LEADERS AND THE VISITORS

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

I write in reference to your lengthy article on the Visitors' Committee meeting with "student leaders" which was reported last Wednesday morning. I wrote for many students who are disturbed at the undue attention given to SDS by the Committee Apparently ones gains access to the Administration by publicly taunting the Secretary of Defense. Why were not officers of other student organizations besides the Crimson and SDS invited to participate?

The Visitors' Committee should know that the leadership of the SDS does not represent student opinion. Nor does the HUC, whose members are often elected by default in most of the Houses.

Members of the Board of Overseers should not (and I am sure do not) confuse student inactivity with student apathy. Most Harvard students are quite concerned about the quality of their education. But they do not want to spend weeks and months in "university-wide discussions" and public haggling in "constitutional conventions" about how they are going to get that quality. They want out learn something about English or government or biology, not about participating in a "free, democratic community of scholars," whatever that is supposed to mean.

David Gordon's comments, reported in the same story, avoid humility like the plague. Anyone who calls the lecture system "antediluvian" has obviously not listened to Fainsod or Maass or Friedrich or Banfield or Kissingers in the Government Department. His suggestion that students should get credit for their own seminars, with or without Faculty supervision, may be an excellent way to encourage bull sessions (as if they needed encouragement), but it is also overweeningly pretentious and not likely to produce much serious scholarship.

The SDS's attempts to create a Berkeley attitude toward toward university life should receive as little attention from the Administration as it has from the students. We have shown repeatedly that we are not interested in chasing the chimera of "student government." Sincerely yours,   MICHAEL R. MERZ '67