Shanties

To the Editors of The Crimson:

At midnight on Monday, April 21, the Conservative Club erected a shanty in Harvard Yard to protest the existence of all such structures in the Yard and to make it clear that oppression does not only exist in South Africa, but is actually sponsored by such kind and decent regimes as the Soviet Union as well.

Whether or not students agree with what the conservatives, or SASC for that matter, express on their shanties, the University, unfortunate as it may be, recognizes the shanties and the signs aorund them as a "legitimate form of expression." To prevent damage to the shanties, Harvard police keep a 24-hour watch at great expense to the University (do you wonder anymore why your tuition is so high?). As a result of this policy, the shanties and the signs of the prodivestment students have not been touched or damaged by malicious hands. Therefore, the University has effectively protected SASC's right to free expression. However, many of the signs around the Gulag (as the conservatives christened their shanty) have been torn down, and apparently, the University has done nothing to prevent this or punish the prepetrators of this violation of free expression (as defined by the University).

Is this a double standard? Or is it fair and just to allow the conservative viewpoint to be harassed and suppressed while taking active measures to protect SASC--which has been known to and can be expected to take actions which are harmful to the University, its faculty, students, and invited guests. If it is, as the University claims at this time, a form of free expression to build shanties and display signs around them, then the tearing down of this conservative information is an inexcusable violation of the right of free expression. When only side is allowed to express it views, the society can be called totalitarian. Is this what Harvard wants?

Does Harvard want to live up to, and enforce, its reputation as the "Kremlin on the Charles?" Hopefully not. It is therefore imperative that the University either admit its folly and remove all shanties or grant the same protection to all points of view that it has to SASC's. John L. Worden IV '86