SYMBOLIC POLITICS

To the Editors of the Crimson:

After five years of student militancy I suspect we should all be inured at the symbolic politics indulged in yesterday by the Negro students who confronted the Deans and President Bok over Harvard's Gulf Oil holdings. But I persist in thinking this kind of political behavior silly and irrelevant.

The black militants who participated in yesterday's confrontation ought to face the fact that it is easy to attack Harvard in regard to investments in South and Portugese Africa by corporation whose stock Harvard own. This kind of militancy is positively cheap: It costs those who indulge in it nothing.

I would suggest to militant students, black and white, who are exercised over this issue that they undertake a symbolic political act of a higher order than yesterday's. Why not draw up a statement in which Negro student militants (and white too) who are outraged at Harvard investments in Southern Africa agree to surrender their Harvard scholarships and other financial stipends provided by Harvard.

This form of symbolic political action at least has the virtue of a cost to those who undertake it. Where I come from they call it putting your money where your mouth is...Indeed, until some such symbolic political act, presenting a sacrifice by the actors, is pursued, those who like parading their moral outrage of investments in Southern Africa (often as if they are the only ones exercised over exploitation and fascism in South Africa and Portuguese areas) have no reason to expect the Harvard community to take them seriously. At any rate, I, for one, will not take them seriously. Martin Kilson   Professor of Government