Puerto Rico: Swept Under the Rug

"The course has no future."--Susan W. Lewis, director of the Core Curriculum and General Education, The Crimson, September 21, 1989.

"There is a sucker born every minute,"--P.T. Barnum.

I am a sucker. For the past three years, I honestly believed that Harvard would offer the one course I have always wanted to take, Gen Ed 154, "Puerto Rico in the Twentieth Century."

Call me naive, but I was so sure of it that I would have made a bet with anyone. Form a line and place your bets, current odds are 3-1 that a course on Puerto Rico will finally be offered at Harvard.

As it stands today, I would have been a very poor student.

NOW, "the course has no future." Problem is, the course has never even had a present or a past. Just a lot of empty bureaucratic promises and plenty of excuses.

When Gov. Rafael Hernandez-Colon of Puerto Rico made an official visit to Cambridge in March 1987, the University gave him and Harvard's Puerto Rican community a warm reception. The Harvard Foundation presented to Hernandez-Colon an award "for outstanding contributions to governmental leadership and international cooperation."

Amidst wining and dining at Leverett House, Hernandez-Colon spoke of the University's enthusiasm to increase awareness of Puerto Rican affairs and culture. For years, La Organizacion (La O), Harvard's Puerto Rican student organization, has asked Dean of the Faculty A. Michael Spence to consider offering a course on Puerto Rican history.

Gen Ed 154 was supposed to be the first installment of the University's plans. In the fall of 1987 and 1988, the course was included in the annual course guide, but was never offered. This year, it wasn't even included. And now, "the course has no future."

So, as I start my final year at Harvard, I am still waiting. Maybe Godot will pay me a visit.

THE main reason for the University's inability to fulfill its plans is inexcusable. Arturo Morales-Carrion, perhaps the most prolific Puerto Rican historian of his time, was the professor the University wanted all along. But Morales-Carrion had been sick for the past few years and died this summer. Without Morales-Carrion, Gen Ed 154 could no longer exist, the University said.

But according to Wendell C. Ocasio '90, president of La O, the University presented a different story last spring.

"In a meeting with MSA [Minority Student Alliance] at the end of last year, Dean Spence and [Associate Dean for Undergradute Education David] Pilbeam told us that they would either get Morales-Carrion or somebody else," Ocasio says.

"They never said, either Morales-Carrion or no one," he adds.

This is irresponsible on the University's part. To use the excuse of Morales-Carrion's death as the main reason to not offer Gen Ed 154 after saying it intended to search for other professors besides Morales-Carrion reveals a significant flaw in the University's efforts. It is as if the University simply does not care when or if a course on Puerto Rican Studies will ever be offered.

I find it hard to believe that the late Morales-Carrion was the only qualified professor in this world to teach about Puerto Rico. Morales-Carrion was certainly not the first prominent Puerto Rican historian, and he is certainly not the last.

One professor who was planning to teach the course last year is Luis E. Agrait, an associate professor of history at the University of Puerto Rico. La O presented Agrait's name to the University and after establishing contact, Agrait began to coordinate the course, with the hope of teaching it last spring. A week before spring registration, the University decided not to offer the course.