SWAT

To the Editors of the Crimson:

The article "Gender Affects Views on Clubs" was for the most part an excellent and informative article. However, it included one gross misstatement. While most of the article clearly and directly stated the facts concerning the poll taken, the final conclusion read, "The poll suggests that despite statements by the anti-final club group Stop Witholding Access Today (SWAT) that the gender discrimination at the clubs is an issue of basic civil rights, the issue is identified with liberalism on campus." The implication of this statement--that because SWAT's cause is a liberal cause it is not a civil rights cause--is absurd. Liberals have long been champions of civil rights, conservatives long opponents of it. (Just take a poll of civil rights activists asking which side they're on.) It was not that conservatives of this country who championed the fight against racial discrimination. The greatest civil rights leader this country has ever seen, Dr. Martin Luther King, would surely not have seen his cause as a conservative one. The fact that the fight against sex discrimination in the final clubs is one espoused by liberals should practically confirm its validity a civil rights cause.

Perhaps the statement in the article was not intentionally malicious on the part of the authors. In general, I applaud the quality of journalism pursued by Mr. Forman on the Final Club issue this year, and while I am well aware of Mr. Samwick's views, I find them principled and better thought out than most. At the very least there was a carelessness of language unbecoming the quality of journalism I have come to expect form the Crimson. Jack Robbins '90