Harvard's True Mettle

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

So the law-and-order issue has come to Harvard! Conservatives and liberals have gleefully joined forces to suppress conscientious radicals. For the first time we have successfully prevented the hateful propaganda of war supporters from receiving the kind of audience which they so desperately need in maintaining an aura of legitimacy around the war effort.

The Harvard Administration has retaliated by finally showing its true mettle in dealing with those students who are politically too far left for its own tactics. It certainly seems to have been preparing for such a showdown. Charles Whitlock, Assistant Dean of the College, had asked everyone of the Senior Tutors to attend the Teach-In once he became aware of how strong the radical opposition would be. Why else did he do so, if not in order to have on hand those who could identify the most students? Why were the "Students for a Just Peace" taking pictures, if not for the same purpose?

The charges leveled at the three students are trumped up, to say the least. When has lack of courtesy been a crime? Prosecuting students as criminal offenders for successful anti-war protest is a blow by the Administration against their own students, and the students may just strike back if the prosecutions are not halted.

When a nation is bent on the destruction of tens of thousands, the vocal protest of its citizens is, if anything, not enough protest. When will the Harvard Administration stop hiding behind the cover of "free speech" and take a moral stand? Or is that too much to ask of our self-satisfied bureaucrats?

If the Administration deserves our disdain the "Students for a Just Peace" deserve our utmost contempt. By betraying their fellow students through providing more identifications they have sought to win support for themselves. Acceptance of their evidence by the Administration shall be construed to be nothing less than the University's complicity with rightist organizations...