DISSIDENT FEW

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

It is a tragedy when a community has lost its sense of values and runs in fear of being called names--such as "cop lovers"; yet the only place to run in the issues before us this week is into the arms of a small group of students who no longer are operating in the tradition of free discussion and free ideas; but who have employed (in a symbolic way to be sure) tactics and methods used by the tyrants of history--and that is precisely what they are: violence, intimidation, rallies, propaganda and "outshouting" the world.

We would do well to recall how Hitler often literally shouted his way into power and his opponents into silence. I am not suggesting the students of SDS are capable of such, for they are not (especially the students who seemed to be highly interested in photographing themselves the afternoon of the seizure). But the are playing with games that have grown to national scale in other societies; games that men have died for to get rid of.

The anguished, uncommitted Middle would to well to recall that history has crushed neutrality time and again; that men have been forced to choose sides, often belonging in neither camp. It has not come to that in America, yet, but what has happened at Harvard this week, in my opinion, is an example of what can happen to a nation when moral judgment is suspended on behalf of those dissident few who mock the foundations of the society in word and act. Carole Comeron Shaw   (Graduate student's wife)