Samaritan Instincts

To the Editors of the Crimson:

This afternoon at 4:00 1 walked over to where it had happened, right in front of the Harvard Bookstore on Massachusetts Avenue near Harvard Square. I watched the people walking in both directions for a few minutes--two old women. 20 students of different ages, maybe five professors and assorted other people going their daily business. I tended to like them all. A good selection of my fellow citizens.

I was part of that crowd at 4:00 p.m. last Monday, February 11.1 was walking back from class. A 16-year-old boy in a red zipper jacket walked by me and spat on my shoe. I made a verbal note on his carelessness, and suddenly from right around me, three of his fellows, two of them 20 years old and in black leather jackets, the third, a bit younger and quite fat, jumped on me. One of them picked up a big rock and attempted to hit me with it. Someone held my arms behind my back while the fat kid kicked me in the stomach. I loudly yelled "help" several times and tried to take away my book bag. During the scuffle two of my fingernails were partially torn off. I kept yelling. I'd never seen the four before, but one of them gave me such a look of concentrated hatred that I could barely believe it. There were a few more kicks and they ran off.

I stood up and walked up the street to a police car parked in the Square. They couldn't have been nicer, we looked for the four and didn't see them, and after filling a report I went home. One of the policemen said. "This happens all the time."

What was so odd to me is this the beating took at least three minutes. I guess may be an people passed us on the narrow sidewalk Not one individual stopped to help, nor did anyone pause at the police car to tell them there was an assault going on just behind them.

Sometime during all of our lives, we will see incidents similar to this that will challenge our instincts to take a Samaritan course of action. I am writing this letter to express my hope that we will be well enough educated to respond to these instincts in a more potent way than those handful of bystanders on the street the other day. Withheld Upon Request