Speaking in Tongues

WHAT WAS SO ODD--so disturbing--about the whole thing was that both sides got what they wanted. Protesters of Harvard's investment policy put themselves, if not their cause, in the headlines. On that freezing night in late November, police cleared the protesters--not violently, but calmly--from the steps of the Fogg Art Museum like so much snow blocking guests from the entryway. The University held its dinner.

But when both sides win, it is time to question the context of their separate triumphs. The arrest of protesters blockading a dinner for benefactors at the Fogg was the first time since the takeover of University Hall in 1969 that Harvard arrested students. That violent, unprepared-for event came as a shock to Harvard--a sudden blow that engendered a long period of self-questioning. The arrests last month--performed like a perfunctory chore--were by comparison narrow tactical gains, their success a non-success.

The conflict of protesters and the University is no longer simply at an impasse. It is no longer a matter of a Corporation that refuses requests for an open meeting by the community and by its elected government, nor of the alienation of student dissidents who are forced outside legal avenues to make their voices heard. The arrests make it clear: they are speaking different languages.

There may not have been blood on the dinners of benefactors at the Fogg--as protesters said in their chants--but there was and is a wound in the community.

STUDENT PROTESTERS clashed with police at Lowell House in the spring of '85. And again at the 350th celebration at Memorial Hall. And again on the steps of the Fogg Art Museum last month. In only the last of those instances--the one which could be characterized as the least volatile of the three--did the University decide to have students arrested. Yet the Administration maintains that the arrests at the Fogg involved no "significant policy changes."

And surprisingly, the comment from on high is right. Out here in the community it certainly looks like something has changed. But the community fools itself to think that the University suddenly has showed its trump card. It is misleading to think that administrators ordered the arrests--after a decade and a half of abstention--as part of some calculated shift in the grand design of Harvard's policy toward dissent.

At Lowell House and at Mem Hall, protesters blockaded buildings and restricted the freedom of movement of others--violating the law and Harvard's own code of conduct. The University, however, avoided making arrests, seeking--as it is commonly understood--to avoid publicity.

The fact that the Fogg incident did not involve the same escalation of tension and violence underscores the contingency of the decision to arrest. Why at the Fogg? Why not at Lowell and Memorial Hall--when the heat was really on?

What lies behind the decade-and-a-half of no-arrest policy is the violent clash of police and student protesters occupying University Hall in 1969. That image haunts the administration--and reminds us of the responsibility of the community and the administration to prevent dissent from becoming violence.

Depending on how you look at it, the function of the police is to maintain law and order or to reinforce an existing power structure. Regardless, the use of police is a symptom of a breakdown in the community.