I'm not entirely sure how reliable it is. The [ruby 2 docs](http://ruby-doc.org/core-2.0/Object.html#method-i-send) are explicit that strings passed to ```Object#send``` will be converted to symbols, but [the docs for earlier versions](http://ruby-doc.org/core-1.9.2/Object.html#method-i-send) (including 1.9.2 and 1.9.3 which we're using) are silent on the subject and only talk about ```send``` receiving a symbol.

Given that I'm inclined to leave the ```to_sym``` call here since it doesn't hurt anything and puts us in line with the documented behaviour.