Let's Put The Universe Back Into The University

To the Editors of The Crimson:

I am writing because I am a cranky old guy, and one of the things that really upset me is that geocentric spectacle hanging from a freshperson dorm in Harvard Yard--namely, the flag bearing a photograph print of the Earth.

To be charitable, I will not accuse its hangers of malicious terra firmism; they are clearly too young to have learned about the oppressive implications of privileging the third planet from our sun above the rest of the universe. But we should all ask ourselves if perhaps we, too, are not sometimes guilty of earthism as we giddily congratulate ourselves for living on a planet blessed with water and organic matter while implicitly denigrating the experience of the rest of our galaxy which is, after all, mostly rock and void.

Such geocentrism is a burden carried and imposed by us all--even by students from such largely inorganic regions as the Dakotas--but the display of the "Earth flag" is qualitatively different in its egregious symbolic offensiveness.

Harvard's new president, though himself an Earthling, should tear down the offending banner and forcibly enroll the culprits in Introductory Astronomy. Let's put the "universe" back into "University." Jeff Moran, G-4