E4D Issue: Not Ideological

To the Editors of The Crimson:

The article "Council Sidesteps E4D Issue" by Michael Nolan, which appeared on Thursday, December 5, misrepresented my purposes for submitting a proposal to the Council's Administrative Committee suggesting that the Council sever its ties to the Endowment for Divestiture, and my reasons for deciding to withdraw it. Since, Mr. Nolan spent about 20 minutes discussing the issue with me in an interview, I fail to understand why this information was omitted from his aricle.

I submitted this proposal on a purely administrative, technical level, not on an idelogical one. Politically it is neither conservative nor liberal, but neutral. Personally, I feel very strongly about the divestiture movement and support it wholeheartedly. However, given the administrative entanglements that have resulted from the Council's relationship with E4D, I feel as a Council member that we need to reconsider whether E4D should continue to fall within our jurisdiction. The Council does not have unlimited resources; we have a specified amount of time and energy to spend on the issues with which we deal. Therefore, we should be spending that time and energy on issues that we can handle effectively, rather than on issues for which our support will ineffectively weaver from year to year.

Additionally, I would like to point out that it is unfair for Council members and/or Council officers to be expected to uphold specific political beliefs if they disagree with them. Some people have very strong arguments for constructive engagement, and feel that it would be morally reprehensible for the Corporation not to maintain its investments. It is wrong for the Council's liberal contingent to offend the political and moral sensibilities of the more conservative members by attempting to speak for them on the issue of divestiture. Additionally, the interests of Harvard's divestiture movement are much better served by undergraduate organizations that are firmly committed to it, rather than an organization that is only half-heartedly supportive of it.

I temporarily withdrew this proposal because when one of the members of the Administrative Committe suggested that the issue be taken up with the Committe on Investment Responsibility before being presented to the full Council, it seemed like a logical reason for waiting to officially submit it. The proposal is in no way "short-lived", as Nolan's article implied; it has merely been temporarily postponed. Lynn A. Marchetti '87   Undergraduate Council