Lily white problems plague campus media

Like the national news media, Harvard's undergraduate publications have a lily white problem.

It has been complicating their coverage of the Black student movement and, paradoxically, it has gotten worse as the numbers of black students has increased.

The near doubling of black enrollment last fall with the entrance of 130 black freshmen to Harvard and Radcliffe brought no comparable influx of black aspirants for the Harvard news media. In fact the slack turnout coupled with the departure of '69 graduates slightly reduced the number of blacks in these organizations.

"We haven't had a black go through a 'comp' so far this year." said Carol Sternhell '71, Managing Editor of the CRIMSON. "In many ways we're in worse shape than a regular newspaper.

"On a regular newspaper, you get blacks who are interested in reporting on the black community to the outside world. But here, the main thing seems to be politics. student activism."

With roughly 240 blacks among 6,000 Harvard and Radcliffe undergraduates. the CRIMSON has two blacks on its 60 member board; the Independent has three out of about 60 board members and contributors; and the Lampoon, one of about 55-ratios little different from the years when Harvard had only one-tenth as many black students. At WHRB, there are roughly 10 blacks out of 100 members but there, as in other news media, fewer than 'half of the blacks are really active, their own thing, Lee Daniels '71, a mem-

One reason is that blacks are doing ber of the CRIMSON Editorial Board, and Ernest Wilson '70, a Lampoon staffer, have recently obtained a $10,000 grant to revive an on-again, off-again black publication.

The Philip Graham Fund of Harvard has provided the money for one year's publication-two issues-of the Journal of AfroAmerican Affairs (formerly the Journal of Negro Affairs). It was started in 1963 and published sporadically since then, last in Spring, 1968. The next issue, due out in March, will focus on the decade ahead: "Black alternatives in the '70's."

This has left Daniels and others among its 16-member staff less time for the white publications.

But there is a much larger reason for the black withdrawal from the traditional white-dominated student outlets. It grows out of the whole feeling of militancy and solidarity among black students, especially these past two years, and their disenchantment with Harvard.

'This is a general alienation." explained Derrick Bell, a lecturer on law and former attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. "Some of it is based on ambivalence-what the hell is a young, aware, militant black doing at Harvard anyhow?"

As for the undergraduate publications. "There is no great interest-the stuff seems a waste of time (??) really (??) to their concerns."

Jim Fallows '70, outgoing CRIMSON President, and some of his predecessors began to notice a change in mood among potential black candidates in 1968 after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. A determined effort was made to recruit blacks the next Fall, but made little headway. One black student from Radcliffe, trying out for the CRIMSON, was assigned to report on Afro affairs. She got caught in the conflicting demands of black solidarity and CRIMSON reporting.

"We came to the conclusion it was grossly unfair to put blacks in the position of trying to smoke out the objective news when their black friends were pressuring them not to sell out the Cause." said Fallows. Reluctantly, the CRIMSON assigned whites to cover black affairs.

The trend was even more pronounced in the '68-'69 academic year when blacks were more preoccupied with their demands for Afro-American studies programs.

"We really began to feel it last spring during the takeover of University Hall." said Kenneth Bechis, former President of WHRB. "We really wanted a black reporter who could report if blacks seized a building and to give us a black viewpoint. But the one or two black reporters we had said flatly they wouldn't report on Afro."

The CRIMSON tried, offering the Afro society leaders a weekly feature page for presenting their viewpoint but that idea fizzled out. Only a handful of articles appeared.

At the Independent, President Morris Abrams Jr. '70, said blacks have written a few articles this year but the board has not tried to set up a black column or page because of lack of space. At WHRB, any member can voice his views editorially, but Bechis said the blacks had not used this outlet much.

With the present separatist mood of blacks on campus, reflected in the political split with such organizations as SDS as well as the pullback from news outlets, neither whites nor blacks hold out hope for an aggressive recruitment campaign among blacks.

"If they try to do too much, it would become patronizing," Daniels remarked. "You know, the CRIMSON and the others can't come out and make a pitch. 'Callin' all black students, we want you. The blacks know it's here; they're not interested now."