Coors' Speech

To the Editors of The Crimson:

I am writing to thank The Crimson for fairly accurate news reporting on the speech by William K. Coors hosted by the Conservative Club last week. However, your editorials on this issue have been neither fair nor accurate.

Long before Coors even spoke, you ran an opinion piece by Matthew H. Joseph warning students against believing the "clever lies" the author insisted Mr. Coors would say. This week you ran a staff editorial (March 6) expressing pride that Harvard students had allowed Mr. Coors to have his way unmolested, as if it was an incredible, unprecedented gift to let the head of a major U.S. company exercise his right of free speech at Harvard. Thanking Harvard for allowing free speech is like thanking the University for supplying heat in the dorm rooms; both are fundamental, basic rights which no one can deny.

In a recent opinion piece by Kevin Malisani (March 9), the author accuses the Conservative Club of inviting "provocative" speakers to campus and then providing massive security to instigate a riot. Let's deal with this point by point.

Every single speaker the Conservative Club has ever invited to Harvard had spoken at college campuses before, all over the country. Most of them never had a problem anywhere until they came to Harvard.

Malisani is saying that the same individuals who can freely speak at other college campuses are not welcome at Harvard. Mr. Coors' speaking at Boston University is free speech; his speaking at Harvard is "Provocative."

Malisani accuses the Club of providing "massive" security, including ROTC members, to "provoke the crowd." First of all, the Conservative Club has never hired anyone to perform security at our events. No ROTC students were involved in the Coors event.

Second, security is a necessary evil. It would be infinitely better if any speaker could have his say at Harvard without security and without interruption. If Harvard actually punished just one student for disrupting a spech, we would not have this problem. A single example would deter others. But in every case, from the students who threw paint ballons at Caspar Weinberger to those who drove Wilson Goode and his entire audience out of the hall, the University has refused to mete out any meaningful discipline. In the absence of deterrence, the Club needs, and our speakers demand, adequate security.

Malisani complains about the cost of security at these events. It is interesting that Malisani never complained about the cost of security for the shanties set up by the South African Solidarity Committee last spring. Harvard set up a 24 hour armed guard for the shanties, at the cost of tens of thousands of dollars. Shouldn't we pay a couple of hundred dollars to insure free speech as well?

It is easy to accuse those who express unpopular views of "provocation." Your writer should come out and say what he really believes: that conservative speakers--no matter where else they are welcome to speak--have no right to open their mouths at Harvard. Marci Bobis   President Conservative Club