Debate Escalates Into Heated E-mail Exchange Between Organizations

A disagreement between two students over the grape boycott escalated into an e-mail exchange between two campus organizations early Saturday afternoon.

The incident occurred almost one week before tomorrow's campus-wide vote on whether Harvard Dining Services should end its 13-year boycott and begin to serve grapes in the dining halls.

The e-mail exchange began after anti-grape supporter Edgar Saldivar '99, who is Mexican-American, was verbally accosted Saturday morning by a pro-grape advocate, who is white, while copying anti-grape posters at Gnomon Copy.

Saldivar said that the student claimed he was a Republican and had read an e-mail from a Republican organization that said that the grape boycott was "BS."

"He told me [in reference to the anti-grape posters Saldivar was copying], 'I don't want to read that crap,"' Saldivar said. "I replied, 'you don't have to'....He just continued to verbally assault me using curse words."

At one point, Saldivar said the student made the incorrect assumption that Saldivar's parents were migrant grape farmers.

In response to the incident, Saldivar sent an e-mail early Saturday afternoon to the membership of La Raza, an association of Chicano students, which began, "For the first time while I've been at Harvard, I have been racially victimized!"

The e-mail message to La Raza was subsequently forwarded to many students, and it got the attention of the Harvard-Radcliffe Republican Association (HRRA) after Saldivar wrote in his La Raza message, "[T]here seem to be significant racial tensions (between) the Republicans on campus and Raza as evidenced by this guy's vulgar discourse."

In response to Saldivar's e-mail message, Noah Z. Seton '00, president of the HRRA, sent La Raza members an e-mail message on Monday in which he denied that the organization was involved in any way in spurring racial tensions.

Seton said yesterday, "I think it was a very unfortunate event. I wish it hadn't happened. I wish people would learn to express their views on issues without getting personal."

Seton sent the e-mail to all members of La Raza, including Saldivar. In it, he expressed his concern over the event on behalf of the HRRA.

"If anyone really sits down, they know it is not a Republican thing to berate someone personally," Seton said yesterday.

"That doesn't represent how Republicans as a whole respond to issues," he said.

On Tuesday, a person claiming to be Saldivar's verbal attacker called Saldivar and, according to Saldivar, "insisted that he didn't want to make this a racial incident."

"He said that he didn't mean to sound racist," Saldivar said. "I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt."

Although the argument has been resolved, Saldivar said the incident shows how racial tensions have become involved in the grape debate.

"People tend to make [the grape boycott] an issue of race, and instead it's an issue of human rights and worker's conditions," Saldivar said.

Yesterday, La Raza President Gonzalo C. Martinez '98 said that the exchange of e-mails has resolved any tension between La Raza and the HRRA.

"The issue has been resolved between us," he said.