SOME OBJECTIONS

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

I have read with interest the review of the book, "Seven Amazing Days," and the article you published about me, while I was away, in your Registration Issue of February 2.

Probably you were actuated by good intentions, but the expression "tribe," like "native," is objectionable to us Africans and especially to Nigerians from densely-populated and well-established societies. What you describe as "tribal" robe is more correctly one kind of national robe or dress, and although I happen to be an Owerri Ibo, and a hereditary leader or chieftain from Obibi-Ezena, a territory in Owerri Division, my hopes for the future are for one Nigerian nation.

The M.A. degree which I earned here and the Ph.D. degree of which I am a candidate are both in Political Science, not Government--just a technical difference--and the proper designation of the degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, which work I have now completed, is M.A.L.D.

Last I forget, and in order that the people of my homeland do not get the impression that Harvard has changed my social habit of complete abstention (re the "Peggy" Affair) I still neither drink nor smoke and in fact find coffee too strong a beverage.

Yes, the staff of the Adelphi College Guidon, like other undergraduate newspaper idealists, thought that a little article on the President's wife on April Fools' edition might improve public relations on the campus. (The staff of the Oracle, the college year book, of which I was also a member had forecast whisperingly, but quite correctly, that the Guidon was headed for the biggest "news" of the year). The edition was really hot. The college authorities begged the post office not to accept or deliver that edition. One of the girls, a senior who was alleged to have given a finishing touch to the story nearly missed her diploma and with it her graduation day marriage to a wealthy Long Island man. The Long Island press certainly did not help student-faculty relations when they published such banner headlines as: "ADELPHI LAMPOON TOO HOT FOR PREXY." The name of the paper was promptly changed to the Adelphian. The editorial staff struck. The editors defended the "freedom of the press," that is, as they say in Nigeria, freedom to do the devil's work. The theory behind the change of name was that a good Adelphian would not trifle with the delicate dignity of the president's "consort." The President restored normality when he declared that the whole affair was a little tempest within the college family. Exe Anyanwu Oguerl, II.