Splitting the Sexes Isn't the Solution

I'm sure that Brent McGuire's recent editorial ("Coeducational No More," Dec. 13, 1994) raised quite a few eyebrows and voices across the Harvard campus. It raised mine, too, and reminded me of why I never wanted to write for Peninsula. As a conservative myself, it raises my ire to see such views sprawled across the campus press. For many will walk away from such an article with the impression that this is the conservative view, when it is not.

McGuire notices the major gender problems inherent on campuses today, but his proposals for addressing them are counterproductive. We live in an academic society where gender has become one of the most problematic topics in any level of discussion. From not knowing whether to use the non-specific pronoun "he" in a paper to not knowing what innocuous sentence may stir indignation in the mind of a fellow "co-ed," gender questions have become a mystifying mine field for many male students.

Also, the academic world is afraid, as McGuire asserts, to notice that fundamental differences do exist between men and women. And with this fear comes a certain difficulty in forming answers which may seem intuitively obvious but which are also politically incorrect. But the answer to these problems is not increased separation, nor the continued use of stereotypes and fixed roles, but a greater degree of understanding and respect on all sides. To do away with coeducation would help nothing, for these issues are bound to come up again after our four years here are over.

In the final analysis, it is best to treat other human beings as individuals, not as specific and monolithic groups. This is the factor in human relationships which is so often lost in institutions such as Harvard, and which McGuire also fails to recognize. As a conservative, I recognize respect for the individual to be the cornerstone of any productive society. Classification and separation are carried out instead by social engineers, who have rarely, if ever, proven themselves worthy of imitation. William E. Pike '95