Mr. Cleary, Lily White Ain't Right

If you didn't read yesterday's The Harvard Crimson, shame on you.

Because yesterday, David Fahrenthold and Daniel Habib reported on Harvard's abysmal percentage of non-white coaches.

The article says that Harvard has no non-white head coaches and only four assistant coaches that are non-white.

That translates to: 0 percent head coaches and 4.5 percent assistant coaches. And that translates to: shame on you, Harvard athletics.

The attitude of the department is apparent--the head man doesn't care. Athletic Director Bill Cleary '56 might be a legendary hockey player and coach, but he's carried a petty grudge against The Crimson for most of this decade because he says he was misquoted in the early 1990s.

When approached by Habib and Fahrenthold, Cleary said, "I don't talk to you guys." Well, he might have meant The Crimson by "you guys," but judging by his hires, he might as well mean "minority coaches."

Mine is a strong and maybe unfair statement, but this is too important an issue not to have a comment. He refused to return two phone calls yesterday.

Let's clear the air-I'm proposing a truce. This is an institutional matter, and I think that you, Mr. Cleary, as head of the athletic department, should have something to say about this to a major news source for your students. Nothing personal should get in the way of that duty.

Harvard has to "think out of the box." Conventional means aren't enough. For a problem this serious, we need drastic measures.

It's not just a shame; it's downright embarrassing that Harvard has no minority head coaches. We've got more varsity sports than any other school in the country! It's not like we're strapped for openings!

Harvard is a symbol. President Neil Rudenstine recognizes this and has been a formidable advocate of affirmative action. The result is the highest percentage of black students at any Ivy school. But what sort of a message does it send when that "symbol" doesn't see fit to hire minorities as coaches?

Plans and committees aren't the solution to this problem. Hiring minority coaches is a start. Moreover, I say we copy something the San Francisco 49ers did in the 1980s under Bill Walsh.

Walsh started an internship program for minority potential coaches. They sat in on meetings, participated in the day-to-day job of coaching, and learned what it takes. Some stayed with the 49ers permanently.

Did it work? Try two current NFL head coaches: Dennis Green and Ray Rhodes.

Football coach Tim Murphy is a good coach. He's turned a moribund program into a champion. He's already shown he can do a great job training future coaches. After all, the reason Harvard had an opening for Bruce Tall, a minority, as defensive coordinator was the departure of Mark Harriman to become the head coach at Bates.

And Murphy isn't the only good coach here. The point I'm making is that Harvard needs to hire more minority coaches, but that's only the start.

Like it or not-and whether this sounds arrogant or not-Harvard is one of the colleges that sets the tone for other colleges across the country. Stealing minority coaches from other schools would show that we care, but it isn't going to make things much better.

Harvard has to produce minority coaches. It's not just something that's politically expedient to do. It's right. It's just. Whites are about 75 percent of America's population. They shouldn't be 100 percent of Harvard's head coaching population.

I'm not even accounting for the fact that hiring minority coaches might make Harvard teams better if they can interact with their minority players better.

So I encourage you to call (495-2204) or e-mail Bill Cleary (athletic@fas.harvard.edu), and tell him you're mad.

And Bill Cleary, if you don't agree that it's a good idea to have more minority coaches than can be counted on one hand, shame on you.