed to use as many forms of sarcasm as I want made this an easy-to-write paper. The goal of the complaint letter was to complain to a certain audience about something that you didnt like, and to use many forms of rhetoric to convince them of either fixing it, doing something your way, replacing a product, or whatever else you could complain about. This is actually a skill to learn, as complaint letters are often written, and while ninety-nine percent of them are thrown out upon reading the first line, the one that they choose to read all the way through to get a good laugh may have an effect. Mine would certainly work. This complaint letter would be sent directly to the man in charge of the Gaston County Schools lunch system. After doing some research, I found this man to be Frank Fields, Director of GCS School Nutrition. This would be sent directly to his office, as he is directly in charge of making changes such as putting cheese on spaghetti. I almost wanted to put, sarcastically, To the Director of GCS School Unhappiness. The form of rhetoric I used the most was of course sarcasm. Its a way of subtly telling the person he or she is stupid for believing what they believe, and can help them see the obvious logic of what youre trying to say. I also used it as a subtle way to complain about other things wrong with the countys school system. For example, I mentioned that this county needs the academically improved performance to make the reader think about larger reasons why this change should be made. I also mentioned the problem with low teaching salaries, which is a whole two or three sentences ripe with sarcasm. Now that I think about it, I couldve written an entire complaint letter about low teaching salaries that would be much funnier and much easier

to write than a letter about spaghetti and cheese. The problem with teaching is more widespread than the spaghetti one (surely not the entire nation wouldnt put cheese on their spaghetti). Each paragraph of the complaint letter takes on a different aspect of rhetoric. After the introductory paragraph, which states why Im writing, the first paragraph hits hard quickly with the ethical issues of not putting cheese on the spaghetti. This is very strong ethos and is meant to make the audience feel bad for ignoring this issue. It very clearly states that doing something like this is just plain wrong and it will make the students continue to be very unhappy and to perform inadequately in school. The second body paragraph takes a logos point of view. There is nothing more logical than explaining how finances will work in the process. I also presented questions to think about, in which the goal is to get the reader to think more specifically about my point of view in approaching this topic. There is also the example of taking money out of teachers salaries as an example for how to raise the funds for such a change. I wouldve added something about starting Cheese Rally fundraisers in the school if it were still too expensive of a change to make, but this is counterintuitive to the point I made about forcing kids to go to festivals and activities they dont want to be at. The last paragraph hits hard with pathos. Pathos is meant to evoke emotions from the audience. I do this mostly with threats, as this is meant to strike fear into the reader and more or less force them into seeing your side. Although this is mainly how the United States government solves issues with other countries in the world, more people should use this approach. If I were to actually send this letter, which I wouldnt even if you paid me, then it would work in persuading Frank Fields simply because of the last paragraph.