College's Cold Shoulder Welcomes Sargent Blasts

Porter Sargent '96's latest blasts at the University have met with stony silence from the Square and praise from the press.

Sargent, who makes sniping at his alma mater an annual feature of his widely distributed prop-school guide, has been unable to provoke University officials, but his complaints have been splashed all over the Boston press and "Time."

In the long foreword to his handbook, which he publishes himself because "nobody else will print it," Sargent calls. Professor of Anthropology Clyde K. M. Kluckhonn a "trigger man to Provost Buck."

Sargent bases his charges, which have included swipes at R. Keith Kane '22, Special Advisor to the President, and President Conant himself, on a stack of bulky file folders which he has accumulated concerning the various officials and departments of the University.

Reliable 'Informants'

"I know more about the College and its workings than some of the professors themselves," he claims. Sargent says he has a group of "informants" who food him his information.

Among the "condemned" officials who have ignored the charges based on these dossiers is Provost Buck, whom Sargent has criticized for allegedly using "financial manipulation" to control academic policy.

Sargent's central intelligence bureau for his campaign against Harvard is a three story Colonial Brookline house which he calls the "factory." Here Sargent compiles, writes, and edits his own material, surrounded by a near-impenetrable disarray of books, papers, old manuscripts, and two harrassed secretaries.

Former Biologist

To secure wider distribution, he binds parts of his publications as separate volumes and sells them individually, relying on direct-mail advertising and an erratic flow of mimeographed news-letters to push his sales.

Sargent, who as a biologist spent considerable time working with monkeys, claims his chief aim is returning the University to the "healthy simian curiosity" which he claims was prevelant during his own College days. He feels the only path open to Harvard is to throw out the officials who have been "prostituted by outside pressures," and to ensure the undergraduate a "true view of the future."