II.

But students are not the only members of the University community who are affected by the draft. The most interesting part of the story is the role of the Administration and the Faculty.

Before World War II the Harvard Administration viewed its relationship with students as custodial. In loco parentis was the rule. The University was the authoritarian father to the students. It protected them, but it demanded obedience. Until the war, the University felt that it could require students to act in certain ways and expect students to respond. Requirements were not strict, but the point of view of the custodian shaped policy.

After the war, as veterans of 25 to 30 years of age came onto the campus, the custodial role became gradually modified. Until recently, the University has tried to provide a wide framework for the exchange of all ideas and nearly all kinds of behavior. It builds a big playpen for all of us to roam around in.

THIS ROLE, squarely in the liberal tradition, has now come under fire because of the rapid expansion of the University community and because of the draft. First, the University has more outside contacts than never. Harvard is big business. The largest corporation in Massachusetts, it has assets of over one billion dollars. For example, the 1966-67 Financial Report states that the University owns 213,279 shares of American Tel. & Tel. at a market value of $12,156,903.

More important, as President Pusey noted in his Annual Report, new programs in the Kennedy School of Government, the Education, Divinity, Law, Public Health, and Medical Schools will mean closer cooperation between Harvard and federal and local governments.

War Policy Administrator

Second, the draft has put the University in the position where it is an active administrator of war policy. As much as Harvard tries to deny it, by inducing students to register for the draft and getting them II-S deferments and by processing and authorizing deferments it is actively supporting a Selective Service System that provides personnel for a war that 94 per cent of the class of 1968 believes is wrong.

Add to this the more dramatic issues of recruitment--providing University space for the Armed Forces and armaments makers to disseminate information urging students to participate in this war--and war research.

The draft also acts on the students to alter the old relationship. The draft is a threat to their personal and political beliefs, and a threat to their education. Two Harvard students recently were reclassified I-A and subject to induction after turning in their draft cards at an anti-war demonstration. The two talked to deans and faculty members, who patted them on the back but told them there was nothing the University could do about it all but Good Luck. The Dunster House Senior Common Room lent its sympathy in a weak-kneed petition, defying a rule against such pronouncements. But it meant little. Two Harvard students may well go to jail for their political and moral beliefs while the University, in true laissez-faire fashion, invites the Navv and Colgate Palmolive to recruit more "highly trained young men."

The relationship between the University and the students is reaching a crisis. The traditional liberal playpen is irrelevant. Harvard is, however reluctantly, supporting the war and the draft by its actions. It is neither politically nor morally neutral. It could not be if it wanted. Those days are over now. Meanwhile, educational policy is being disrupted (How can we justify ranking students for Selective Service but refuse to go along with the NCAA's guidelines on grading?), and worse, students are being snatched out of school for their beliefs.

III.

If the traditional liberal stance of the University is irrelevant, what do the students want their relationship with Harvard to be? There are two stances: First, they want a reversion to the custodial role but with a moral imperative behind it. That is, the University should, by its actions, take a stand against the war, and protect its students from the draft with its own power as an insitution.

The Divinity School, for example, seems headed this way. On December 15 its faculty unanimously passed a resolution supporting Divinity School draft resisters. It read in part: "We encourage members of our School community to join those who have pledged financial assistance to help defray the legal costs incurred by the resistance." The Faculty reportedly came close to pledging Divinity School money to this cause.

Second, students are asking the University to tear down all the playpen fences. School, they contend, should be reduced to a place where one takes his studies, and no more. The University should not restrict students at all. One evidence of this school of thought is the movement to abolish parietals. Another is the contention of some that the University should not protect them from outside police and should not place them in double jeopardy either.