Farce

To the Editors of The Crimson:

I am writing to deplore the farce that took place at the Kennedy School Forum prior to the televised debate between Bush and Ferraro on Thursday night. This non-event termed a student "debate" between Harvard and Yale Democrats for Mondale-Ferraro and Harvard and Yale Republicans for Regan-Bush was a shameful performance. First, the student debaters failed to address the true issues of the campaign. Second, the audience was for some reason thrilled by the failure of either side to make substantive points. They cheered and hissed whenever a non-point was made, apparently to express their unreasoning support for the candidates. This gave the Forum a zoolike atmosphere.

This is not to say that there aren't very important reasons for supporting one side. As Mr. Bush commented in the following debate, we are presented with the clearest choice in over 50 years. (That, by the way, was the Hoover-Roosevelt contest. It would be interesting to know what side Mr. Bush was suggesting we should have supported...) The real issues are Ronald Reagan's War on the Poverty Stricken, his stance on civil rights, his politicization of religion, his destruction of the environment, and certainly not least, his lack of a foreign policy.

The point is that the number of people in this country who are below the poverty level is still increasing. The point is that when Reagan said there were no hungry people in America, people were starving in Detroit and elsewhere. They still are. When a small assortment of donated meat dishes (TV dinners, canned ravioli, etc., one to a family) was distributed to the poor in Detroit several months ago, people lined up to wait hours before hand. Many went away with nothing. The point is that Reagan Administration officials have engaged in activities reminiscent of Marie Antoinette. She pretended every once in a while that she was a peasant shepherdess. But she had perfumed sheep and a huge villa. Reagan officials pretend that they're poor and try to live for short periods on assistance payments. They comment that they didn't think they were going to make it in the end but the poor really do get plenty to live on. And anyway, the experience was sort of fun, the point is that the Reagan Administration has continuously fought against civil rights. Mr. Bush made very clear the Reagan Administration mentality with respect to civil rights when he drew a connection between civil rights and crime in our neighborhoods. In addition, the Administration's desire to enforce second class citizen status through reduced minimum wages on those "teenage black...kids" that George mentioned is touching. The point is can you imagine Ronald Regan trying to handle the Cuban missile crisis? The point is...

In other words, the choice is very clear. The question is why the students in this debate were unable to raise these points and why the audience loved this failure. If this inability to analyze and clearly state the issues is the best that Harvard and Yale can produce, we are in for several very grim decades. If the audience's reaction toe student debate is an indication of the level of thought and rationality in the Harvard community at large, the void is too terrible to contemplate. Frederick J. Horne '85