A Word About the Class Marshal Election

Now that the shouting, the dirty posters, the exhalations of scandal and, yes, the glory of the Class Marshal election have faded away, I feel it is time to make a statement. So many people have asked whether my campaign was a joke or serious that it is my dcty in this terribly verbal community to attempt an answer.

Certainly it was conceived in a spirit of playfulness, by boys, who wished to liven up a slushy reading period and a pompous election. They planned it to be a circus from the start, and hence the silly picture in the Crimson, the "Hi" instead of serious qualifications, the nota bene, fans, tongue in check editorial, written by one of my heartiest supporters. And this group of people never intended me to "win" in any effective sense, some because they weren't interested in a political fight, others because they felt that radcliffe's independent status, independent Class Marshals, and separate commencement would have to be corrected first.

But the reason the joke caught on so well, I think, was that it contained a fatal germ of truth. Supporters flocked to the cause with an intuitive enthusiasm--but they were flocking to several different causes.

Some were protesting the anachronistic rule of aristocrats: clubbies and jocks. Surely at Harvard these groups are not very powerful, less powerful probably than at any other school in the country. But still, their most entrenched stronghold, the Class Marshalships, offered itself up as a target for even vaguely resentful intellectuais, bohemians, radicals, proletarians.

Others were protesting the pomposity of campus politicians, notably the HCUA, and those ambitious young democrats and rebublicans who see any student elections as a stepping stone to a career. This group, too, is held in unusually low esteem at Harvard, but this did not prevent them from irking those other ambitious campus politicians who are more subtle about their methods of advancement; for example, CRIMSON editors.

Others were protesting the administration, and with it, the sanctity of tradition, the bigness of the system, the anonymity of authority. My campaign represented for them, my original and wittiest supporters especially, exactly that light-hearted challenge which is best suited to the undermining of traditional authority.

And others, particularly girls and the outside world, saw my campaign as a valid statement about women's rights. To be sure, the existence of Radcliffe class marshals and separate commencements obscures the issue, but it does not refute it. It is a fact at Harvard that women are allowed equal opportunities to the fendamentals of an education: they have the same classes, same teachers, same exams, etc. This equality is recent, one should remember. And it is still not practised in many places. Even the Harvard Medical School, for example, requires women applicants, but not men, to take a psychological test. Rumblings are now being heard from Yale and Princeton, where the lack of this basic equality is seen as a detriment not only to potential woman students, but to the actual men students.

However Harvard, as I say, does have a meat and potatoes equality. But when it comes to dessert--ah, that is another matter. Girls are allowed to be equal; they are not allowed to excel. Girls are not eligible for membership in Harvard's only literary honor society, the Signet. Until recently, there was no literary magazine for them to write on. Girls shy away from holding top offices in clubs or publications, from directing plays. And most important, for it reveals the deeply traditional roots of the practise, there are no travelling fellowships--certainly the most coveted senior prize--for which girls may compete. It is as if these honors are on a higher plateau than mere academic necessities, on a plateau to which women's equality has not yet reached.

And for some people the Class Marshalship represented a similary honorific achievement, for which they thought I had qualified on the basis of my activities at Harvard. I have not been a sloucher, appearing for the first time on the public scene to run for this unorthodox post: I have on the contrary become fairly well-known for my work on the Crimson. Had I been a boy with the same qualifications, the ordinariness of my case would be obvious, and I most certainly would have gone down in unpublished defeat as just another ambitious politico-journalist. And strangely enough, there were moments in the campaign (which would probably have disgusted some of my most enthusiastic supporters) when I forgot it had originated as a joke and desired election just as much as any other grubby politician.

Yet the added qualification of being a girl changed everything. As I have tried to describe, my sex attracted supporters like a flag of revolution, providing the spark which ignited whatever sort of revolution they were thinking about. My most vehemently revolutionary friends took the ultimate defeat the hardest--some even sent me anonymous accusations of betrayal when I refused to press on to the bitter end.

What they had forgotten, I think, was that the "foes" in the case, the HCUA and the administration, although patently pro-aristocracy, pro-politics, pro-tradition, pro-male, and pro-seriousness, were really not evil. what could they do against such a fast, curved pitch? Quite predictably they squelched the vote which would probably have put me into the top four, locking it up in their dignified closets. But resist though they might my actual physical election, they could not undo the damage that had been done. The seriousness of my cause, or causes, lived an imperishable life in the humor which surrounded it.

The joke succeeded, and so did the grains of truth, which have now been planted lovingly in Harvard's fertile soil. Certainly dining halls, commencement, class marshals, even travelling fellowships will be for both men and women in a few years, and the steps will be taken by the same men who squelched a premature vote this month. And for those who wished only to disturb routine, or tradition, or pomposity, success has been gratifyingly obvious.