Making Dramatic Errors

To the Editors of The Crimson:

I am writing to correct several of the many fallacies in Ronetta Fagan's article. "Governing the Harvard Drama Community, HRDC Organizes Castings, Adjudicates Disputes" (May 8, 1992). The article is riddled with inconsistencies, misquotes and misinformation. Although most of these are relatively harmless, a few are dangerously misleading and need to be corrected.

First, I never said that the Gilbert and Sullivan Players, CityStep and other Harvard drama groups were under the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club's "jurisdiction" the HRDC works together with these groups to improve conditions for the arts on campus, and the HRDC has offered to represent these groups to the Standing Committee on Dramatic arts when they request such representation. The HRDC Executive Board is not involved in the management of organization of these groups, nor should we be.

Second, and more importantly, the HRDC Executive Board was never involved with the disputes among the cast and crew of Mirandolina. The Board never discussed the issue, passed any judgment or made any statements about the conflict.

The extent of our involvement came when I personally told Scarlett Marquette that the HRDC Board has no authority or involvement in cast disputes and that if she thought sexual harassment had occurred, she needed to talk to the appropriate University officials.

Had Ms. Fagan bothered to ask me about any of these issues in our five-minute conversation, I could have informed her of this and perhaps her article would have contained fewer glaring falsehoods. Jen Uphoff'93   President, Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club