Discrimination

To the Editors of the Crimson:

"How many disabled and handicapped professors are there at Harvard," a disabled and handicapped student asked me, as I was trying to recruit her for Harvard. "How many blind professors are there?" another asked me. "How many hunchbacks," asked a third.

All these questions came to mind in reading Laura E. Gomez's shamefaced confession in the Crimson that she did not know how to answer "How many Hispanic professors are there at Harvard." Since I was born in New Mexico, and took an even more lofty view of those who came from the Caribbean, the question of how for one goes is making distinctions become an interesting sociological question.

Behind all this is the nonsensical assumption that the faculty of a University has to be "representative" of the population. The first, and only assumption is that a faculty has to be scholarly and oustanding in its particular discipline and field, and all other considerations are irrelevant. Of course, if scholarly and competent persons are discriminated against because they are women, or black, or Hispanic (of the different varieties), or Chinese, or Jewish or any other criterian, then the background of the person becomes relevant--but only on the matter of discrimination, not of representation. Fellpe Torres   Brookline, Mass.