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The Mail 'NOTHING VENTURED'

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Friday, February 8. WHRB sponsored a Kris Kristofferson concert at Sanders Theatre. When we arrived at 8:30 a note on the door advised us that the concert had been cancelled. The WHRB promoter downstairs explained that it had actually been cancelled a week earlier; publicity (posters) had been informal and not enough tickets were sold.

No doubt the Red Sox would play the Orioles even if only six people showed up. After all, when one sells a ticket, one promises a performance. Kristofferson, the promoter said, had not cancelled. The decision was an economic one, and dubious at best.

Yet even allowing this much, why had WHRB not at least informed the public of the week-old cancellation, notes on the door notwithstanding? Simple enough, according to the promoter-since the concert itself had been little publicized, why bother to publicize the cancellation? Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

It makes a lot of sense. You rent a hall, schedule a concert, then fail to advertise it. When the failure to advertise succeeds and few tickets are sold, you off the concert and assume that the people who did buy tickets won't mind not knowing. After all, might they not have easily enough intuited that cancellation was imminent (nay inevitable) inasmuch as there had been no effort to sell tickets?

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Felix Belardi

Larry Duberstein

Amanda Fairchild

Susan Fletcher

Gordon Pardee

Steve Shenker

Mav Valvo

COURTESY FOR SIORIS

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Professor John Cooper and your editorialist Michael Ryan berate Harvard for entertaining the Greek Minister Nikitias Sioris as a guest. They are right about the character of the Greek regime. But as to the question of courtesy, a different principle is involved. Would they protest equally if the Soviet Minister of Education came as a guest? Yet the regime is equally repressive. What one should show is the open character of the American campus. That is the principle of freedom. Bring on the guests, and bring on the pickets, too. The latter have their rights. But keep an open campus.

EASY TO BE COLD

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

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