Mather's Reputation Distorted

To the editors:

As a Mather House alumnus, I was shocked by the blatant lack of research done by Talia Milgrom-Elcott for her April 20 column, "Randomization Reassessed." In Milgrom-Elcott's attempt to show the fluctuations and extremes of house populations before randomization, she claims that before Mather was a home for "steroids" it was a "house for science and math nerds. In fact, Mather house used to be a haven for humanities concentrators and, in particular, homosexual humanities concentrators. I do not remember seeing more than a handful of "science and math nerds" (to borrow the author's phrase) in Mather during my undergraduate years. This lack of research on the part of a senior editor and The Crimson in general leads me to think that a dark spot in Harvard's history's--namely, the persecution of homosexuals in Mather House by male athletes that eventually led to a deliberate choice by subsequent Harvard homosexuals to opt for Adams and Dunster--is all too easily forgotten by today's students and faculty. Shame on The Crimson and Milgrom-Elcott for perpetuating this ignorance. D. ROBERT BROUDY '74   Seattle, Wash., April 21, 1998