How to Improve The Crimson

Upon reading Sarah Schaffer's oped about the importance of the Crimson to the Harvard community (Opinion, Jan. 22), I wanted to provide a few suggestions to the 124th Editorial Guard on how the Crimson can become an even more significant element of Harvard life. These four humble ideas are only meant to give the new editors an idea of where a daily reader of the Crimson for four years feels the paper should go:

Make the paper free: it is imperative, as Ms. Schaffer insisted, that a student newspaper, a forum where students can debate and freely exchange ideas, be available to all students without charge. While $34 sounds like pocket change to most students, there are many of us, yours truly among them, that simply cannot come up with that kind of money. I walked into the Leverett dining hall on the morning of the January 22nd and saw several of my housemates fervently discussing David Goldbrenner's oped about whether or not recruiting was more socially valuable than public service, in the free edition of that day's Crimson. If we want to witness more scenes like this and if we want students informed about their campus, we should start with a paper that could be universally accessed. Making the Crimson free, like most college papers across the country, should be the primary objective of the new editors.

Reach out to minorities. It is truly unfortunate to read a newspaper which does not reflect the diversity of the campus it purports to represent and cover. If the Crimson wants to be legitimate to some members of the Harvard student body, it needs some of their voices. A diverse staff can bring insight to matters, such as randomization or the possibility of a multicultural center, that the current staff cannot possibly provide. For example, it was reassuring last year to read David Brown's columns on racial issues that non-minorities on staff, I felt, were reluctant to address. I do not lay all of the fault at the feet of the Crimson; the Crimson has made some effort to attract Latinos and African-Americans to the paper this recent semester. Minorities who are interested in writing should comp, knowing that as a student paper, it should be as much their paper as anyone else's. Regrettably, like a Gordian Knot, minorities will never feel comfortable at the Crimson until there are more minorities at the Crimson, which will not happen until they feel comfortable at the Crimson...It is up to the Crimson's new editors to spearhead the effort to untie this knot and move the Crimson into the diverse 90s. In my four years here, I have heard too many people complain about the Crimson as a white newspaper. While we expect other publications--the Lampoon, Peninsula, the Advocate, etc. to be all-white institutions, I hope we hold higher expectations for the Crimson since, after all, it is the one student publication which can set an example for all of the other publications here and at other colleges.

Get the paper on-line. The Crimson should keep up to speed with the fast pace of technology by putting its archives and current issues on the World Wide Web. I remember when some of my friends and I, in our effort to challenge the Ad-board's hegemony, did research on whether Yale had student representation on its Ad-Board. Not only did we find an answer to our question (yes, they do!) we also discovered, by using the archives of the Yale Daily News on-line, that there were having the same problems Harvard has been experiencing. I obviously do not want the Crimson to go on-line because everyone else is doing it. The more important reason is accessibility. If the Crimson is on-line it can be read by alumni, students on leave, interested applicants who want to get a real view of the school, or anyone else interested in what is occurring on the campus of the nation's foremonst school. Costs can be covered by advertisements which can be placed on the web site. If the 124th Editorial Guard takes this crucial step, The Crimson will be vaulted from a paper read on a small college campus in Cambridge to a publication read by anyone with a web connection anywhere in the world, from Djibouti to Nepal.

The paper should not just report, it should also encourage. I think the paper could be a haven for activity if it encouraged more student events. The U.C. debates and the primal scream celebration at Tommy's are two good examples of how the Crimson can bring people together. These acitivities demonstrate that the Crimson is in a position of power and can wield it effectively. There should be weekly student polls on a range of topics, such as: what percentage of students think the Ad-Board is fair? how many students think Dean Lewis is doing a commendable job? what band should the U.C. invite for Springfest? All these questions are of interest to most students on campus, and can provide better news stories then an inane story about a final club rallying for chicken parmesan. I don't think it is fair for students to wait once a year to read the Independent's poll, when we can have one every week. My challenge to the 124th Editorial Guard is to make the Crimson a paper students want to read because it is doing things, and not just reporting them.

I wish the new editors of the Crimson luck in the upcoming year. It has taken me four years to realize that a campus publication cannot thrive without the requisite feedback from the students it serves. While I am fully aware that most of these ideas many not be realized in my last semester here, I pray that one day in the near future the Crimson will be free, diverse, on-line and an even more critical facet of student life. If the Crimson wants to be read, as Ms. Schaffer affirmed, then let it continue to make itself readable and accessible. --Sozi Sozinho '97