The Puppetry of H Bomb

“Rape fantasies” and a nude “photo essay” are on the table for the forthcoming issue of H Bomb—but not porn, as the magazine’s founders have made painstakingly clear. Whew—I’m glad we’re not allowing smut into our ivied halls.

Call H Bomb what you will—I’ll call it porn until I see it and am convinced otherwise—but as of Sunday, the publication is $2,000 richer thanks to the Undergraduate Council’s decision to award the magazine the second-largest grant this year. Just for perspective, the average council grant last year, the Independent reported, was $183.39.

But since this figure is merely an average of the grants for everything from “real Mariachi suits” to dirty magazines, let’s compare and contrast some salient examples. H Bomb’s editors asked the council for $2,000. And the council obliged, giving them the full sum. Also this month, the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter applied for a $1,000 grant to buy a new washer/dryer set for their establishment. The Council’s grant to them? $400. The Coalition Against Sexual Violence was given $800 for its annual Take Back the Night project, which does a lot more to confront issues of sexual violence than publishing accounts of rape fantasies does, instead of its requested sum of $1,000. The same fate befell a proposed Doctors Without Borders panel on “Rape as a Weapon of War,” which had its requested amount nearly slashed in half by the council.

All of these grants were awarded Sunday night, and of them, H Bomb’s request was the only one funded in full. Council deputies apparently have keen senses for dark irony.

Council proponents have established an idea that those projects which have a “high projected student impact,” in the words of Financial Committee (FiCom) Chair Teo P. Nicolais ’06, are the most reasonable requests to fund. It’s a seemingly logical way out of a tight budget of $180,000. And certainly, in judging H Bomb by its yet-unpublished cover, Nicolais is right. Oodles of people will read H Bomb—but will they because it contains a “serious discussion of sexuality,” as College Dean Benedict H. Gross ’71 was hoping for? Or will they because the coy “exposé on the demented sex life of the Harvard band” draws chortles? To give a hint, I would just suggest ruminating on the very name “H Bomb” for a while—the subtitle “The Harvard Undergraduate Journal of Sexuality” would be slightly out of place.

To be sure, neither the aforementioned Doctors Without Borders panel nor Take Back the Night are as interesting as H Bomb. No one’s going to be hoping for a glimpse of a nude colleague at those events. But are they more worthwhile?

Of course they are. But ever since the days when the council (and for that matter, The Crimson and, generally, the student body) was easily distracted by fawning over its favorite Maoist group or concerned about the plight of Colombian coffee-growers, there’s been a yearning in the council for a cool, calculated logic to guide its proceedings. Here enters a tricky argument that challenges that calculus through which the council has regained its credibility. Should the council ever make a conscious funding decision based on a magazine’s content? We might, of course, play the ad absurdum game where I suggest Harvard Students for the Confederacy apply for a grant for a “Confederate Flag Day,” or worse, in order to arrive at a suggestion the council would rebuff because of content. (Incidentally, I imagine such an event would have, for many of the reasons H Bomb will, a “high projected student impact.”)

However, beyond deploying theoretical examples to prove the point, council members should realize that despite their best intentions, FiCom speaks with its pocketbook. They already have, of course, by deciding that H Bomb ought to get its whole request while three other projects dealing with issues of sexuality or sexual violence should be scaled back. But more importantly, the council should begin realizing that its decisions to fund (or not to fund) magazines results in them being published or laying fallow.

A sex mag will always be more popular than a French literary magazine. And, for balance, a conservative publication like the Harvard Salient—for full disclosure, I’m the publisher of that magazine—whose writers (whether social conservatives or libertarians) are certainly in the minority at Harvard, will always be more read, and scrutinized, than the liberal Perspective will. But this hardly means the council should provide the Salient with more money than Perspective.

Rather, representatives should have the question in the fore of their minds that they’re constantly judging subconsciously: how much the campus needs a particular project. Anyone who’s observed the Council undergo its reforms over the past years should realize that its representatives, while chummy, hardly treat their jobs with levity—even the decisions that repulse me, like withholding money from Christian clubs that require their officers to be Christian, reveal the seriousness of the organization. These are people who are able to realize on their own that there’s a place on campus for a conservative and a liberal magazine, and that each deserves equal funding. And these are also the people who should have realized that regardless of how big a splash it will make, H Bomb is undeserving of this year’s second-largest council grant.

Travis R. Kavulla ’06 is a history concentrator in Mather House. His column appears on alternate Tuesdays.