Misunderstandings like these can be serious impediments to the resolution of the present crisis. Pusey writes: "Bringing students of this persuasion [i.e., activists] back to reality presents a new kind of challenge to education, to Faculty certainly, but especially and with painful immediacy, perhaps to deans." Pusey has the roles reversed. It is the role of the students to make the rest of the University understand what is going on for them. Administrators are trying to run Harvard in a way incompatible with the new demands of 1968. Students must make them realize this.
Without swinging too far either way--toward a totally new custodial relationship or toward a complete break in relations--there are intermediate positions that can be taken now to help solve the crisis. The most important would be to respect the authority of the new Student-Faculty Advisory Committee and enact any of its recommendations to bar recruiters.
Second, the University should encourage groups at all academic levels to take stands on the war and the draft: departments, common rooms, committees. Third, it should sanction the use of funds for anti-draft use if one of the Schools should advocate financial aid to resisters. Fourth, it should not discipline students for demonstrations unless they are "maliciously destructive."
Finally, the University should encourage more student-Faculty-Administration contact by ending secret Ad Board and Faculty meetings (unless they deal with personalities) and by setting up more joint committees. This is the most constructive direction--toward more University participation in the draft problem.
The second direction--toward a break in University-student relations--is less desirable. But this direction could provide an easier "out" for the University. Measures here would include lifting double jeopardy and extending student power and control to all areas of activity--ending parietals, establishing a more powerful student government with discretion over recruiting policies. These would be satisfactory intermediate measures. The long-range goal would be complete disassociation.
Meanwhile, while the crisis in the student-Administration relationship goes on unresolved, Harvard is being drafted. Even if administrators get the message, it may be too late. For many seniors it is already too late. It is already next year, and in the leaves and the scraps, Harvard is being drafted.
The University has to realize that it cannot be neutral even if it wants to