To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

The morning is steeped with gloom. The little birds are retching and barfing in the trees. The Mother Charles is saddened, and the air is sick at heart.

Miss Levine has been defeated; not by a fair and honorable vote, but, like mankind's clearest dreams throughout the ages, by the sycophants and martinets who inevitably gravitate into The Establishment. Defeated; not by the honest efforts of her adversaries, not by an honest election, but by the baleful poison of small bureaucratic minds, which crawl and plot at night.

And yet in a broader sense the blame lies with all of us. We have seen minds which would throw out a ballot, and we have permitted them to live. We have taken the worst from among us, and systematically elevated them to the HCUA. We have seen the office of class marshal reduced to a scrap of carrion for which jackals fight.

And yet once, once we may remember, we had an honest standard-bearer. Once idealism had a living symbol. She has bared her bosom to the wind. Our ugly world can have little claim on her.

Her candidacy is dead, but those who refused to count her votes, our votes, live on. For what they did Monday they bear the curse of cain, the albatross, and the scarlet letter. They were born bureaucrats, and bureaucrats they will remain. May they be drowned in a pit of red tape and their death certificates notarized in quadruplicate. Christian Brannon