Don't Stop Now

AT HARVARD it is rare for either the head of the College or the University to publicly condemn a campus incident. It is perhaps unprecedented for the two to join in their moral outrage. But last week, both President Bok and Dean of the College John B. Fox Jr. '59 issued strongly worded statement denouncing the now infamous Pi Eta Speakers Club newsletter, which droolingly depicted an upcoming party as a stockyard slaughter with the women guests playing the livestock. And Radcliffe President Matina S. Horner this week issued her own condemnation of the newsletter. Fox wrote that "the letter makes a mockery of basic standards of civility, which the College takes seriously." Bok concurred that "tasteless and grossly insensitive references to groups of people (such as those made in the newsletter) have no place in this or any other civilized community." The swift administrative censure is reassuring and refreshing, but we hope that the University will also take further steps to attack the deeper problem the newsletter reflects.

Defendants of the Pi Eta complain that such official actions are themselves immoral as they tresspass on the sacrosanct territory of free speech. Yet this logic confuses the principles involved. Few people deny the club the legal right to make whatever statements it wants. But the University and its members have the same right to declare that viewpoint inappropriate and to try and discourage it. While that policy would be disconcerting if applied liberally, all but the staunchest of libertarians would have to concede that it can be used against blatant sexism or racism without poisoning the atmosphere for free political or social expression. The Pi Eta newsletter was one of the rare examples of something so blatantly offensive it demanded a response.

Some have floated the idea that that response should come from the Ad Board, the College's disciplinary body. In the Pi Eta case, however, disciplinary action is ill-suited to the problem at hand. First, it is unclear whether all club members should be held responsible for the letter. More important, though, disciplinary measures offer little hope of promise of affecting the attitudes that are expressed in the newsletter.

Nevertheless, Bok and Fox should go beyond their statements of last week. Although helpful in alerting students to offensive behavior, the public declarations do not explore why such attitudes exist, and how they might be changed. The University's implicit acceptance and subsidization of all male clubs--including the Pi Eta as well as nine final clubs--probably has something to do with it. Harvard currently offers the final clubs access to the steam heat system, centrex phones and alumni records. Such involvement with groups that, as a matter of policy, exclude women, can only be seen as an insult to the principle of total equality for women at Harvard.

The existing inadequate procedures for dealing with sexual harassment and the small number of women faculty and staff may also have an effect.

Structural solutions to attitudinal problems are always difficult to define and implement. But unless the administration tries, it will likely only be a matter of time before officials are jarred into issuing more declarations of dismay.