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To The Editors of the Crimson:

What if they wrote an article about the Intercollegiate conference but never checked out the facts? Then you would have Eric Fried's "Philadelphia Story" opinion piece, which appeared in The Crimson on March 7. The article is basically flawed and requires a response. Leaving aside the sarcastic tone and pejorative phrases running through the entire article, we should point out the several factual errors and mistaken impressions in the piece.

First, there are some very simple facts which anyone writing about the conference should have gotten straight. MIT, a school which the article says was represented at the conference, was in fact not there. The name of the conference, which was printed on the cover of the conference's booklet, was the "Intercollegiate Conference," not, as the article states, the "Little 11" conference. Twenty-three Harvard-Radcliffe students went down to Philadelphia, not 20 as the article states. According to the article, the University of Pennsylvania has "student trustees"; actually, they don't (though perhaps the article was referring to Cornell which does have one student trustee.)

These straightforward, yet not crucial errors parallel the more serious and less obvious faults of the article. We want to first point out several incorrect assumptions which were based solely on the author's limited experience with the conference--assumptions which he never confirmed with any of the other delegates or schools, though he could have easily done so. The article asserts that "they (the conference planners) ...never forged ties to campus political organizations." Aside from Harvard, the following student governments were intimately involved in planning and executing the conference: University of Pennsylvania, University of Chicago (including its officers), Stanford, Brown (including its officers), Columbia, and Princeton. At Cornell, Dartmouth and Yale there is no student government and so there other ties were made: student trustee, members of acronym committees (Cornell), class councils (Dartmouth), and the Yale Political Union.

At Harvard, extensive ties were in fact formed. Seven Student Assembly members (including Fried himself) went to the conference, and the Assembly contributed $200. RUS contributed $200 and its incoming secretary and outgoing president attended the conference. Three ERG members were involved. Many other organizations (AAA, BSA, La Raza, Freshman Task Force, CHUL, Crimson Key, E4A to name a few) were contacted and contributed members and/or information. Actually, Harvard and the other schools are in a very good position to "implement the conference's policies."

Fried also says that "the conference might have worked as a giant workshop." In fact, if he had checked with members of committees other than the one he was on, he would have found that these committees did in reality run in the manner he suggested. We, as delegated on other committees confirm this; his impression is ungrounded in fact.

More subtly, he seeks to lay the blame on "the conference organizers" for all that he thought was ill. His analysis directly equates the organizational difficulties, which clearly did exist (although none was specifically documented in the article), with the ineptitude of the conference organizers. While we think that some fault does lie with the organizers, we feel that Fried ignored and was unsympathetic to other inherent difficulties which the conference faced: e.g., that this was the first venture ever of its kind, that all money had to be raised by students, that there was a short amount of time to get organized, and that there exists at all of the colleges a general student apathy. Here we should point out two facts concerning Harvard's participation. First, The Crimson did very little reporting on the conference, to the point that the $200 Assembly grant which the article refers to was completely ignored in the story that covered the meeting at which it was given. Second, in a relative sense, the conference represented (unfortunately) a highwater mark of participation among student-issue oriented groups; the number of students who were involved at Harvard is about equivalent to the average assembly attendance last semester and far outnumbers participation in the more visible CDU. In all, we feel that a more constructive statement on the conference itself--with all of its difficulties--is that it is remarkable that it even happened at all. Contrary to the impression given by the article, the delegates as a group do plan to follow-up the conference, both with the assembly and with many other student and student-faculty-administrator groups. We have met three times already to pursue this.

One fundamental point puts the whole article in perspective: when a paper prints a long opinion piece but very little in the way of news, the paper puts the uninformed or casual reader in the position of having to accept opinion for fact. This problem is especially salient in this case since Fried's opinions were based on "facts" which he never corroborated. Further, his own opinion is not given any perspective because the article fails to mention that he was a delegate to the conference. To create this kind of a situation is, we think, irresponsible journalism on the part of The Crimson. In the future we hope that The Crimson, in scrutinizing the pieces which it publishes, will be more responsible. Mark Shlomchik   Elizabeth Shaw   Arthur Kyrazis   Jon Slater   David Grosof   Aloutte Kluge   John Kyrazis

Eric B. Fried responds:

Admitted my article contained two factual errors, which were the result of inadequate communication between the article's editor and myself and misinformation supplied me by a member of the conference's student government committee. Organizers can title their bookjets what they want, but the conference was commonly called the "Little 11" even after MIT dropped out. And 20 was an approximation of how many Harvard-Radcliffe students went down.

But these points seem raised to distract the reader from the real question, the role and behavior of the conference organizers. On some campuses, it is true, organizers involved student governments in planning stages: my point, however, remains: that they did not involve the student bodies as a whole nor did they successfully tap into the active political movements on most campuses. At Harvard, the student body neither knew nor cared in large part about the conference, and the assembly was only peripherally involved. The Harvard organizations involved in the conference were involved only to the extent that individuals working on the conference also happened to be part of these organizations. The conference, on the whole, never made it onto the political agendas of the campuses involved.

I stated in my article that the exchange of information basically sought by the conference occurred, but this is not to forget that the exchange was hampered by lack of focus, overattention to resolutions, and poor organization. I do not deny that the organizers had a difficult job: I just say they didn't do it very well.

Since the article was written, the Harvard delegates have in fact met three times. Fine. Hopefully these meetings will accomplish something.

Finally, the authors of the letter attack my credibility directly by claiming I talked to no other individuals involved and made up the article entirely out of my own head. This is simply untrue. I have spoken often with many of the Harvard delegates, and I spoke extensively to students from other campuses at the conference. My view of the mixed results of the conference is a commonly-held one. As the letter's authors point out, 23 Harvard students went down to Philadelphia; seven signed the letter attacking my view of the conference's outcome. What do the other 16 think? Perhaps the Harvard organizers should check with their own delegates before they go running off with the bit between their teeth.