THE NATION-WIDE EFFORT

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

It is as appropriate that Harvard students should be in the vanguard of the nation-wide effort to clarify the issue of college youth's right in a premarital sexual life as it is that they should be in the forefront of the struggle for civil rights and peace. Moreover, they should be receiving help and support from the college administration and faculty around such issues as, e.g., distinguishing between compulsive, anxiety-ridden sexually and healthy erotic love; facing and alleviating the internal as well as external in the way of a responsible expression of tender and sensual impulses; learning to follow one's true feelings at a given stage of development rather than anxiously submitting to the opinions of others, be these views for or against premarital sex. Instead, students too often meet with such sweeping statements from their elders as, "Yorulcation in ... against the law ... Harvard has to uphold the law" (Dr. Cobb), or the grouping by implication of premarital sexuality with plagi, lying, and (Dean Munro). Such dogmatic support of the sexual status que gives many youths the feeling that some of their deepest nings are profoundly misunderstood and condemned. Unless the legitimacy of the best elements in their sexual aspirations is frankly acknowledged and respected by the administration and faculty, students may well come to feel that no meaningful and growth furthering dialogue can occur between the generations on this vital issue. Myron W. Sharaf '49, Ph. D. '60