Crowds Flood Debate

Hundreds sprinted across the Yard and raced to Sanders Theatre last night to win the best seats for a debate about affirmative action featuring many of Harvard's most popular professors.

The debate was originally slotted for 7:30 p.m. in Emerson 105, but when it became obvious that the audience could not fit into the room, event organizers announced the move to Science Center B, and eventually the growing hordes were relocated to Sanders Theatre.

Students rushed for the doors and climbed out windows in a frenzied attempt to get the best seats in the new location.

As hundreds of students sprinted across Tercentenary Theater toward the Science Center, Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III rushed to a Centrex telephone to find out whether Sanders Theatre was available as a precautionary measure given the unexpectedly huge crowd.

While waiting for the debate to begin in the Science Center, students decided to lighten the atmosphere by starting a wave.

"Well if this isn't going to start anytime soon, let's get a wave going," said a student in the middle of the hall. "Start it in the front. One, two, three, whoo!"

Harvard students were in jubilant form as virtually everyone in the audience rose in a wave that traveled towards the back of the lecture hall.

At 7:55 p.m. S. Allen Counter, director of the Harvard Foundation for Race and Intercultural Relations, announced that the debate would move to Sanders Theatre. Again students leapt from their seats despite Counter's plea that they move in an orderly fashion.

Cars backed up Kirkland and Oxford streets as the audience flooded toward Memorial Hall.

"The last people in were the first people out," said Valerie EdmonsonLopez '00, ecstatic about her eventual fourth row seat in Sanders.

Several students attributed the draw of the event to the panelists' stature.

"I can't believe they didn't plan this better," Edmonson said. "All [Sandel's] students are going to go," she added, noting that Sandel's class, "Moral Reasoning 22: Justice," regularly draws over 800 students.

Sandel, however, attributed the size of the crowd to student interest in the affirmative action debate.

"This puts to rest the myth that...this generation has a political apathy, and apathy to political debates," Sandel said in his opening remarks.

At 8:30 p.m. a quiet voice was heard over the microphone.

"Testing?" said Jobe G. Danganan '99 using the hurriedly assembled sound system.

The audience quickly settled into its seats--on the floor or the benches--an hour after they had originally arrived to hear the magnates speak.

--Andrew K. Mandel contributed to the reporting of this article.