Klitgaard and HDNS

To the Editors of the Harvard Crimson:

Once again Harvard is showing its true color. Recent (as well as not-so-recent) events substantiate the fact that Harvard's commitment to diversity is a sham, and perhaps justifiably so, according to a recently released report. Robert Klitgaard, associate professor at the Kennedy School, recently released the preliminary findings of his study which found that "women and minorities at top universities often do not perform as well academically as their high aptitude tests would predict." He goes on to say that the reverse is true for Jewish students. But Prof. Klitgaard doesn't stop there. Because of this "problem" with standardized tests, affirmative action programs tend to create a student body with a wide disparity of academic capabilities. Klitgaard's solution to the "problem": perhaps if Blacks (Third World students?) attended "slightly lesser insitutions where they might compete as intellectual equals," we could eventually reach a point when "Blacks (Third World students?) would end up academically equal to whites at all but the very bottom institutions"--the "ripple effect".

It is quite obvious that not only does Harvard not want Third World students here (evidenced by events surrounding Third World Studies departments/committees, University publications' coverage of Third World issues, lack of commitment to a Third World Center, etc.), but it also feels that Third World students don't deserve to be here on an academic level. Even our role of bringing diversity to the University's Euro-centric atmosphere is in question: Klitgaard is "uncertain" of the benefits of diversity to the students body in general.

Klitgaard is quick to add that the findings are his ideas and are not policy decisions. But let's look at Harvard's policy decisions with respect to different parts of the student body.

Recently Dean Epps "co-signed $14,000 in loans and used $2,000 in 'discretionary funds'... to pay off the debts and expenses incurred by Harvard Delivery News Service (HDNS)" that resulted from embezzlement of about $6000-$7000 by HDNS's former manager. In conversations after the signing, Dean Epps learned that former manager, Martin Olive, was a cocaine user. Is it too naive to associate cocaine use with embezzlement of large sums of money? Yet despite a perhaps logical association, Epps has chosen not to prosecute because of "concern for (Olive's) personal situation."

But let's look elsewhere again, to the concern for the personal situation of Third World students at Harvard. Third World students representing Blacks, Africans, Chicanos, Boricuans, Asians, and Native Americans have called on Harvard to live up to its professed commitments to Third World students by providing a Third World Center. This demand is not unprecedented, for many of the "elite universities" (as Prof. Klitgaard calls them) have responded to similar demands of their Third World students and have provided Centers (Yale, Princeton, Wellesley, Dartmouth, etc.). Of course the university's response was the typical smoke screen--a committee. Perhaps alleged embezzlement/drug use does not merit committee investigation, nor even an investigation by legal authorities. Perhaps Dean Epps can find it in his "discretion" to bail out a student alleged to be involved in criminal activities and can't grant the demand of a group of diverse students for a centrally located, university-financed, student-run Third World Center in which to work to eliminate the alienating atmosphere that pervades the university, as well as to find their own personal space away from that atmosphere.

Perhaps Dean Epps could get together with the officials of Cambridge Trust Co. (who "like to work closely with Harvard") and set up a bank account for the funding/running of the Third World Center, for I daresay that our personal situation at Harvard is deteriorating quickly. Dean Epps' actions with respect to organizations that he has no legal/administrative responsibility for are quite magnanimous. I think that some of Harvard's generosity should be directed to Third World students in our struggle in the world and at Harvard. Harvard has been delinquent in its commitment for too long. John Johnson III '82