Do Not Punish Protester

To the editors:

Although the immense security efforts surrounding Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s visit to campus on Dec. 10 (News, “China’s Wen Talks Trade, Reforms,” Dec. 11)

may have seemed to turn Harvard into a police state for a day, Wen had to face the fact that he wasn’t in China anymore.

Let me tell you about Meghan C. Howard ’04, the student who was recently threatened with administrative action by the University for unfurling a Tibetan flag and telling Wen that Tibet belongs to the Tibetans. My blonde-haired roommate from upstate New York has been a devout Tibetan Buddhist since childhood. One night at the dinner table sophomore year, she noticed some peculiar deposits on the mixed greens in her salad, which she recognized as caterpillar eggs. Instead of throwing them away as you or I would have done, she cared for them until they hatched into little green caterpillars, then morphed into fuzzy white-and-black moths who proceeded to make more caterpillar eggs. Eventually there were hundreds of caterpillars in our little room, too many to stay. Knowing they had little chance for survival in the Quincy courtyard, my roommate released them in the wilderness near Concord, Mass.

I can think of few people as gentle, level-headed and sincerely concerned about respecting life as Meghan Howard. She is no fire-breathing activist who enjoys rebelling against order and embarrassing the University. She was practically hyperventilating with nervousness the night before, but she loves the Tibetan people enough to step out of her comfort zone to demand respect for their human rights. Ad Board or no Ad Board, thank goodness that at least one country on earth respects her right to do so, since people in China cannot speak for themselves.

Ashley E. Isaacson ’04

Dec. 11, 2003