CIA/DHS Protestors Hurt Job-Hunting Seniors

To the editors:

As a witness to the grotesque display during the OCS panel, I was unconvinced by Kevin J. Connor and Suvrat Raju that their chosen methods were designed to achieve those goals (“Change From the Inside,” Op-ed, Apr. 20).

If the goal was “to intervene in the day to day operations of government,” then the actions taken by the protesters sorely missed the mark. The recruiters will recruit elsewhere; indeed, there is no shortage of qualified students that believe government intelligence agencies play a crucial role in our national security. Rather, the ugly protest intervened in the day to day operations of fellow students—namely seniors such as myself, who now have to scramble to figure out if it is worth the time to finish the application to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), given that the word “Harvard” should immediately make any reviewer think twice.

Thankfully, I was not solely relying on the CIA or the Department of Homeland Security for employment. But what if there were students who had been? Would their increased anxiety and hardship over finding a job be counted as a success by these people?

ARIEL SETH WOLF ’05

April 20, 2005