SUPPORTING POLICE ACTION

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

The alumni association of the GSAS and the Kennedy School of Government, in this year's fund-raising appeal circulated from Holyoke Center, urges its members to "make your gift in support of academic freedom in higher education". The appeal is accompanied by a statement which begins:

The Council of the Harvard Graduate Society for Advanced Study and Research endorses the policy of the University as expressed by the Board of Overseers in dealing with a student minority who last week occupied University Hall by force. We believe that police action was unavoidable and necessary in the particular circumstances in order to preserve the institution itself.

This statement goes on to assert, in terms which could not be more disingenuous, the responsiveness of Harvard administration and faculty to student demands: "There can be no doubt of their desire to understand the pressures of war, social unrest, poverty, racial discrimination, and the rise of impersonal political institutions on Harvard students-as indeed on students everywhere".

Responsibility for the attachment of this statement to a fund-raising appeal rests presumably with the chairman and council of the Graduate Society, but also with ex-officio councillors Pusey, Ford, Price and Elder. Alumni who respond to the appeal should take pains to repudiate both the inappropriate political maneuvering, and the content of the statement with which, by virtue of their contribution, they would otherwise be associated. Sarah Kafatou, M.A. 1966