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One Reason Why Mrs. Pankhurst Was Refused.

Communications

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

There appeared in the columns of the CRIMSON a few days ago, a communication arraigning the Corporation for its action in refusing the use of a College building to Mrs. Pankhurst. And since then the Boston papers have taken up the issue.

I should like to point out one thing in this connection. It is a well established but perhaps little recognized fact that whenever anything of note happens in a large university, glowing accounts, often puffed with the bellows of ill-feeling, find their way into newspapers all over the country. It has come, as a result, that a university must guard its reputation very scrupulously. Give the public the least suspicion that there is anything out of the ordinary going on, and immediately the pack of newspaper reporters is in full cry.

In refusing the use of a College building to Mrs. Pankhurst, the Corporation has doubtless been influenced in part by this. Far from "branding her as forbidden fruit" as the editor of the Women's Journal puts it,--and how childish such a statement seems!--the Corporation simply refuses to have reports circulated, in great, glaring headlines, to the effect that "Harvard Turns Suffragist!" 1913.

The CRIMSON believing that both sides of this case have been adequately presented does not care to publish further communications on the subject.

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