Coverage of Homeless Woman’s Plight Unfair

To the editors:

I write to make known my utter disappointment in the article published recently in The Crimson describing Agatha M. Okyere ’81 (News, “Harvard Grad Prepares to Leave Home on the Street,” Nov. 15).

In seven semesters and one summer spent here, I have been concerned for this individual and curious about the circumstances of her homelessness. I too was party to the rumors that she was a graduate of the College, and many times have witnessed her show a crumpled library card, a decade old, to the M2 bus drivers who tended to admit her before her bags became so numerous. As she accumulated possessions over the summer, the passengers and drivers became less willing to assist her, and by August I rode bus after bus that passed her by as she stood waiting on the side of the road. I therefore have observed firsthand her sad deterioration over the past months, and it is clear to me that this person suffers from a psychological disorder that has gripped her life and distorted her perceptions of reality.

The Crimson told this story as a talk show would, revealing little details at which the audience at home could snicker mercilessly—details that are not worth reporting, and details that are clearly the manifestations of a disordered mind: a job at Chase Manhattan, studies at Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge consecutively, a bag full of tailored business clothing. The article resulted in a mockery of this woman and of her disorder by cross-checking her clearly delusional reports to the alumni newsletters, reporting them as fact, and then exposing her lies as though they could have ever been believed in the first place. It would have been better if the article had considered what Okyere’s affliction could possibly be, if anyone qualified to diagnose it had done so and then perhaps any ways to assist her. Instead, what we received was more of her own could-be-true statements: she dreams of a return to Ghana.

Now that the student population has read this article, which pinpoints this tragic woman to an exact location, we may all walk past Holyoke Gate “fully informed” and wonder how she could possibly undertake this journey across the Atlantic. Presumably, we are supposed to laugh at the idea of it, as at the idea of her working for Chase, owning her own company, searching for romantic involvement, and writing a resume—all fabulously good jokes considering the bedraggled, ranting woman outside the gates of fair Harvard. The joke is further enriched by the ominous and didactic undertone that warns: Harvard undergraduates, you could end up this way too.

It is appalling that The Crimson has allowed this mockery-making of psychological illness and of an individual upon whom Harvard thought it worthy to bestow a degree. It is my sincere hope that there will be some published follow-up, lest we all be left to wonder, and, with no direction for our concerns to impel action, lest human compassion fade to apathy and Agatha M. Okyere, the living woman, vanish off our streets and into Harvard lore and worse, Harvard jokes.

Hilary C. Robinson ’03

Nov. 17, 2002