Big Brother

To the Editors of The Crimson:

We enjoyed reading The Crimson's forecast for 1984 ("The year of the Wrap," 1/3/84): a year in which the Kennedy School, armed with nuclear weapons and led by Bok and his coterie of Latin American dictators conquer the world. You captured with humor what the K-School was really about. Unfortunately, the Harvard administration is not known for its sense of humor and appears to have taken your article as a guide to action for the new year. Dean Epps, who used to play "High in the Saddle," has been remodelled and unleashed as Big Brother for 1984.

Stung by the reception given to Weinberger by some 600 students last November, Epps has redoubled his efforts to wipe out student protest. He has threatened the two of us with expulsion. On 16 January we were called in for a chat with Elliot Cohen, our senior tutor at Quincy House. While Mr. Cohen blathered about Harvard's "liberal principles" which he felt were blown to smithereens by the Weinberger protest, we thought about the 50,000 Salvadorans who were blown to smithereens by Caspar Weinberger '38, the victims of "liberal principles." Mr. Cohen's soliloquy was cut short by our assertion that "we're not liberals, sir, we're communists." Cohen replied, "That's the heart of the problem" and went on the explain that he had been commissioned by Dean Epps to deliver the following threat" if we participate in actions similar to the Weinberger protest at any time in the future, we will be asked to withdraw from the College. We asked if Big Brother planned a mass expulsion of the 600 + students who protested Weinberger, or were we two communists a test case in Epps' drive to crush free speech at Harvard, Cohen replied that there were a total of 10 students who Epps had lined up tutors to "warn." Should we continue to exercise our democratic rights to protest (which we unreservedly will), we will be tried by the administration's kangaroo court, the Committee on Rights and Responsibilities (CRR), which was set up to enforce Draconian legislation and purge "undesirables" in the aftermath of the '69 Harvard strike. Never mind that the CRR is "inactive" became students have boycotted elections to it as a matter of principle for more than 10 years.

Yet communists aren't the only victims of "liberal principles." The Harvard administration and Epps in particular have become an iron heel under which all aspects of student life are crushed . Following in the muddy footsteps of James Watt, Epps stumped on students' rights to listen to the music of then choice and killed the Grateful Dead. Epps ruled that the Harvard Band's use of Shakespeare was "vulgar" and ordered them to march to the beat of his drum. Freedom of religion will also be done away with in 1984 as the administration thumbs its nose at Jewish students who petitioned to reschedule Commencement so it wouldn't conflict with a Jewish holiday.

We warned that Weinberger and his underlings in the Harvard administration would no doubt like to treat their opposition in the U.S. the way they do in El Salvador where anyone who breathes a word of protest is summarily seized, interrogated, imprisoned or "disappeared." Now they've gone an done it, Hahvahd style--a fireside chat about "liberal principles" with a tutor who holds a gun to your head. These outrageous threats of expulsion and attempts to regiment campus life must be exposed, protested and reversed! Andre Weltman '86   Tom Crean '86   for the Spartacus Youth League