It Matters Who Pays the Bills

IN 1990, Harvard took a principled stand on ending systematic discrimination in the U.S. military against lesbians, bisexuals and gays. Last week, it waffled.

On Wednesday, the Faculty Council voted to dump its ultimatum to the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) in favor an ageold stall tactic: they want to study the problem further. Specifically, the council gave its committee on ROTC an extension in preparing its report until next fall.

"There are lots of people who have views on the subject," said Pforzheimer University Professor Sidney Verba '53, chair of the ROTC committee. "We wanted to make sure that we have heard from everyone."

But Verba's invocation of open discussion is a distraction. The only issue is whether the University will tolerate discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

The council should immediately reverse its decision, and it should include other discriminatory scholarships as well. In fact, it's time that the University revamp the way it thinks about how students pay Harvard's bills.

OFFICIALLY, Harvard says it will not recognize organizations that engage in such discrimination. But by continuing to accept ROTC scholarship money, the University ignores this policy.

Verba and the council never would have succeeded with the delay had the discrimination involved other minority groups. No study would be called for if ROTC denied its funds to, say, Blacks.

By backing down from its ultimatum, the University offers a poor precedent for other schools and an empty threat to the Pentagon. MIT and the University of Wisconsin, among other colleges, have considered cutting ties to ROTC.

But public schools such as Wisconsin often face state laws which require them to provide military education. It's up to private universities--especially those with Harvard's prestige--to take a stand.

Since the debate reopened last fall, some have argued that Harvard should wait on American politicians to change the military's policy and that Harvard's action would be a meaningless waste of energy that would hurt poor and middle class students who rely on ROTC funds.

They point to recent meetings by the Bush administration with a gay and lesbian group and Democratic presidential contender Bill Clinton's promising statement that he would end the ban on gays in the armed forces. The proper arena for the debate is the political one, they say.

But this attitude ignores Harvard's influence over other schools and the fact that if no schools accepted the discriminatory scholarships, ROTC would be forced to change. Besides, the real issue is that Harvard has the right--and the responsibility--to make ethical decisions about the sources of its funds.

As Harvard backpeddles, the military can both continue its policy (until at least 1997 at the College) and use rationales provided by the University to postpone change.

What about those students who could not afford to attend Harvard without ROTC funds?

The answer to the high costs of college education is not to accept money from discriminatory organizations.

In fact, to be consistent, Harvard should refuse to accept money from all organizations that discriminate on the basis of sex, religion, race or sexual orientation. That means nixing those "prizes" for descendants of white students from old New England families and any church-based scholarships.

Now the University incorporates such scholarships into financial aid packages, often providing grants and low-interest loans as part of such packages. In theory, admissions are "need-blind" since Harvard helps students pay what they cannot afford.

Refusing to accept discriminatory scholarships would increase Harvard's financial burden to provide need-blind admissions. But the ideal is worth the cost. The University should make it clear to all prospective students that Harvard will cover costs that discriminatory funding might otherwise pay.

In other words, no students--not even the poorest--should be able to say that because Harvard opposes bias against homosexuals (or anyone else) by ending discriminatory scholarships, the University effectively prevents them from attending.

And the need-blind admissions funds should be generous enough to live up to their name. Some students complain that Harvard offers their parents impossible choices. Sure, those students say, they could accept the financial aid packages offered them--but only if their parents remortgaged their homes.

WHAT ABOUT race-based scholarships for minorities? And how about class-based monies for poor students? Recently, the Bush administration said that minority funding is illegal because it discriminates on the basis of race.

In a narrow sense, they are correct. Indeed, this conclusion would flow from my general standard of nondiscrimination as described above. But draconian meritocratic standards do not account for past and present bias. Minorities who face the psychological, economic and social barriers of societal bias cannot be held to the Bushies' level-playing-field argument. Thus minority scholarships should be allowed.

Still, giving a scholarship to a Black son of a Harvard grad from Andover and not to a poor white from a rural working class family (Who faces similar psychological, economic and social barriers) seems skewed.

So if Harvard is truly to increase fairness, it should in addition to allowing minority funds accept such class-based scholarships as those given by unions or corporations for children of workers.

AND ALL THIS should be done soon. The Faculty Council voted nearly two years ago to levy the ultimatum against the Department of Defense. That should have been plenty of time to come up with a funding plan to allow needy ROTC students to attend the school (i.e., deepening the need-blind admissions coffers).

The other major issue--what to do about the loss of ideological diversity accrued when some students choose ROTC over Harvard--seems like a specious one.

First of all, as an Undergraduate Council study found last fall, only a few ROTC students would have chosen not to attend Harvard solely because it had banned ROTC completely. In other words, given University funding to make up for what would be unacceptable ROTC money, most would have come to Harvard.

Of those who would not, their loss is a price I'm willing to pay to oppose the military's biased policy. It's not these particular ROTC students' ideology I oppose--but if they positively cannot attend Harvard just because they won't be able to play soldier here, I can stand to lose them. Opposing vicious state-imposed discrimination is more important.

Harvard has dragged its feet long enough on the ROTC issue. And now is the time to reject other discriminatory scholarships as well. Otherwise, Harvard's commitment to fairness will be little more than window dressing.