NO ENTRANCE

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

I am one of the disgruntled seniors not admitted to Social Sciences 139, Erikson's course on the Human Life Cycle. This has provoked me, usually not an outspoken student, to complaint. It is all right to limit a course by class or prerequisites, as long as all qualified people who want to take it are admitted. But it is a huge absurdity that a university of the size and affluence of Harvard must limit a course like Soc Sci 139 because of lack of staff, room, and money. Students can be rejected only arbitrarily, and the injustice of this is not merely institutional, but personal and individual as well.

A course in the human life cycle is not found anywhere else in the world, certainly not given by a man as charming and human as Erik Erikson. Some of us have waited three years to be able to take the course, and we missed. Coming here to learn something about ourselves and the world around us, and wanting to luxuriate in a course that has some relevance to us as college students and intelligent human beings, are we to be faced with the impregnable doors of 2 Divinity Ave.? We are left like Tantalus panting after grapes we cannot have, and for no real reason.

Mr. Erikson has apologized for the impossibility of the situation; he would gladly lecture to the whole university if it would listen. He even had the room changed to accommodate 70 more people, but still some were left out.

If the university is going to offer courses like Soc Sci 139, and I hope it does, it should provide every student who can and wants to take the course with an opportunity to do so. Every year this and other courses have caused problems, and they won't get better. I am sorry to think that this university is not flexible enough to satisfy students who take its aspirations to "liberal arts" seriously. Jennifer Flinton '67