???hot

?? Frank the Press? ?? CL, Number 1 ?? into frozen ?? ?mpton Street, ?? ?orgia town. As ?? over the tundra? ?? stood by a beach, un? ??teful to have escaped the six-degree ?? ?sed to ice my teeth. While I walked ?? ?hing long-haired girl, someone who ?? all like me shuffled through Memorial ?? ?abbed the registration envelope bearing ?? Because the registrars eyes are no sharper ?? have been for the last two years, the ruse ?? again.

?? may be a lesson in all this-and not simply ?? ?tain young journalists have discovered the ?? ?son style. It is sad that Mother Harvard has ?? ?pletely reduced her children to numbers on ?? ?tion tapes that she cannot tell one from ??

?? a little effort, we could probably extract ?? ?theme. While the loss of student identity ?? ?creaming through on mass-processing days ?? yesterday, the kids aren't the only ones who ?? have suffered. The extent to which everyone at ?? Harvard-the once-respected Faculty as well as the ?? ?ansient students-is having his humanity squeezed ?? ?ay is one of the truly depressing phenomena of ?? last few years.

?? ?Men are not just teachers any more. Now they ?? ?potential votes, which can be mustered behind ?? Enlightened or the Neanderthals at one of the ?? ways-urgent Faculty meetings. Even that kind of ?? ?wn-making is only a laughable slight when com?? ?red to what grotesque dehumanization happens ?? where. Ernest May is a good if pathetic example. ?? ?ing from the relative security of the Faculty ?? come Dean, May is now the closest thing ?? to an Instant Pig for any and all ??

?? ?nths of enduring personal har? ?? with no real connection to his ?? me thinking that he is provi? ?? be punished. It is hardly sur? ?? the Pig begins to think in animal? ?? himself. The students who chant ?? longer people but "barking dogs." ?? by using the same canine imagery ?? Report, suggests that the rhetorical ?? University may at last have found ?? wepon. It is a discovery that no one ?? ?appabout; the University should not ??

?? THOSE ?? the issues lurking in yesterday's ?? ?gistration ?? it is probably best to let them ?? undistu Anyone who hasn't already felt ?? ?ueezed wi? ?? be convinced by reading about ?? Those wh? ?? for themselves don't need to be ??

?? ther? ?? subjects which seem-to me-?? other of dragging out into print ?? a topic which I know something ?? people may not; the other is a ?? which is about to enter the public ??

?? CRIMSON. I have tried hard and ?? fully to avoid a CRIMSON-centered ??d; I realize that not everyone is ?? minutiae of the paper's opera? ?? am. That is why I do not plan to repeat ?? of deta led analysis of the CRIMSON's suc? ?? and failures that I did in a piece last Fall. But the last year, which was as remarkable in the CRIMSON's history as it was for the rest of the College, taught us on the paper a few things which may be of general interest.

I have always been amused to overhear conversations about "the way the CRIMSON has changed." In the standard decline-of-CRIMSON theories, the students who ran the paper four or five years ago were dedicated but cheery young men, who always ?? standards of good taste and objective jour? ?? passing whims or pressures. But as ?? moved on it was replaced by a new kind ?? journalist. The distinguishing marks ?? ?comers were their fascination with radi? ??d their inability to keep any of it out ?? stories and editorials.

?? current CRIMSON events, the theory ?? dismal note. Many people seem to ?? whatever sanity exists on the newspaper ?? only because of a few residual oldtimers, who have fought hard to beat down the radical threat. On more than one embarrassing occasion I have had Faculty members tell me how glad they were that I and some of my friends were holding down the Young Turks. But what, they ask, will happen next year?

Any scheme that tries to divide members of the paper into revolutionary and administration-toadie camps is bound to be wrong far more often than it is right. Aside from one or two permanent polar opposites, most of the political alignments on the paper shift constantly-and leave no real trace for the reading public to follow. As far as I can tell, the people now running the paper are as politically diverse as most classes have been for the last few years.

The problem with entirely junking that what-happens-next-year question is that, in its blundering way, it hits an important point. There may not be any impressive Passing of Mastodons this year at the CRIMSON, but there is a distinct difference between students leaving the paper and those now taking it over. The difference is not so much in politics or style as in the things we've learned to expect from Harvard and from the CRIMSON.

There is a group of people on the CRIMSONnearly all of us now seniors-who came to a university and a newspaper which were unrecognizably different from those we sec today. The people who wrote editorials when we were freshmen proclaimed themselves-with no trace of embarrassment-to be the "New Middle." There was much easy talk then of the CRIMSON's role as "the University daily" which would "serve the University community."

It is hard to listen to any of those phrases nowespecially "the University community" -without wearing a sour smirk. The changes that have come to the mythical University community since. 1966 are obvious; what may be less immediately apparent is the way those changes affect a newspaper.

IMAGINE for a moment a newspaper whose circulation is limited to members of Nixon's Cabinet plus the Weathermen, or to a random sampling of soldiers on either side of the DMZ. The you will have some idea of what it is like to put out a newspaper in a university at war. Anyone who has ever written a news story knows that the subjects of the story almost always complain about the results. That is usually a good sign, since the reporter tries to get a more detached view than any of the participants. And most newspapers are usually able to endure the gripes because they have a healthy buffer zone: since only one or two per cent of their readers are ever involved in the stories, papers like the Times or the Globe have more room for both interpretation and error.

Things are different when everyone is involved. In situations-like Harvard's last Spring-when every portion of the reading audience has some vital stake in the way news is reported, no one is likely to be happy with the communications media. It is simply impossible for a newspaper to operate in that kind of fishbowl, since nothing but the most simplistic version of the facts will escape charges of biased coverage. The instant a reporter tries to put the facts in perspective, the waves of public indignation will roll down to crush him.

That, I think, is the reason WHRB escaped the torrent of abuse that hit the CRIMSON and the professional newspapers last spring. Radio, by its nature, is perfectly adapted to presenting large amounts of undigested fact to the audience; a newspaper, just as naturally, has to condense and exercise some judgment. It's hard to fault a live broadcast of a Faculty meeting, but a news writer will have to choose one event as the most important-and instantly antagonize half his readers.

The moral of this may be that when there is no middle ground in the University there is no place for a newspaper that tries to be objective. All college newspapers may someday move into overtly partisan journalism, abandoning even the pretense of balanced coverage. We're not ready for that yet at the CRIMSON. We still act as if we think we should "serve the University community." But while trying hard to keep up that front, we can't help but remember what we've learned.

Those of us who came here when "objective journalism" was a more plausible fiction have merely had our assumptions crushed in the last two or three years. Those who have come since then have seen only the circumstances that destroyed our original beliefs. I'm not trying to sound patronizing here, or to strike a grandfatherly pose at age 20. The point is simply that the students now running the CRIMSON have not had to rid themselves of the same set of anachronistic assumptions that burdened us.

The upshot of this will, I think, be healthy for the CRIMSON's news coverage. The paper will still, of course, try its best to present an objective version of the news. But reporters who know that objectivity is basically a sham may spend more time looking for more perceptive ways to report. A writer who has been burned time and again for his "balanced" stories will have fewer inhibitions about presenting very openly his own interpretation. As long as there is still room on the page for a bare factual account, I think the more interpretive coverage will go farther toward satisfy ?? ?ntellectual demands of the readers.

There may b?? ?? ?lopment, which is already ?? ?ciful old days of u?? ?? ?mmunities, the CRIMSON's editoria? ?? crammed, nearly every day with corporate? ?cements on a vast range of topics. Even ca??lers of our current editorial pages have notice larger and larger chunks of them have gon? ?tonal pieces-reviews and analyses-with a ?ding drop in the number of formal editorials.

That may also be an inevitable bluct of the university gone berserk. In theory, are three ways an editorial can exert some??le over its readers: on obscure or confused ?? can dig up new facts to educate and person issues that are already well-known, it ca??t a particularly elegant argument to win??ers; and when struggles get to the point of up firepower on each side, the paper can its collective weight to one of the teams.

Without any detailed analysis, it's to see that every recent trend at Harvard ?ndercut the bargaining points. There are not topics any more where the CRIMSON can ?? to unearth surprising facts. Everyone is ?? expert now, on a steadily widening circle of ?nd our editorial role has unfortunately become one of reaction than of muckraking. At the same, as the number of pressure groups here mushroomed, the pressure exerted by one of ?otorials has shrunk almost to the disappearing. And as the University becomes more and mo?? great closed mind (e.g., Nathan Pusey last sp? "Can anyone believe these demands are ?n seriously?"; an OBU spokesman after Clif? Alexander was named the University's ??ator: "Pusey appointed him-what more do have to say."), even well-argued stands seem inngly futile.

There will still be editorials, just as there still be "objective" news. But now we will rea? their limitations as we write them.

I SAID BEFORE that the cult of personal ?cks is one of the most loathsome of current Car? ?ge developments. I stress that again as I tack ??al polemic onto this piece, because I'm trying ?w that there is something other than person ?le behind the next 15 inches of type. A corany man's resignation naturally smacks of ??d slinging and symbolic assassination; that is j?? problem with the issue. It has been left ?? to fester in the realm of personal slander, an?? needs to be considered on other grounds.

In the first few minutes after 5 a. m. last Ap??, one of the chants that rose from dumbstruck ?tators around University Hall was "Pusey Mus? Pusey Must Go!" The chant died gradually? curiously did not reappear.

In the weeks that followed, Pusey escaped ?? of the personal-castigation that fell on other ?ulty members and administrators. Franklin ?? was held responsible for the infamous "R?? Letter"; Henry Rosovsky became a scapegoa? the Afro-American Studies Program. But th? it all, Pusey never became the Grayson Kir? S. I. Hayakawa of Cambridge. It's hard to ?? exactly why Pusey did not become more of a tar? Perhaps the radical students were too sophistica? to waste their attack on one man; perhaps th? knew Pusey would leave anyway in two or three years.

With passions somewhat cooled from last Spring it is possible to look at the question in a different light. Completely apart from issues of calling in the police or eulogizing the departed ROTC, it may well be that Harvard's health depends on the quick departure of Nathan Pusey.

The problem is not the much-celebrated "symbolic isolation" of Pusey from the students at Harvard. The isolation is, of course, real; students know that Pusey will not invite them over for dinner, or seek them out for chats in the Yard. But students also realize that the frostiness is merely a sufface matter; befriending the undergraduates is not really the President's job here. And I doubt that anyone at Harvard would feel satisfied to see some glad-handing smoothie come rolling in to take straight-talking Pusey's place. Now, at least, we are always sure that Pusey says exactly what he means.

The problem is also not one of political differences-although those differences certainly exist. There is an illustrative story here which I have heard from so many different sources that I assume it comes somewhere near the truth:

Pusey apparently tells his friends that there have been three major failures in his years at Harvard. The first was the Faculty's decision to let the 1967 Dow protesters off with minor punishment. The second was the Faculty's emergency vote last April to give students a greater role in the Afro-American Studies Department. And the last is the continued existence of Jack Stauder-the Instructor who was arrested in University Hall-within Harvard's confines.

OBVIOUSLY, most students and many Faculty members would draw up a different list of calamities, probably including Pusey's use of police at University Hall. But it is also obvious from any exposure to the diversity of Harvard opinion that quite a few people would agree with Pusey. Even if they did not, the president of a university should not be forced to conform to prevailing thought as a condition for further employment.

The problem is a more basic structural one. If

the surface upset of the last year is going to have any curative effect here, there will have to be some changes in the way Harvard's power blocs are arranged. That at least is the premise of the groups which have been working on "governance" and "restructure" since last Spring.

As the most powerful single officer of the University, the president will undoubtedly be affected by the changes. Pusey realizes that; he probably even thinks that the re-examination and re-arrangement are healthy.

The difficulty arises because of a gap in timing. By all accounts, Pusey-while never a personally vain man-is very concerned about protecting the dignity of the Presidency. He will not agree to sweeping changes in the waning years of his term-not because he wants to hoard power for himself, but because he wants to be sure that the next President does not land in a game where the rules have just been rigged against him. Before there is "restructure," the man who will have to lead the restructured university will have to be available for consultation.

That is a laudable stand. But in practical application, it puts the University in a dilemma. Either Pusey leaves before his allotted time is up, or else Harvard endures the next two or three years without the changes it thinks it should make. Surely Pusey realizes the danger of such protracted inflexibility.

Fortunately, there is a happy opportunity ahead. Pusey has fulfilled his responsibility to Harvard's long-term health by pumping three new and competent members into the Corporation in the last two years. With that task out of the way, he can now think of his own departure. A singularly graceful retirement might begin with his announcement sometime soon that he is ready to leave as soon as the Corporation can find a successor.

On those terms, Pusey might still serve until retirement age. He may, for all I know, already have told the Corporation that those are his plans. If he has, he should tell the rest of the University quickly. The difference between the private agreement and the public announcement is only stylistic, but it is huge. It is the difference between a grudging Lyndon Johnson hanging on in the face of dissent and a gracefully aging president serving his last days. Those political comparisons may not appeal to Pusey the classical scholar, but perhaps the love-which many of us share-for his University will.