Choosing A Heavyweight

THE NICEST thing about Class Day is that it only comes once a year. Its high point is supposed to be the Class Day Speaker's address, in which one or--another celebrity edifies a horde of proud parents and bewildered seniors in Harvard's famous Tercentenary Theater. One reason the seniors are bewildered is that the Tercentenary Theater bears such a startling resemblance to the Yard. Another is that so many of them are realizing for the first time that Commencement is not a beginning, but an end. "Oh, mama," they wait "Can this really be Commencement? To be stuck inside of Harvard Yard with...Elliott Richardson?"

Actually, Elliot L. Richardson '41 will probably not be the Class Day speaker this year. For one thing, he is probably too busy setting odds with British journalists on when he will replace Henry A Kissinger '50 as secretary of state. Also, Richardson had his shot at the seniors last year, following Woody Allen's second annual rejection of the coveted honor. In any case, the next week should settle the matter: at this very moment, the class of 1975 is weighing the comparative merits of giving Allen one last chance and striking out on its own.

Ever since 1968, seniors have had the right to invite anyone they like as Class Day Speaker. It is one of the few reforms of the '60s that has not yet been whittled away--a tribute to the University's commitment to freedom of speech. How will this year's class discharge its responsibility? The seniors may not remember George Santayana of the class of 1886, who preceded John Kenneth Galbraith as Harvard's sage-in-residence. But they should. For it was Santayana who warned. "Those who forget the past are condemned forever to relive it," and the recent history of Class Day must have him spinning in his grave.

THE FIRST speaker selected by the seniors themselves--she had expressed her happiness that the choice was the students', not the administration's--was Coretta King. By all accounts, King gave a fine speech, praising student protest and denouncing the Vietnam war. Unfortunately, she was there as a replacement for her husband, who had been shot and killed in Memphis two months earlier.

Perhaps chastened by this experience, the class of 1969 turned from radical political activism to perennial political futility, in the person of Allard K. "Help-Me-With-My-Campaign" Lowenstein. "What troubles me most this year is how much we've lost by not trying." "Help-Me" told the listless seniors, some of whom were also troubled by the deaths of King, Robert F. Kennedy '48 and tens of thousands of Vietnamese. "I think it's terrible to throw out a dean--I was a dean once," the once and future would-be Congressman continued.

The next three year's choices--University of Oklahoma president J. Herbert Hollomon and writers Jimmy Breslin and Tom Wicker--ranged from inoffensive to creditable, with even more commendable choices, such as Madame Binh of Paris Peace Talks fame, who finished seventh in 1973, garnering some student support. In 1973, the first year that Allen passed up his chance, the Class committee came up with playwright Arthur Miller as the next best thing. Miller accepted, and as if to disprove Death of a Salesman's thesis that "attention must be paid," he read from his introduction to Garage Sale, a collection of essays by Ken Kesey.

Opportunity knocked at Allen's bolted door again in 1974, after that year's Class Committee decided that Alexander Solzhenitsya was an infessible choice and I.F. Stone decided he would rather go sailing. Stone also said he was probably "too anti-Establishment for Harvard"--a problem that did not trouble the People's Fourth Choice, Richardson. Still soggy from his bold and anguished desertion of the sinking ship of the Nixon administration, Richardson scarcely alluded to his political prospects or career: the modest former secretary of defense omitted mention even of his command over the last year of the American bombing of Cambodia. Instead, the ex. Poonster discussed his admiration for Doonesbury as class arator Daniel A. Swanson '74 berated "the men who planned this friminal war," and informed his listeners that "a lack of imagination causes cruelty." Largely ignoring a small but spirited group of hecklers. Richardson rambled from the lessons of Vietnam to his undergraduate love for philosophy to the lessons of Watergate, saying little about any of these subjects, as Hannah Arendt reported from the Eichmann trial, even bad guys can be boring.

IF THIS YEAR'S seniors have learned anything from Watergate, they have learned that Watergate lecturers rarely have anything to say, and certainly aren't likely to say it for less than the $25,000 an hour H.R. "Call me Bob" Haldeman will receive from CBS. So we can forget some of the current stars of the lecture circuit: John W. Dean III, Ronald L. "Over-There-Is-the-Hippopotamus" Ziegler, Bob-Woodward-and-Carl-Bernstein, and Rabbi Baruch Korff. And although Lieut. William L. "Rusty" Calley has now hit the lecture tour as well, even color-slides from Mylai would represent only a footnote to the history that Richardson in his pre-Watergate incarnation helped make.

On the conveniently pre-stamped postcards distributed by the Senior Class Committee, seniors can recommend as many alternatives to Allen and Calley as they can think of. Word is that Mel Brooks and Hunter Thompson are currently leading the list. Like last year's L.F. Stone, if he showed up. Thompson would probably give an interesting speech. But since Thompson might also be comatose from Ibogaine, seniors might want to consider other possibilities as well. For example, they might recommend Fidel Castro, who startled the diplomatic world during his last visit to the United States by staying in a Harlem hotel instead of the Waldorf-Astoria. Or they might follow their predecessors of two years ago and consider Madama Binh. If they prefer to limit themselves to Americans, the seniors have a less charismatic but still meritorious group to choose from. Roger Baldwin '04, founder of the American Civil Liberties Union, will probably be in town for Commencement anyway. Henry Aaron may be swinging through, too, now that he's over in the American League. Seymour Hersh, Margaret Mead, United Mine Workers president Arnold Miller, or Reps. Barbara Jordan (D-Texas) or Bella Abzug (D-N.Y.) might be more predictable, but they would certainly represent a step up from Richardson.

THE GREATEST, of course, would be Muhammad Ali, World Heavyweight and the People's Champion. All has been contributing heavily lately to Third World charities, and he lost one of his titles for refusing to fight in Richardson's war. Also unlike Richardson. Ali has a sense of humor, writes poetry, and is pretty. Maybe it's time for a Class Day speaker who floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee.