HOUSE DRAFT STAND

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

In response to the Masters' decision (as reported in the CRIMSON on February 25) to discourage senior common rooms from issuing statements "on public issues," we would like to explain the reasoning behind our proposing and voting for the Dunster House Senior Common Room's resolution condemning the 2-S and 2-A deferments.

Senior Common rooms are essentially associations of faculty members who have an interest in undergraduates; hence appropriate topics for discussion and comment by them include any issues which affect undergraduates. The participation of Harvard students in a selective service system through which they benefit from an inequitable distribution of the burden of military service is certainly an issue. It is not, of course, a typical topic for discussion in senior common rooms (as is, for example, the propriety of mini-skirts in house dining halls). Our hope in discussing the issue of deferments and passing the resolution was to suggest that broader issues concerning students and education should be regarded as equally worthy topics for discussion and comment by senior common rooms.

The Masters' substantive criticism of our action was that the group voting was unrepresentative of the senior common room as a whole. But seldom are more than twenty of the sixty or so members present, so that most action taken involves the consent of no more than a third of the members. And in this particular case notice was sent to every member of the common room before-hand informing him that resolutions regarding the draft would be proposed at the next meeting. Furthermore, in reporting the actual vote we effectively disassociated any member not present from the position taken in the resolution. Larry Blum,   Resident Tutor   Maurice Ford,   Assistant Senior Tutor   Caroline Bynum,   Non-Resident Tutor