In Conclusion

Over the past year, the proprietors of this column have tried, among other things, to point up some of the weaknesses and problems of the University. The goals attempted have ranged in magnitude from stopping the buzzing of lights in Lamont Library to solving more weighty matters of Corporation finance. Although what was intended to be constructive criticism has at times been called destructive carping, we have accepted this as an avocational hazard.

The University has many faults. It has not been able to fit into its liberal arts structure such fringe items of education as basic language instruction and ROTC. The trend of its tuition policies is toward turning the student body into a mixture of the wealthy and the scholarship holder, with a disregard for the problems of those in between. Its parietal administrators still-seem to adhere to the ascetic standards of a prep school. Yet on matters like distribution and sale of football tickets, it tolerated abuses until unfavorable publicity became inevitable.

There are many sound ideas and policies at the University which are still struggling and need development. The compulsory tutorial system and basic General Education are two we have discussed. And encompassing most of these are the almost unsolvable dilemmas of increasing costs and decreasing sources of private income, which drain the efficacy from buildings and programs, and, even at the nation's wealthiest University, submerge plans for expansion in the problems of keeping up what now exists.

If this summary suggests a hostile attitude, this should be made clear: after a year of criticising the University, we are firmly convinced of its greatness. President Lowell once observed that Harvard might make more mistakes than other universities because it tries more of what is new, and in the process accomplishes more. If the University were perfect, it could not be the growing, wide-ranging, freedom-loving community of scholars and students that it is. And college editorializing would be a very dull avocation.

But while criticising constructively, we have noticed over the past year an increase in another kind of criticism of the University from other sources. Using the inevitable results of past freedom as an excuse for demands to limit the freedom of the present, these critics have ballooned the importance of the weak parts of the University in relation to the sound. In the past year, this attack has centered around the one-quarter of one per cent of the teaching staff involved in investigations. In general, the Corporation has handled the investigation problem well. It has recognized that the teachers implicated are neither dangerous spies nor maligned heroes, and remembered that certain of the University's principles cannot be lightly overthrown. Yet, it has left the door open for more severe action if ever circumstances warrant it.

By the temper of its decision, the Corporation seems to have recognized what others in the University have ignored: that some (not all) of the criticisms of Harvard on this issue come from well-intentioned people, and they cannot be discounted merely because they are not sophisticated or intellectual. For when an intellectual community gives up trying to understand and reason with people outside it, it has lost one of its raisons d'etre.

Criticism cannot be confused with disloyalty at a University any more than in a nation. True loyalty to Harvard can best be shown by trying to improve it from within, and by defending it from untrue criticism from without. If we have been able, through some editorials, to make a University official think twice on a policy, and through others, to give a few more people a better conception of Harvard as it is, we shall regard the year well-spent, and the goals attempted at least partially gained.