Hockey Player’s Motives Mischaracterized

To the editors:

This letter comes in response to Mr. Weinberger’s letter concerning the decision of a student, Jesse E. Lane, ’05 to withdraw from the University (“Academics Must Take Priority in Admissions,” Nov. 26). Mr. Weinberger, an Exposity Writing Program preceptor, has come up with one of the more audacious and weakly constructed arguments that we have ever seen.

Weinberger makes a myriad of assumptions regarding Mr. Lane, which we challenge him to substantiate. First, Weinberger makes the claim that “he was basically a professional from the very beginning” and further alleges that Lane’s hockey experience prior to admission at Harvard somehow ought to have rendered him ineligible. While Mr. Weinberger may not be familiar with the world of athletics, it is more the rule than the exception to play on numerous club teams and select teams—even taking years between high school and college to do so. To suggest that any of this activity even approaches the line of illegality suggests only that Weinberger has a questionable understanding of NCAA rules.

Next, Weinberger makes arrogant presumptions about Lane’s motives for leaving so abruptly, claiming that he was “never serious about education to begin with.” Many students, from painters to pianists, leave Harvard to pursue careers in non-academic areas, but does this justify his charge that their only interest in attending Harvard in the first place was to simply mold clay or play the cello? We doubt this letter would have found its way to The Crimson if instead it were a Bill Gates-type who withdrew. We detect a healthy level of anti-athlete prejudice.

On his point about Lane’s roommates “enjoying more space,” we can only say that as an Expos preceptor, we’d expect something more germane to his argument. However Weinberger makes one last argument in this closing paragraph that contains the least logic of all: he charges that the travesty in Lane’s leaving is that he denies a student who “belonged here” a spot. Exactly who does Weinberger think he is to make such a presumptuous comment? Is Weinberger just the pen name for Dean Fitzsimmons? If that’s the case, then he obviously knows who deserves to be at Harvard. If not, he has no more authority to make these generalizations than we have to state that he has utterly no business representing Harvard as a student himself or in whatever quasi-faculty position he holds.

There are no guarantees about what admission to Harvard means. Unless we are to accept Mr. Weinberger’s narrow conception of what a Harvard student should be, he has little right to make these claims about an entirely personal choice.

Brad Sohn ’02 and

Nick Lenicheck ’02

Nov. 27, 2001