Gags

The last person we expected to find among the dissentious Young Democrats was the Associate Dean of Harvard College. Yet, barely twenty-four hours after the HYDC split in two, Dean Watson stepped in and, reminiscent of a Wild West story, announced that the College was not big enough for both of them. Apparently the Currey faction has no right to official status if it parallels its parent group on policy or candidates.

There is little point in assuming that the Currey faction wants official status now that the Lampoon has taken charge. If there were, Dean Watson's observation, that "there wouldn't be any point in parallel organizations," and the Currey faction's somewhat dishonest machinations would at first seem logical arguments for denying the Southerners recognition.

But despite the gag overtones, the pointlessness of parallelism, and the dubious ethics involved in pillaging the HYDC's treasury, Watson's threat is unsettling. If fulfilled, it would set a precedent incompatible with the Harvard theory of education, a theory which includes as one of its essential features the freedom of students to form unencumbered their own organizations. No matter how illogical the situation, or how tongue-in-cheek its perpetrators, the Dean's Office has no business concerning itself with anything more than enforcing the rules.

Official power to pick and choose among groups which apply for use of the Good Name, regardless of their compliance with the rules, means a return to the bad old days of arbitrary meddling that existed before students and officialdom decided on the present regulations. Regardless of this revisitation's innocence, Dean Watson's announcement smacks of a paternalism we would rather forget.