UC Should Not Base Funding On Superficial Distinctions

To the editors:



You recently published an editorial (“UC, Stick to Your Guns,” Apr. 20) advocating that the Undergraduate Council (UC) not change its policy so as to make Committee on College Life-approved organizations eligible for funding on an event-by-event basis.

The editorial’s assertion that student funds should “serve all Harvard students,” is inconsistent with its later approval of funding for “groups that may discriminate in some de facto manner.” Although I do not personally object, when the UC grants funding to an all-male or all-female singing group, half of the campus loses access to its own money. If the UC’s resources must only be used for benefit of the entire student body, it cannot fund groups that discriminate in any way, de facto or de jure. Consistency on this issue would preclude the funding not only of religious groups and single-sex choirs, but numerous other political, artistic, and even cultural groups as well. As far as I’m concerned, that is reason enough for the UC to change its policy.



JORDAN C. BAEHR ’08

April 20, 2006