DRAFT POLL HIT

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Ho-hum. Another piece of yellow journalism. I refer, of course, to the "poll" results. "One out of every four seniors at Harvard...." The statement cries out for clarification. This excellently prepared document was not a poll but a questionnaire, as indeed the Crimson off and on terms it. The essence of a poll or survey is selection. The essence of a questionnaire is voluntary response. This was a questionnaire, answered by those seniors, and only those seniors, who so wished. The questionnaire sought to discover the extent of potential draft resistance among seniors, but more than half the class did not respond. Into what category are these non-responders likely to fall? Can anyone doubt that it will be into the category of those not sufficiently hostile to the war and the draft to fill out the document? Or, to put it another way, is it likely that anyone who does feel strongly against the draft would fail to take this opportunity to express himself? In either case, the inevitable conclusion is that the vast majority of those not answering the questionnaire do not hold as deep a dissent as those who did answer. So what did the questionnaire show? It showed that 22 per cent (and 22 per cent is, let it be noted, closer to one out of five than one out of four) of 43 per cent of the senior class expressed the opinions accurately listed by the Crimson. 22 per cent of 43 per cent is equivalent to saying that 9 1/2 per cent of the seniors have actually expressed these opinions, and as I have suggested not much extrapolation is possible to the 57 per cent not responding.

That almost 10 per cent should express deep revulsion from national policy is an important dissent. It only does a disservice to the cause of this significant body for Mr. Lerner to concoct a transparently hyperbolic "poll" tabulation. Marsh McCall '60   Instructor in Classics   Assistant Senior Tutor, Lowell House