Get on the Wagon

THE LOGIC OF drinking games has always eluded me.

Every time you "win" at quarters, some other guy gets to drink your beer, burp in your sober little face and insult you.

The same type of twisted logic applies to the recent imbroglio between President Derek C. Bok and Secretary of Education William J. Bennett. Bok invited the guy to a birthday bash, and Bennett ended up swigging some tea and spouting drivel all over his hosts. Bok was left holding the quarter.

"There are too many intellectual and educational casualties among the student body of Harvard. Our students deserve better," Bennett bellowed. Not exactly a typical birthday greeting. Although Bennett raised some valid points--such as the problems with Harvard's advising system and the Core Curriculum-the good secretary failed to butress his conclusion with anything resembling researched support. Even Bok said Bennett didn't sound too "sober."

Bennett based his belligerent blabber on a short article in Time, a perusal of the course catalogue, and a few comments by Harvard students. His research would be laughable were it not so malicious. One hopes he didn't pick up such sloppy scholarship habits when he attended law school here in the late '60s and early '70s. One also hopes he didn't allow such academic atrophy when he was a Social Studies tutor and freshman proctor.

BENNETT, BELIEVE it or not, was an early sympathizer with radical student groups and an avowed rock and roller. He still loves to quote Dylan lyrics, even to illustrate his neoconservative nitwitticisms.

When Bennett took over the Department of Education's top job in early 1985--after three apparently successful years as head of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)--the signs were hopeful. He was, after all, a Democrat. Moreover, New Republic President and Harvard Lecturer on Social Studies Martin H. Peretz raved about his buddy "Bill" Bennett.

Peretz's pal showed a darker side when he took his Cabinet position. He immediately announced support for a multibillion-dollar cut in student aid, a stance he has strengthened in the past 20 months. Supporters of educational equality jumped on Bennett because they feared a two-tiered system of higher education: Ivy College for the rich, State U. for the poor. This was the same Bill Bennett, who as the head of NEH, had refused to comply with an affirmative action decree from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Besides making reprehensible policy decisions, Bennett began a reign of rhetorical terror, startling both for its outlandish implications and its general incomprehensibility. First, Bennett took advantage of the student aid controversy to take a swipe at both pro-education and pro-divestment activists, saying that wholesale funding cuts might "require for some students divestiture of certain sorts--stereo divestiture, automobile divestiture, three-weeks-at-the-beach divestiture."

Bennett later said that families earning more than the $60,000-a-year federal aid income ceiling, and who are desperately trying to finance college education for several children, should "maybe do your family planning a little better." The federal government, he said, "can't afford to give every student the opportunity to go to the college of his choice."

Bennett last year foreshadowed his recent attack on Harvard when he charged that "some people are getting ripped off" in their college education. He urged parents to visit a college for several days and attend a dozen classes before sending their child to that school--something he didn't even bother to do before writing a speech of potentially national significance. Bennett has obviously decided that Harvard should be a principal target: this summer he cited Harvard's drug policy as an example of liberal leniency, and he has stated that he would rather give his son money to start a business than send him to Harvard.

UNFORTUNATELY, Bennett is probably right when he states that he has "more affinity with the views of the American people than most of my academic colleagues." After all, there are a lot of people--and potential voters--who hate Harvard and love simplistic attacks upon college education. Pundits speculate that Bennett may run for political office in 1988. Right now he's making all the right moves: his fire-and-brimstone attacks upon liberal educational values, his anti-intellectual polemic, and especially his blind and vocal allegiance to Ronald Reagan. The American people lap that stuff up. What they should demand, however, is sobriety.