Giving for a Voice

A lot of people have asked me how I feel about graduating. "Great!" I reply, and leave it at that. My real feelings are more ambivalent. I want to help future students at Harvard, but I'm not sure that Harvard is going to want my help.

One of the most important lessons I've learned here is that you have to be ready to work for the things you want, because they rarely come easily. Harvard makes you fight for every privilege it gives. The Handbook for Students does not list the facilities that will make students happier and healthier, but the rules we had better not break if we want to continue attending. This includes the phrase that every Harvard student fears, but none understands; one must avoid "conduct unbecoming of a Harvard student."

This vague phrase was the charge brought against a group of students who were staging a peaceful demonstration against a controversial speaker here a couple of years ago. To me it demonstrates Harvard's almost complete mistrust of its student body, and, I fear, of its alumni.

THIS mistrust often translates into arrogance. Harvard seems to feel that neither its students nor its alumni are worth accepting advice from, but they work very hard to convince us that we should remember Harvard and all the good it did for us by giving money as generously as we can.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with a private educational institution asking for money--a quality education (which I feel that Harvard provided) costs a great deal these days, especially with the Reagan budget cuts. In fact, contributing regularly to their school is one of the best ways in which alumni can make it better.

But the Senior Class this year was less than enthusiastic about contributing to the Class Gift; so far only 38 percent of the class has contributed. The motivation was not the selfishness of which our generation is so often accused; it was not that we could not afford the $25 recommended donation. The reason I heard most often, and the one I felt myself when I was first asked, was "What did Harvard really do for me?"

While there is no doubt that my friends and activities and classes were the most important influences I had here, I cannot credit Harvard with providing them. The best way I can describe my relationship with the governing forces of this University is to call it adversarial. The experiences I gained the most from, and often those which brought my friends and me closer, were fighting things we felt were wrong about the way the University was run, from the administration's policy towards South Africa to its handling of student protests.

WHAT can students expect? We were never promised democracy by Harvard, only a great name on the diploma and a good education if we wanted to work for it. If that's the case, then I paid them my tuition and they can work with that. But that isn't how it should be. Alumni should give money and they should have a voice.

The supposed difference between students and alumni is that as an alumnus I will have earned the right to give advice to Harvard. The Board of Overseers is the voice for this advice, as the one truly democratic institution in the Harvard bureaucracy to which alumni elect representatives to present their concerns and opinions.

But even this doesn't fit the administration's plan. In recent years, the University has used all the resources it can to block the election of Overseers candidates from the Harvard-Radcliffe Alumni Against Apartheid slate, which is committed to getting Harvard to divest from its holdings in South African-related companies--a cause I agree with. Alumni Association officials have sent letters at University expense to convince alumni not to vote for them. A few weeks ago one said publicly that these candidates "do not have Harvard's best interests at heart."

I am offended by this attitude, and by the implication that an alumnus who disagrees with the University's position is disloyal. One of the most important conversations I had with my roommates was about what we would have done during the Vietnam War if we had been drafted. One said he would have left the country, but would not ever have tried to return, explaining that if he disagreed with the government, he had an obligation to renounce his citizenship. I believe this destroys the premise of American democracy.

If I disagreed with the government's decision to draft, I would go to jail in protest, but my responsibility to my country is to try to convince them of my position, and if I cannot, to pay the price of my civil disobedience.

Harvard can never jail me for arguing my opinion, nor do they have to accept it, although I doubt they will ever refuse my money. But when I receive my diploma, I will have a responsibility to give both to them, and maybe then they will listen.