Electing for a Solution

To the editors:

Ever since the Christian Fellowship leadership controversy at Tufts two years ago, I’ve been very surprised that no one has suggested a very simple and fair solution to their problems as well as the current one at Harvard ( Editorial, “A Discriminatory Clause” April 15 ).

Many groups, including the Catholic Students’ Association (CSA), have a system in which any member of the organization (membership being open to any undergraduate) can run for a leadership position, and the membership votes for who they want to lead them. The members, as a whole, decide who will best represent them. If a majority of CSA members decided that a non-Catholic student active and interested in the CSA would be a fitting addition to its Steering Committee, then he or she would be elected. Any group in which one year’s leadership hand-picks the next year’s leadership on the basis of a “litmus test” of beliefs or ideology is bound to be discriminatory. An election system of and by the members of an organization is a simple and just solution to the problem.

Jeffrey P. Morgan ’02

Arlington, Mass.

April 15, 2003