Courses Don't Discriminate

To the Editors

Two errors of fact have appeared in recent issues of The Crimson concerning Harvard's recent decision to enter into an agreement with NROTC.

The lead story on February 11 reported a letter from the Undergraduate Council to Dean Spence that "both the Faculty and Undergraduate Council are opposed in principle to the military's policy against homosexuals." This is not true. In fact, at its meeting last February, the Faculty voted only that in reimbursing MIT's costs of operating the ROTC program it did "non wish to imply support of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation."

In a letter to The Crimson on February 9, Mr. Jake Stevens asks, "What if Harvard gave students academic credit for a course which no Black student could attend?" The implication is that Harvard is giving academic credit to ROTC courses that are closed to gay students. In fact, the course in question are offered by MIT as part of is ordinary curriculum, and, like all courses offered by MIT for academic credit, they are open to all MIT students and to all Harvard students as well. Harry R. Lewis   McKay Professor of Computer Science