Taking Responsibility

Every year Harvard University opens the gates around the Yard and a new batch of immigrants become its citizens. More than 30,000 strong, including employees and students, Harvard's a small town with big city morals. While here you'll find a diversity rarely found in a community of this size and a pleasant tolerance of ideas and different modes of behavior.

You're at Harvard in large part to get an education. It's fair to say that universities exist because society needs individuals with open minds, creative spirits and most important, a hatred of apathy. But the classrom doesn't necessarily teach these values; in fact, it often does harm by separating people from the issues of concern of the day. A true liberal education comes from participating in the life of a community.

Because of its small size and the diversity of its attitudes, Harvard beckons as a perfect environment for its citizens to participate in determining their common values. But beware of two dangerous predators that threaten to alter the natural balance of that community and make an open society an endangered species. They are administrators and students.

By closing the decision-making process of the University from students, faculty and employees--the leaders of the Harvard community--fail to govern properly. Nonetheless, every member of the community has an important responsibility to actively participate in our little society whenever he can.

Talking can get very boring when you're talking to a wall, or to a University which ignores the voices of others. But that doesn't mean we should stop trying to influence the community. Every person at Harvard is responsible for his or her actions and all citizens of this community must make an effort to influence its values. No one is just passing through.

Sometimes administrators will say that the efforts of students to change the attitudes of their small school community are misguided. In the face of the broader injustices within the world, they say, it makes more sense if students try to influence a larger community.

For example, President Derek C. Bok tells those students who protest Harvard's investments in companies doing business in South Africa not to march in the Yard, but rather to march on Washington, where the real power to end apartheid lies. What Bok ignores is that if students don't learn to involve themselves in the smaller communities, where they can be a forceful voice, they'll never become effective members of a larger society after graduation.

Clearly the main culprit in the battle for an open decision making process at this University is the administration itself. It condescendingly views student protest as a kind of quaint extracurricular activity which doesn't affect the University. It even tries to squelch participation in its affairs by tampering with elections by its own alumni, as it did this year in the annual vote for the Board of Overseers. (The Board is a 30-member alumni body which technically oversees all decisions by the policy-making Harvard Corporation.)

Yet oftentimes students ignore their responsibility to be an active voice. They get caught up in pre-professionalism, their studies, or Harvard tradition and lose concern about the values of the community in which they live. Those seniors who petitioned at graduation time for the removal of shanties, which were erected in the Yard by activists as a reminder of the University's South African investments, acted selfishly. Their request was value neutral. Neither for or against divestment, it exhibited an insular attitude on the part of students who feared the protesters who were rocking the boat.

Don't be afraid to speak out. This University has a tendency to have a homogenizing influence on all who enter its gates. But those who fall into line with tradition rarely take an active role in influencing their community. Resist the urge to assimilate into the perfect Harvard student.

Which brings us to student journalists. By grouping those who do try to affect Harvard under the general heading of activist, we do a disservice to the community. One need not be a constant gadfly to participate in a society. Journalists have a tendency to concentrate on the loudest or bestknown matters of contention in our community. But that doesn't mean divestment is the only issue of concern at Harvard. In addition to the omnipresent South Africa questions, there are questions about the diversity of the faculty, the effectiveness of a liberal arts education, University relations with Cambridge, the quality of housing and many others which also require a student voice.

By accepting a place at Harvard an individual becomes responsible for the actions of the University. The chance may never come again to have a voice as loud, as powerful and as free as it can be on a college campus. Don't forego this opportunity. It's Harvard's real education.