Weekend Protest Was Half-Hearted, III-Timed

Junior Parents Weekend co-coordinator Richard D. Gardner '95 is a little bit peeved. "Rather displeased," is the way Gardner describes his feelings about the decision of a group of minority students to stage protests during two events during the annual weekend for parents to visit their children at Harvard and see slice of college life.

Gardner understands that the students weren't protesting Junior Parents Weekend, per se, but rather the University's dearth of minority professors and course offerings in ethnic studies. He knows the protesters were just using the event as a public forum to voice their concerns, Indeed, he doesn't even disagree with them.

Still, he's upset. "It was unfortunate that it had to conflict with several speakers who had come to talk to with the parents," Gardner says. "I just wish that Junior Parents Weekend doesn't always have to become a time for the campus to mobilize in protest every year. That's not what it was intended for, but it seems that's what it's become."

We couldn't agree more.

At least last year, the students had a possible reason for protesting at Junior Parents Weekend that was related to the event itself--there was no Asian--American representation on a student panel about race relation. The students rallied against the omission and used the opportunity to catalogue their grievances against Harvard.

Following last year's protest the students kept the momentum going, meeting one-on-one with various top-level administrators and participating in a town meeting to discuss three concerns. Ultimately, their efforts paid off--this year Harvard is offering ethnic studies as a special concentration for undergraduates.

This year, however, the students haven't done much until now, Indeed, even this weekend's protest seemed half-hearted. As Gardner puts it, "It was a very last-second sort of thing so it leads me to wonder just how much momentum they had going into it."

It isn't clear why the protesters chose Junior Parents Weekend to rally this year. After all, their weren't any problems with representation on the panels.

Indeed, in a strange twist, Black Students Association President Alvin L. Bragg '95, who moderated a panel discussion before the parents on extra-curricular life at the College, also participated in the planning for the protests.

Speaking privately, organizers of the weekend suggest that Bragg's participation in the panel and the protest was disconcerting. We'd go a step further, and say it was inappropriate. Even though the protesters weren't challenging Junior Parents Weekend, their rally detracted from the weekend's events.

The protesters should, if anything, be pleased with certain recent events. After all, Harvard has made progress on ethnic studies offerings. And the University's success over the last year in hiring several highly acclaimed scholars who happen to be minorities--including Princeton Professor Corneal R. West '74, one of nation's pre-eminent scholars of African-American studies--is nothing short of remarkable.

Indeed, the protesters claim in one of their flyers that Harvard does not have a single tenured African American woman on the faculty is inaccurate.

Last year, the University achieved a nationally recognized coup by recruiting Professor of Afro-American Studies and African-American Religious History Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham from the University of Pennsylvania. Higginbotham is on leave and not teaching courses during the current school years, but she is on staff and scheduled to teach in the fall.

We're not condemning the protesters for voicing their concerns, But we hope that, in the future, they choose the forums for expressing themselves carefully, and not simply protest for the sake of protesting.