One Harvard Student's Attempt To Make A Difference

Last spring, Andrew T. Starr '91-93 saw the obstreperous face of Bart Simpson in a place it didn't belong.

And he decided to do something about it.

After the Dunster House committee chose a design for T-shirt that sported the popular cartoon character, Starr wrote to Twentieth Century Fox reporting the possible copyright infringement.

For Starr, the letter was just one of many attempts he has made during his Harvard career to uphold the law and do what he could to make a difference in the world around him.

In the case of Dunster House, Starr did make a difference--but not one widely appreciated by his house mates.

Fox wrote to the house committee, telling it to stop selling the contraband Bart-wear, and the house was left with 130 unsellable shirts and a $900 loss.

"At the time, it really was a big deal," says David S. Strait '91, co-chair of the Dunster House Committee. "We got very serious calls telling us to stop selling the shirts."

All the uproar in Dunster caught Starr by surprise. He heard the reaction in dilute form, since he had taken leave from school and was working for the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Starr says that he felt burnt out, and decided to take time off to regain his academic concentration. He is currently living with his family in Amherst.

His sophomore-year roommate, Jeffrey C. Olkin '90, says that Starr reported the Dunster violations casually, without considering the possible effects, and that he felt remorseful afterwards.

"He told me that he did it without thinking--he caught someone doing something wrong, and so he told on them, like a game," says Olkin. "Then when it had the repercussions it did, he felt very bad--he said he just hadn't been thinking."

Starr and his friends say that he has written to companies for years: protesting red-dyed M&Ms out of health concerns, challenging the itemization of his phone bills, sending away for free merchandise. And no one had ever gotten angry before.

He had also written to McDonald's telling the firm that two Harvard Dining Services breakfast entrees--the MacEgg and the Bagel Mac--closely mirrored the names of McDonald's creations. This fall, the University was forced to change the names, but the student reaction was minimal. (C)  (C)  (C)

Starr had led a placid, quiet life at Harvard. He worked on statistics assignments--he is the Statistics Department's only undergraduate concentrator--and hung out with his friends.

"At Harvard, I've got close friends, but in terms of extracurriculars, I didn't do much," he says. Starr says he had time on his hands, and felt that corresponding with corporations was a way to become involved in issues important to him.

When Starr arrived at Harvard, he was full of idealistic dreams of improving the world, he says. "I wanted to major in political science so that I could fix all the problems of the world," he says. But he found government courses difficult and uninteresting.

Starr discovered that he prefered more quantitative subjects--and could still attack unfairness, like copyright violations, outside the classroom.

He began his campaign for justice soon after arriving at Harvard. During his first-year, he lived in Wigglesworth E. It was a cosy community of 12 friendly but overheated people, living above the dormitory's notoriously overactive boiler.

As his dormmates wandered around in tank tops, sharing Chinese fans, Starr wrote to the administration and got the heat adjusted. He earned widespread gratitude for his efforts, says Jennifer N. Geary '91, who lived in the same entryway.

But when Starr turned his attention to the neighboring entry in Wigglesworth, he met with a cooler reception.

Wigglesworth D was larger, more boisterous and "tended to sponsor the hump-night parties," he recalls.

"I tried a couple of times to report underage drinking [there], unsuccessfully," he says. "Harvard didn't choose to take action."

Starr complained to the Harvard police, Dean of Freshmen Henry C. Moses and Dean of the College L. Fred Jewett '57. But those were the days before the new alcohol policy, and his requests went unheeded.

"John Marquand, [Starr's advisor], told me I should go over to Dean Moses' house, even though he was having a tea, and tell him that I was going to call the police," says Starr.

"Dean Moses wasn't happy that I interrupted him at tea," Starr continues," and his argument, I think, was of college as a learning experience, and students should learn these things, and blah blah blah."

Jewett proved no more receptive, Starr says. "I wrote to him saying 'I won't tolerate underage drinking.' He wrote back saying he doesn't think it's appropriate for Harvard to police people and go around looking in their rooms."

Starr says that he reported underage drinking partly because he disapproves of alcohol ("people shouldn't have to assemble around a liquid," he says), but primarily because it is against the law.

And respect for the law, says Starr, is the basic principle of civilized life.   (C)  (C)  (C)

In a black leather briefcase, Starr carries a manila file folder of neatly xeroxed Crimson articles about his copyright reports at Harvard, Time and News-week pieces about other copyright infringements and a copy of his motivational mantra: a letter written by Alexei Cowett '89, which ran in the May, 1984, Deerfield Gazette.

The letter says, in part, "It is my conviction that one person can make a difference and that the obligation resides in every student to either report a major... violation or to attempt to prevent the violation from taking place."

Starr believes that all laws, no matter how minor, should be enforced, he says. "I'm not a neoconservative jerk," he adds, conceding that some laws may be unjust.

But it's a matter of magnitude, he says. "There have been certain cases in history where people have found it necessary to break certain laws for certain reasons--for example, Rosa Parks--and I just don't think Bart Simpson t-shirts or driving 65 miles an hour--unless there's a real emergency--is in the same category of importance."

Starr says he considers copyright infringement to be plagiarism. And so reporting the apparent Dunster and Dining Services violations seemed like the obvious thing to do.

"To him, it wasn't a big deal at the time," says Olkin. "If something in his view wasn't following the natural order of things, it was his job to straighten it out. It was just the way he acted. Everyone stands up for what he thinks is right."

Ultimately, Starr says, he intended his actions as a form of public service, however minor. He concedes readily that copyright infringement is not the dominant issue of the day. "I do have a sense of reality, here," he says.

But Starr says he was never able to get involved in the issues that he considers to be more pressing. "I just don't feel that I can make much of a difference at this time on the more important issues of drugs and crime," he says. "I felt I could have an effect in the issue of civil law."

The flip-side of Starr's advocacy of companies' rights under copyright laws is his campaign against false advertising and for consumer rights.

Mark E. Glickman, a teaching fellow in statistics who taught Starr in a number of courses, says that when M&M Mars reintroduced red M&M's, which had been previously linked to cancer, Starr was concerned.

"When M&M's finally decided that they were going to make red M&Ms, he sent a letter in to them saying 'the dye used in making red M&M's is harmful, you should reconsider,'" Glickman recalls. M&M Mars sent back a polite letter thanking Starr for his comments--and a coupon for a package of the new M&M's, complete with the red ones.

Olkin recalls another occassion, when Starr targeted Baskin Robbins, which had a stated policy of unlimited free samples.

"Andrew was in there trying to get his free samples, and they restricted him to two or three--he got irritated, and he wrote a letter to Baskin-Robbins complaining that he wasn't treated properly," says Olkin. The company sent back a certificate for a free cone.   (C)  (C)  (C)

Although Starr has scored some successes in the consumer realm, he continued to have difficulties in the academic and social ones.

He had a niche in the Statistics Department, says his academic adviser, Assistant Professor of Statistics Hal Stern, but still "wasn't certain that he belonged."

Next term, Starr may transfer to the University of Utah, where he can take a variable course load, he says. "It's nice and quiet out there, peaceful.

Stern thinks that Starr's reports of copyright infringements may relate to "his internal struggle to figure out what was going on."

And Starr says that he hopes to reorient himself to academics--but to leave some room for dabbling.

"When I go back to school, I'm going to try just to be involved in my studies," Starr says, "but if I see something and I have time, I probably will follow it up."