To Change the World

To the Editors of The Crimson:

We sure live in a shitty world. At least, that's what I've been told by departing Crimson presidents on every spring term registration day for the last four years. Following a noble tradition, William McKibben's "Parting Shot" told me little I didn't know and many things which he probably thought I didn't want to hear.

He did so because he is concerned with the complacency of Harvard students. They're applying to Chase Manhattan and Morgan Stanley instead of marching around Harvard Yard is protest of South African apartheid. Some of these wayward souls have probably taken job offers, even though. "There are not that many people who--if they thought they had the choice--would reality want to work for Chase Manhattan or Morgan Stanley."

My "irrational" hope is that 30 years from now one of these souls sitting on a committee which controls an investment bank's loan policy may connect "racism" (having correctly identified the term on his Soc. Stud. generals) with loaning money to South Africa and veto such a policy. He will have changed things And he will have done so by putting on a pin striped suit and walking around Harvard Yard or spilling his guts on the Crimson's editorial page.

A word of advice to the incoming president of the Crimson do not waste your Parting Shot by trying to convince your classmates of the injustice in the world or mocking them for their apparent indifference to it. Those who figure it out will do so without your help And those who want to change the world will work at discovering how to achieve their goal not reminding their poets that it is their goal. Doug Phillips '82