Ungodly Harvard

To the Editors of The Crimson:

Dean Fox's proposal to oust freshmen from the Quad is a scandalous attempt at wrecking one of the last alternative lifestyles at Harvard (is it paranoia, or do I detect the silhouette of the infamous 1-1-2 plan lurking at the sidelines, waiting for its cue?). The timing of the Administration's actions--reading and exam period securely bolting, or so they think, the doors to student concern and participation--epitomizes the slimy, macchiavellian, fetid, underhanded, unscrupulous and most questionable manner in which the Administration has traditionally managed to impose its bureaucratic wet-dreams upon the lives of those most affected by its decisions. An encouraging sign is that concerned and enraged students are organizing, under the name of Committee for a Democratic University (C.D.U.), to combat, not merely this proposal, but the reality of ceaseless Administration encroachment upon the rights and lives of students and workers at this University.

The uproar provoked by the attempted elimination of 4-year housing is completely justified and must command the support of all progressive forces within the University. Fox's hallucination however, is merely a symptom of the cancer that is hounding and crippling this community. The real issue is the reckless manner in which the University has been able to run the lives of the very individuals it is supposed to serve as a source of inspiration and livelihood: its students and workers. Put as succinctly as possible: democracy has become little more than a provocative abstraction, or an esoteric topic for Social Studies tutorials, in this institution. Harvard is run by a bureaucratic dictatorship, properly fueled and oiled by corporate money, revealing in its internal organization and government its true nature. What is needed is not just momentary attention to the protests over Fox's plan, but the creation of the proper institutional tools to prevent such outrageous attempts to be repeated: complete student and worker participation in all decisions that affect their lives.

The housing controversy is but the latest link in a long chain of affronteries to the democratic process at Harvard. The odyssey of the Afro-American Studies Department, won by the sheer guts and conviction of students in the late 1960s, and castrated by the administration's patient patronizing and violent hatchetwaving; the insulting neglect with which the University has treated the widespread demand for Women's Studies; the even more outrageous impositions made on workers by Harvard as an employer, going to the point of actively participating in efforts to emasculate the national Affirmative Action program, even failing to comply with its own flaccid AA plan; and the exclusion of students and workers (the affected parties) from the search team for a replacement for Walter Leonard, our retiring AA officer; are some of the highlights of a long tradition of arrogant despotism in the government of this university. It is clear that Harvard is not as interested in creating an environment of growth through participation for the members of its community, as it is of creating a bureaucrat's dream through the continuous homogenization of its student body and exploitation of its work-force. Despite the claims of its founders, Harvard has become ungodly. Gustavo Buntinx '78