UNEQUAL ADMISSIONS

To the Editors of The Crimson:

I am pleased that at some time in my four-year bondage to this corporation that some member of it's working was bold enough to call a spade a spade. I am referring to the most accurate depiction of the Harvard alienation-complex by Donald Hermann in The Crimson of March 19, 1974. The unfortunate circumstances which surround the Harvard and Radcliffe students are as integrated as the corporate bureaucracy could possibly create: Questions (specifically in Chem 20) are a mark of the student's stupidity, only stylized rhetoric affirming the bias of course administrations is acceptable as independent thought, and students grab ahold of Harvard's "brand" name and distinguished institutions (e.g., the Pudding) as the last thread of an identity. The problem is that this is not a school, it is a corporation. The school is run for the corporation and not the reverse.

I could perhaps list a group of typical outrages perpetrated on the students that would touch any reader's experience here; however, there is little to be done by the student in these areas insofar as he/she makes the choice to go to school here. There is, though, one issue which touches us all: Unequal Admissions.

Although the reasons for this discriminatory policy have changed since I was a freshman, the policy of Harvard is as piggish as an educational institution can be. On the one had President Bok is trying to cause a stir about an educational revolution, and on the other he wishes to maintain a repressive force which has forced his corporation into an ignorant position. I call it ignorant because the reason it is important is for the people's sake, not an institution's. This policy is as repressive to the male as the female because it lowers the standard of living for all (while we are here) and perpetuates the inequality that American educational institutions are supposed to erase.

It would be foolish to assume trained corporate analysts (Derek Bok, F. Skiddy Von Stage) are merely basing this decision on ideology. Nonesense, they are basing on statistics that indicate that in 20 years Harvard males (that means us!) will give more than females. And the sad part is they are right. Needless to say, the prospect of cutting a Harvard class in half is out of the question and it would be first doubled to "save" an endowment so large a separate investment fund is necessary, even at the ridiculous cost of worsening our housing situation. This is efficiency, not humanity; it is a corporation, not a school; we are workers, not thinkers; and in the end, we too will contribute.

As it is that a corporation operates on efficient financial decision,s the only way this abominable policy can be changed is the following: All funds given by graduating seniors (and those there after) should be given specifically to women's scholarships or be made conditional on one-to-one admissions. Furthermore, a unified student policy expressing this intention is necessary to persuade the corporation that the students are committed to this policy as a group.

I have discussed this policy with some of my peers and to my surprise have met some resistance. Ther veracity of the rationale for action as well as the action outlined is intellectually unquestionable. But the persuasive indoctrination of this institution has even shown itself capable of obscuring such a simple sociological truth. Half the blame for this policy will be ours in twenty years, and while we are still together in college it is our obligation to teach administrators (as well as ourselves) that "people" include females as well as males, that "education" should involve independent intellectual thought, not dogmatic indoctrination, and that a corporation is run for the benefit of people, not itself. Berman '75