The Mail PROVOKING A DISTURBANCE

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Last Friday (March 26) the Harvard-Radcliffe Students for a Just Peace held a counter-teach-in-a teach-in in response to various vehemently anti-war teach-ins which had been hold at this university this fall. The speakers who were scheduled to speak at this teach-in could not be heard over the disturbance caused by the unruly behavior of certain members of the audience. The fact that the scheduled persons were unable to speak is deplorable, and this is widely admitted.

I personally feel, and many students and faculty members share the opinion, that this teach-in was hold not only with the full knowledge that it would be disrupted, but also that the counter-teaching was hold to instigate a disruption. I feel that provoking a disturbance is as disgraceful as the disturbance itself, and therefore wrote the following letter to Lazlo Pasztor, a leader of the Harvard-Radcliffe Students for a Just Peace (the organization which sponsored the teach-in) and the Harvard-Radcliffe Young Americans for Freedom.

Dear Mr. Pasztor,

I clearly remember last spring that you expressed support for the Committee for an Open University, and the Young Americans for Freedom have repeatedly stated that they would take the university to court if it did not fulfill its legal obligations fully. Therefore I question what was your real purpose for having the counter-teach-in?

A person of your intelligence could not have over looked the chance that the speakers would not be able to speak-as a matter of fact, various publications (both public media and HRSJP) stated and implied that you fully realized what would happen.

The results of the teach-in have placed the university in an impossible position, and you and members of the YAF are assuring that there will be trouble on campus this spring. I see no conceivable way in which bringing dozens of students, who have the popular sentiment on their side, in front of the already unpopular CRR could not have serious repercussions and unrest.

I fully realize that it is necessary to prosecute those who so rudely disrupted the teach-in-yet this action will conceivably make it impossible for the university to fulfill its obligations fully. I, and many other conservative students and faculty members, have in the past sympathized with the YAF, but are appalled by recent actions of this organization. There is no way in which the university will not in some manner suffer from the effects of the teach-in.

I ask you: are you trying to build a better university, or are you really trying to tear it down-as various radical organizations are trying to do?