The New Art

Again, outside Harvard Hall, we have been treated to the lurid spectacle of self-styled, shabbily-dressed ruffians desecrating our wooden fences with paint and so-called slogans. The bursar's cards of many of these students were confiscated yesterday, as they were in the past few weeks. The University should take immediate action against the offending individuals. Expulsion, perhaps, would teach them a good lesson about the value of private property in a society such as ours.

The walls were once an austere brown, blending in well with the historic surroundings of the Harvard Yard. Now, they look more like the paintings of the so-called radical artist Jackson Pollock or the musings of some bathroom graffiti writer (see Time, Jan. 21).

The ruffians, many of them members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the self-styled New Left organization, had best look to their own principles. They are acting in a highly hypocritical manner, certainly antithetical to the principles of democracy. Who is to decide the opinions to be expressed on the walls of Harvard University? These students take away the rights of others when they express their own opinions in paint. Someone yesterday wrote, "Happy Thanksgiving" on the wall. What if someone held the opposite point of view? How could he properly express himself?

We feel the answer must come from the democratic process. A committee of students, faculty, administration, construction firm executives, and representatives of the art world should decide these questions. The committee would be called SFART (Student-Faculty Art). Its student-members would be elected by students in each House and its faculty members, of course, would be appointed by Dean Ford, (in keeping with traditions that transcend normal democracy.). Such a committee could handle these problems as they arise. In the meantime, on second thought, a stern warning from the Dean of Students will be enough to stay the malicious brushes of these long-haired youth.