CHRISTMAS TREES, AGAIN

To the Editors of The Crimson:

I note with growing concern a propensity of some members of the Harvard community to distort the concept of "rights of the minority" in order to charge discrimination where none exists. The most recent example concerns the reaction to Christmas decorations in House dining halls. Hope Reisman writes to The Crimson that she finds "such decorations offensive and discriminatory." I fail to see the applicability of either term. Ms. Reisman need not feel personally insulted or offended that a sizeable portion of the community wishes to celebrate a particular holiday while she does not. Nor should she feel that she is being discriminated against; no benefits are being conferred on some and specifically not on her except those benefits traceable to a freedom of association which she willfully eschews.

Ms. Reisman also states, "I thought that the student body as a whole would be sensitive to the needs of minority students." Certainly the majority has a responsibility to respect those needs; does this mean that the majority should refrain from anything to which a significant minority objects, perhaps at the expense of being insensitive to needs of "majority students"? One suspects that if this were the case Harvard would have to abandon its four-day recess in November as being clearly discriminatory: there are many foreign students at Harvard for whom that break is doubtless too short a time to get home, even not to celebrate Thanksgiving.

In any community certain minorities may at times not feel "part of the group." This seems to be Ms. Reisman's chief complaint, that, as a non-Christian she feels "excluded" both by the United States and from a part of the University which she considers her home. Nonsense. It is her choice to disdain Christianity and there is nothing wrong with that. Further, Harvard should avoid conflicts such as the one involving Freshman registration and Rosh Hashanah. But to contend that because not all students here are Christian members of that faith should be prohibited from expressing their sentiments in public decorations is a mischievous perversion of the concept of rights of the minority. Steve Boutwell '77