The Calm Before Peninsula's Storm

A friend just sent me a copy of your March 7 feature article "Student Journal Ceases to Shock: The Peninsula No Longer Influences," for which I was interviewed by the article's author. Please permit me to correct some of the factual claims and challenge the central thesis of the article.

The author writes, "When the conservative tab first came out three years ago, few though it would have much influence on campus debate."

First, the magazine debuted in march 1990. That's four years ago. The author cites the prediction of the then- chairman of the Bisexual, Gay and Lesbian Students Association that few would take us seriously.

In finding that quotation in The Crimson archives, the author clearly would have discovered the date of our first issue. But he should have found much more.

He should have discovered that the inaugural issue of Peninsula caused a ruckus on campus second only to our legendary double- issue on homosexuality. Articles, editorials and letters to the editor about the magazine dominated the pages of The Crimson for 10 of the next 11 days.

On two occasion, the entire Opinion page was consumed with commentary on our magazine.

Approximately two weeks after our debut, we were the feature article in The New York Times education. There was a deluge of phone calls and of letters to our new post office box.

We even got our first serious death threat.

At the release of our next issue, in May, there were already students in the river houses prepared to tail our staff members and seize the issues before they seized student minds. We caught them, Dean Epps disciplined them, and The Crimson reported it.

Like it or not, Peninsula has been a campus force since its inception.

All of Which bring me to subtitle of the article, that peninsula no longer influences. The author uses for the standard of "influence" our homosexuality issue, which among other things: induced several dining hall eat-ins, an anti Peninsula rally attended by 250 students, two deans and the minister of Memorial Church; months worth of aftershocks in The Crimson and Independent: immediate public responses from president Rudenstine and Dean Clark: a forum /debate at the Kennedy School attended by nearly 500; feature articles in The New York Times. The Boston Globe, The Washington Times, The Los Angeles Times, Harvard magazine and many other widely and moderately-circulated newspapers and journals; appearances on national radio talkshows and local shows in Boston, New York and Chicago; a PBS documentary; and the admission last year by the Perspective that we killed homosexual activism on campus.

To judge Peninsula's recent issues by the standard is akin to judging atom bombs weak because they're not hydrogen bombs.

Campus debate is a mutualism. It thrives in a strongly, rather than weakly-charged environment, and escalates as the competition escalates.

Because the Harvard Left has become less competitive--whether if be because it is weaker now then before or simply more apathetic with a liberal in the White House--it is a natural consequence that the left's antipode will likewise be taken less seriously than before.

Yet, while opposition to peninsula is considerably less than in the past, support on campus continues to grow. Our list of stealthy faculty members(hidden for fear of tenure boards )mounts.

The stream of supportive telephone calls remains on par with those of years past.

As soon as the left decides to throw its hat back into the ring, the campus will see the newly cut muscles.

But the campus may not have to wait that long. The fifth anniversary of peninsula is coming up in November and rumor has it that something big is brewing.

Could it be the calm before the storm? Roger J. Landry '92-'93   co-founder of Peninsula