After Grapes: Where Is Our Conscience?

More students voted in last week's Great Grape Referendum than in last year's Undergraduate Council presidential and vice-presidential elections, 50 percent to 43 percent. Whether to take this as an indication of greater student ardor over grapes or greater apathy toward the council is up for debate.

A more interesting question is why, although 3,000 students voted, did 3,000 not? Given the three-week barrage of posters, table tents, e-mail messages and articles about grapes that preceded the referendum, how could so many abstain? Admittedly, Harvard students are a busy bunch. Even with all the publicity, even with voting as easy as a card swipe, it is not easy to shake us out of the academic and social shells we inhabit.

And, to give the non-voters a bit more credit, it was easy to become disenchanted with the grape vote, with the debate clouded by disputed facts and allegations of impropriety. The pro-grape forces were led by a student whose family owns a grape farm--big surprise which side he was on--and used catchy slogans about student choice to obscure the labor issues at hand. The anti-grape forces relied on dated literature supplied by the United Farm Workers (UFW), a union that not only has reason to be biased but which has itself all-but dropped the grape boycott, throwing its credibility on the issue into question.

Nonetheless, when it came down to it, the debate was about something not so complicated at all: on whose side Harvard College would ultimately stand--to whom we would give the benefit of the doubt. Would we side with the UFW and students concerned about labor issues, agreeing to forgo grapes on the likely premise that worker conditions had not yet improved sufficiently in California's fields? Or would we subscribe to the Coalition's claims that grape-pickers were doing just fine and, assuming the protesters were misguided reactionaries, demand our grapes?

Sadly, the majority of the student body--both the 1,694 students who voted yes and, as important, the 3,000 who abstained--chose to place their confidence in the grape farm owners, severing their ties to a boycott that had lost momentum but that remained noble in intention. Our pull-out will put grapes on our tables and profits in the bank for grape harvesters. It will do nothing for workers' health, safety and bargaining power.

At Stanford, individual dining halls vote each year on whether to serve grapes. While we hesitate to welcome another round of poster wars and propaganda--may the Grape Coalition, its victory won, rest in peace--we hope the student body gets the chance to redeem itself on labor issues. Social and economic justice require no less.