Harvard Student Refuses to Join Phi Beta Kappa

A Harvard student yesterday turned down membership in Phi Beta Kappa on the grounds that the organization had "too many of the features of fraternities."

In a letter to Gerald D. Folland, First Marshal of the undergraduate Phi Beta Kappa Society, Neal Koblitz '69 said that the organization promoted "an unjustified attitude of superiority and condescension toward those not in the group."

He added that if anyone at Harvard needed more recognition, it was "the militant political activists whose demonstrations and acts of protest are about the only safety valve to prevent our government from getting us into World War III or into a civil war between blacks and whites."

Folland's Reply

In response to Koblitz' charges, Folland said that Phi Beta Kappa realized there were other ways to distinguish oneself besides academics, "but Phi Beta Kappa does not exist to recognize political activities."

"The organization's purpose is to recognize those students who perhaps quietly go about attaining academic success," he said. "That is the reason we are presumably here for."

Koblitz also criticized Phi Beta Kappa's method of election, calling "grades a ludicrous criterion of intellectual worth."

Under Phi Beta Kappa's present election system, the society considers students with the top 16 grade point averages in both the junior and senior classes.