At the same time, however, they will be little comfort to many of those crities who often add "Thanks God, it's not our kids." For the survey also shows a wide distribution of radicals in previously "conservative" areas.
Houses, for example, which have always been considered the domain of conservative traditionalists-Eliot, Lowell and Quincy-accounted for 39 per cent of the survey cases.
Two years ago, the system for distributing freshmen in the House system was changed to break down the enclaves of provincialism that House Masters had set up. With the change came a slow distraction of stereo-types: Eliot House as the prepple House: Winthrop, the Jock House: Quincy the center of student government; Dunster and Adams, the radical Houses.
The new distribution also exposed more students to a wider range of political opinions, and specifically radical opinions, not only at the dinner table, but in late night roommate bullsessions.
While the radicals exemplified in this survey are hardly the working class kids SDS would like, they do include some surprises. Two starters on the 1968 football team were members of SDS last year. A large number of students in the Hasty Pudding, the Fly, and Spee Club also participated in the University Hall occupation.
The preponderance of students from private schools and not holding scholarships can be interpreted in two ways.
"It's not surprising" one radical leader who was fired this Spring, said. Upper middle class students from private schools are exposed to a wider variety of experiences, he explained, and tend to discard the dogma of Americanism more easily. Their training has favored objectivity and therefore they are the first to question accepted American values.
In addition, working class students who are admitted to Harvard are most strongly imbued with the capitalistic ethic. They have to be, he said. And when the time comes to risk their scholarships in a building occupation, they have the most at stake.
On the other hand, blacks and working class students have the most actual experience in the concepts which SDS espouses and therefore are not swayed by often idealistic and vague demands on the University.
They have been most successful by working with the system and know its benefits as well as its deficiencies, critics of radicalism argue.
The same two perspectives can be used to analyze the importance of the concentration distribution. The bulk of the student protesters in the survey majored in the Humanities and the Social Sciences. Very few come from the Natural Science fields.
In general the Humanities and Social Sciences encourage the development of a "world view." The organization of facts into comprehensive schematic philosophies is stressed. In the sciences, generalizations are the jumping off point for specific research and scientists tend to be more skeptical of radical demands or rhetoric which is not accompanied by an appendix of facts.