Signs At Sever Hall Create Needless Class Divisions

To the editors:

Re “University Sees Renovation Blitz,” News, Aug. 5: The code-of-conduct-for-construction-worker signs conspicuously placed around Sever Hall perpetuate a class stereotype of these workers as cigarette-smoking, beer-drinking, misogynistic, homophobes ignorant of how to behave on the civilized confines of an Ivy League university. If I were one of these workers I would feel humiliated by the condescension of these signs, and their public display would add to the insult. Construction workers may be so unevolved that they earn their living by the sweat of their brow, but they are human beings and have feelings.

There are no such signs around Memorial Church or Hemenway Gym, both of which are being renovated, and I have not heard of any of the workers inthese locations offending the sensibilities of the the Harvard campus.

STEPHEN HELFER

Cambridge, Mass.

August 10, 2005

The writer is a library assistant at the Harvard Law School Library