Hang 'Em High

To the Editors of The Crimson:

"We really think this strike [and the takeover of University Hall] is the best thing that ever happened to Harvard. But we didn't want to risk being kicked out. Look, as long as you don't have anything permanent on your record you can change your mind later about being a radical." -A participant in the takeover   of University Hall, 1969

"You can run but you can't hide."   -Ronald Reagan, 1985

For the past few days the Conservative Club has been outraged by the sympathetic treatment given by the Committee on Rights and Responsibilities to those students who attacked, intimidated, and harrassed South African diplomat Abe S. Hoppenstein at Lowell House last spring. By effectively condoning the actions of the protestors, the CRR has both insulted Mr. Hoppenstein and demonstrated that Harvard will take no action against those who disrupt conservative speakers, making sure that such speakers will hesitate to come to Harvard in the future. Further, if such speakers do come, the CRR's actions only encourage protestors to disrupt their speaking engagements.

For these reasons we applaud the decision of the Law School Administrative Board to reprimand Michael Anderson. This reprimand, which according to Anderson may damage his career, is the sort of punishment Harvard troublemakers, from 1969 to the present, have always feared the most: discipline which may jeopardize a student's future prospects.

As long as protestors are assured by a loving CRR that no matter what they do they will be free to graduate in good standing and move on to high-paying jobs at Citicorp, IBM, or Baker International (as the case may be), they will feel free to violate any speaker's freedom of speech and movement in the future.

But by striking at a student's most valuable asset, his "great expectations," the Law School Ad Board has made it clear that Harvard cannot tolerate this sort of anti-democratic behavior.

There are those who suggest the Lowell House protestors are entitled to leniency because they were demonstrating against a representative of a widely denounced government. However, the target of their protests could just as easily have been a Harvard professor speaking against divestiture, or an Israeli diplomat here to defend Israel's ties with South Africa. By denying one speaker his civil liberties, students deny them to all speakers.

There is one interesting point about the CRR rulings which should not be lost on the rank and file members of the South African Solidarity Council.(sic) Leaders of SASC, such as Evan Grossman and Damon Silvers, broke the declared boycott of the CRR, testified before the committee and got off scot free for their actions at Lowell House. At the same time regular SASC members who honored the boycott were given suspended requirements to withdraw.

SASC members shnould think about this carefully, and also about Mr. Anderson's fate, before they follow their leaders blindly in to an assault on the next South African representative who visits this campus.   Saied Kashani '86   Conservative Club President