Things are different when everyone is involved. In situations-like Harvard's last Spring-when every portion of the reading audience has some vital stake in the way news is reported, no one is likely to be happy with the communications media. It is simply impossible for a newspaper to operate in that kind of fishbowl, since nothing but the most simplistic version of the facts will escape charges of biased coverage. The instant a reporter tries to put the facts in perspective, the waves of public indignation will roll down to crush him.

That, I think, is the reason WHRB escaped the torrent of abuse that hit the CRIMSON and the professional newspapers last spring. Radio, by its nature, is perfectly adapted to presenting large amounts of undigested fact to the audience; a newspaper, just as naturally, has to condense and exercise some judgment. It's hard to fault a live broadcast of a Faculty meeting, but a news writer will have to choose one event as the most important-and instantly antagonize half his readers.

The moral of this may be that when there is no middle ground in the University there is no place for a newspaper that tries to be objective. All college newspapers may someday move into overtly partisan journalism, abandoning even the pretense of balanced coverage. We're not ready for that yet at the CRIMSON. We still act as if we think we should "serve the University community." But while trying hard to keep up that front, we can't help but remember what we've learned.

Those of us who came here when "objective journalism" was a more plausible fiction have merely had our assumptions crushed in the last two or three years. Those who have come since then have seen only the circumstances that destroyed our original beliefs. I'm not trying to sound patronizing here, or to strike a grandfatherly pose at age 20. The point is simply that the students now running the CRIMSON have not had to rid themselves of the same set of anachronistic assumptions that burdened us.

The upshot of this will, I think, be healthy for the CRIMSON's news coverage. The paper will still, of course, try its best to present an objective version of the news. But reporters who know that objectivity is basically a sham may spend more time looking for more perceptive ways to report. A writer who has been burned time and again for his "balanced" stories will have fewer inhibitions about presenting very openly his own interpretation. As long as there is still room on the page for a bare factual account, I think the more interpretive coverage will go farther toward satisfy ?? ?ntellectual demands of the readers.

There may b?? ?? ?lopment, which is already ?? ?ciful old days of u?? ?? ?mmunities, the CRIMSON's editoria? ?? crammed, nearly every day with corporate? ?cements on a vast range of topics. Even ca??lers of our current editorial pages have notice larger and larger chunks of them have gon? ?tonal pieces-reviews and analyses-with a ?ding drop in the number of formal editorials.

That may also be an inevitable bluct of the university gone berserk. In theory, are three ways an editorial can exert some??le over its readers: on obscure or confused ?? can dig up new facts to educate and person issues that are already well-known, it ca??t a particularly elegant argument to win??ers; and when struggles get to the point of up firepower on each side, the paper can its collective weight to one of the teams.

Without any detailed analysis, it's to see that every recent trend at Harvard ?ndercut the bargaining points. There are not topics any more where the CRIMSON can ?? to unearth surprising facts. Everyone is ?? expert now, on a steadily widening circle of ?nd our editorial role has unfortunately become one of reaction than of muckraking. At the same, as the number of pressure groups here mushroomed, the pressure exerted by one of ?otorials has shrunk almost to the disappearing. And as the University becomes more and mo?? great closed mind (e.g., Nathan Pusey last sp? "Can anyone believe these demands are ?n seriously?"; an OBU spokesman after Clif? Alexander was named the University's ??ator: "Pusey appointed him-what more do have to say."), even well-argued stands seem inngly futile.

There will still be editorials, just as there still be "objective" news. But now we will rea? their limitations as we write them.

I SAID BEFORE that the cult of personal ?cks is one of the most loathsome of current Car? ?ge developments. I stress that again as I tack ??al polemic onto this piece, because I'm trying ?w that there is something other than person ?le behind the next 15 inches of type. A corany man's resignation naturally smacks of ??d slinging and symbolic assassination; that is j?? problem with the issue. It has been left ?? to fester in the realm of personal slander, an?? needs to be considered on other grounds.

In the first few minutes after 5 a. m. last Ap??, one of the chants that rose from dumbstruck ?tators around University Hall was "Pusey Mus? Pusey Must Go!" The chant died gradually? curiously did not reappear.

In the weeks that followed, Pusey escaped ?? of the personal-castigation that fell on other ?ulty members and administrators. Franklin ?? was held responsible for the infamous "R?? Letter"; Henry Rosovsky became a scapegoa? the Afro-American Studies Program. But th? it all, Pusey never became the Grayson Kir? S. I. Hayakawa of Cambridge. It's hard to ?? exactly why Pusey did not become more of a tar? Perhaps the radical students were too sophistica? to waste their attack on one man; perhaps th? knew Pusey would leave anyway in two or three years.

With passions somewhat cooled from last Spring it is possible to look at the question in a different light. Completely apart from issues of calling in the police or eulogizing the departed ROTC, it may well be that Harvard's health depends on the quick departure of Nathan Pusey.

The problem is not the much-celebrated "symbolic isolation" of Pusey from the students at Harvard. The isolation is, of course, real; students know that Pusey will not invite them over for dinner, or seek them out for chats in the Yard. But students also realize that the frostiness is merely a sufface matter; befriending the undergraduates is not really the President's job here. And I doubt that anyone at Harvard would feel satisfied to see some glad-handing smoothie come rolling in to take straight-talking Pusey's place. Now, at least, we are always sure that Pusey says exactly what he means.

The problem is also not one of political differences-although those differences certainly exist. There is an illustrative story here which I have heard from so many different sources that I assume it comes somewhere near the truth: