To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Tacked to a CRIMSON bulletin board is the largest number of letters we have received on any issue in more than two years. They are about the dealings of the Radcliffe administration with the CRIMSON'S former Radcliffe Bureau chief, Deborah Labenow. One of these letters is from a former CRIMSON editorial chairman, Joel Raphaelson '49; it cuts so cleanly into the issues of the Labenow case that we are printing it as today's editorial.

As a former editor of your newspaper I have been particularly interested in the Deborah Labenow case. I have taken part in, observed, listened to, heard about, and, occasionally, unsuccessfully tried to escape from, countless discussions about it. These discussions almost invariably turned on one or both of the following points, which seem to me to have nothing at all to do with the issue, and which tend to obfuscate, confuse, and even to bypass that issue.

1) Whether or not Radcliffe has the "right" to deal with its students as it dealt with Miss Labenow.

2) Whether or not Miss Labenow and the CRIMSON are, have been, always will be, and don't try not to be, inaccurate, unethical, and unreliable.

First, Radcliffe has the "right" to deal with its students as it sees fit, short of beating them, libeling them, stealing from them, and so on. President Jordan could proclaim that any girl who didn't chant "I shall protect Radcliffe's good, name" for a half-hour every day would be expelled, and he would have a perfect "right" to do so. No contract, no charter, no law forbids such action. Similarly it can threaten Miss Labenow with expulsion for just about any reason it chooses. Or it can insist that its student reporters are reporters only by the permission of the Radcliffe administration, and can force them to retire when, in its opinion, they are not doing a good job. Which is to say that Radcliffe has the "right" of censorship over newspaper reporters when those reporters also happen to be Radcliffe undergraduates.

Second, such authority remains censorship even if the reporter's conduct is reprehensible beyond question. In the present case, the inaccuracy, unreliability, and lack of ethics of the CRIMSON and Miss Labenow could be ten times what even the worst accusations have claimed, and Radcliffe's actions would still classify as censorship. There are cases when censorship is necessary. Censorship that will protect the safety of the nation's armed forces is clearly such a case. Radcliffe feels that the protection of its own good name against what it claims to be inaccurate reporting is also such a case.

So the question is not whether Radcliffe has the "right" to do what it has done--and what it has done is clearly to assume authority to censor the news--but whether, according to the objectives of a liberal educational institution in a democratic society, it ought to have done it. My own opinion is that the protection of Radcliffe's good name is no justification for censorship, and that inaccuracy and lack of ethics, if they existed, should have been dealt with in any of a number of ways short of censorship. If more discussions were on this point, instead of on the price of fish, they might get somewhere.