OUTRAGEOUS DISGUST

To the Editors of the Crimson:

I am writing to express my outrageous disgust with the meeting held last night in Sanders Theatre and Lowell Lecture Hall. My intention is not to discuss the content of the various proposals that were passed but rather to take issue with their validity. It was the intention of that meeting to consider and vote on various proposals that were to reflect the sentiment of the Harvard community. However, I would maintain that to say that all of the proposals are supported by a majority of the Harvard student body is as absurd as the manner in which they were passed.

To attest to the invalidity of the vote I should point out that seated in front of me at Sanders was a group of Cambridge high school students who voted on every proposal, and indeed, there were also large contingents from both Lesley College and Boston University that also participated in the voting. I agree that the escalation of the Vietnam war is of great concern to all students, however, on issues such as amnesty for the occupiers of Massachusetts Hall. Angola, and the abolishment of the CRR, these outside students have little or no idea of the complexity of the issues. Also, the purpose of the meeting was to arrive at a platform endorsed by Harvard students, not outsiders. Even assuming that all of the less than 2000 people that attended were Harvard students, it would still be obvious that the passed proposals were still not indicative of the true University-wide sentiment due to the relative sparseness of the crowd less than 40 per cent of undergraduate enrollment.

I would suggest that all future proposals that profess to truly represent University sentiment should be voted on, by ballot, at meals in each of the various houses. Such proposals would not be considered endorsed by the student body unless at least 70 per cent of the students vote and at least two-thirds of that 70 per cent endorses the proposal. It that arrangement proves too difficult to implement, and it should not, that bursar's cards should be checked at all future mass meetings and provisions made to accomodate more of the student body to prevent the recurrence of such a fiasco. Thomas S. Volpe '73