FDO's Anti-Grape Stance Wrong

Volume XIII, issue 12 of the Yard Bulletin featured an exhortation to students to vote against lifting the boycott on serving grapes in Harvard's dining halls. Since the Bulletin is published by the Freshman Dean's Office (FDO), this sort of comment seems inappropriate. If the FDO wishes to enter into dialogue with students about a political issue that concerns them, it should do so either by way of printing propaganda for both sides or printing well-informed commentary on the issue. Students have a right to make up their mind on their own, and the dean's office does not have a right to get involved in the affair by coming down on one side of the issue.

To say that the boycott is a serious human rights issue, as the Bulletin does, is to ignore a number of important factors. Not the least among these factors is the clearly negative effect the boycott must have on non-unionized workers.

Receiving less money for their grapes, the employers will either cut down on employment, leaving already destitute grape pickers unemployed, or will lower the quality of life for the grape pickers even more. The only party that stands to profit from the boycott is the United Farm workers Union, and the union benefits at the cost of all non-unionized workers. By claiming that supporting the boycott somehow upholds human rights, the dean's office makes the implicit statement that only unionized grape pickers have human rights, a statement that ought to be rejected by all thinking human beings. In not taking such factors into consideration in their exhortation, the FDO has acted in a morally reprehensible fashion. The Bulletin, a publication supposedly printed to provide important information to first-years, should not be a source of questionable political propaganda. I believe that the student body deserves an apology from the Freshman Dean's Office for its transgression. --Roman Altshuler '01