O My America

Harvard is a cold place, the foreign student is likely to find. Its undergraduates are not often cheerily gregarious, and they do not greet him with warm hearts and delighted cries at the airport where he disembarks after a long flight from Pnom Penh.

So he flees to the harbor that the University has thoughtfully provided for him, the International Students' Center on Garden Street. He may find here other foreign students, and form with them a sympathetic island of unfamiliarity with America and her ways. He will see precious few Americans at the Center, and if he is particularly unlucky may become almost totally isolated from the University community.

The Center's function as a meeting house is one of indisputable value. So it seems very puzzling that more U.S. students--who are evidently passionately interested in Peace Corps and international affairs--do not use it. One reason that has been suggested is that not enough people ever hear of the Center and that they would run like rabbits toward it if they had. Yet there is a more frequent complaint: the administration of the Center frowns on political discussion and absolutely prohibits political speeches. Those who advance this objection argue with some reason that they wish to do more with the company of foreigners than to radiate good will; they are concerned about the politics of other countries and want a chance to talk about them with the people closest to them.

The Center's directors can back up their policy of restraint with a disturbing history of fights, riots and walkouts. Still it is a lame excuse; the Center does a greater disservice to its members by refusing to risk a few quarrels than it would by risking them and encouraging the interest of Americans. And, after all, the students meeting on Garden Street are to be the peacemakers of this world, and they ought to be quite capable of setting political disputes without recourse to rage or violence.