Academically, I have done well. After my first semester's academic shellacking. I quickly found out that for the sake of grades I had a prescribed role to play in this institution. I would have to always give teachers what they wanted, and rarely what I truly believed, for my beliefs were usually in conflict with the professor. In classes taught by whites, like Pettigrew's class on Race Relations. I returned my thinking to 1962 and wrote as I thought Martin Luther King would have because I knew that that was what Pettigrew wanted. For most of the Afro-American courses I have taken I assumed the rhetorical style of H. Rap Brown.

I am not proud of my self-demeaning, two-faced accomplishments, but this behavior is just a microcosm of the group behavior the black man is relegated to in this society. For I am neither Martin Luther King nor H. Rap Brown. I don't think every white man is a devil, nor do I think every black man is an angel. I wasn't raised to think either way, nor has my life led me to believe otherwise. If that makes me "a Tom", so be it. If it makes me a black militant. I guess I'm one. I am convinced that the real me could not have made it through Harvard. The only courses at Harvard in which I could unmask my true feelings without fear of grade reprisals were scattered through the Anthropology Department.

Athletically, I had only unfortunate experiences at Harvard. One was meeting Coach John Yovicsin and his football staff, who successfully foiled any aspirations I had for gridiron achievement. Yovicsin and his staff could best be described as typically racist, reactionary conservatives--the kind of Americans who elected Richard Nixon in 1968. The following selected passages might provide more insight into "Yovy" and his relationship to me during the 1970 football season: Dartmouth Program Oct. 24, 1970 "It didn't seem inappropriate at his first press conference at a Boston hotel. Down at the end of a table was a long-hair, a beatnik with bushy hair and thick glasses--a stereotype. Yovicsin merely glanced at him.

"Tom Bolles, the athletic director, with a whimsical turn of mind, said to Yovicsin: 'That's one of your ends.'

"Yovicsin recalls, 'I almost fell out of my chair.'

"Of course, he wasn't a football player at all--just a writer from The Crimson."

'I have loved my years at Harvard.' says Yovicsin. 'I love Harvard more than Dick Harlow said I would. That zoo parade up in Harvard Square these days, that's not Harvard. The real Harvard is in the college, in the classrooms.'"

News and Views of Harvard Sports Dec. 1. 1970"...after beating Yale for the eighth time in his 14-year career at Harvard. "It takes everything a person can give to coach football, and even then you never get to the point where you feel you've done all you can." Yovicsin said the 14-12 victory over Yale was more important to his players than it was to him.

"...a Yale scout once wrote in his report: 'Harvard is a team that can be depended upon to play the percentages.' Now his critics said: Well, he's too aloof; he doesn't get close enough to the players. He wins because he has good material.'

'I couldn't be over-friendly with an individual or a group, say from the same House. I couldn't face the charge of favoritism.' he says. 'I couldn't let my hair down. There are two sides to the job, the nature of the man and the nature of the job.'

"Yovicsin's career at Harvard, from time to time, has been clouded by drop-outs. 'Sure, they bothered me,' he says. 'I tried to convince them they were making a mistake. I talked with them the way I'd talk to my sons. I asked them to seek other advice--from people outside football--and to add everything up. Sometimes, truthfully, you're better off when some of them quit.'

"Above all he has been honest. An honest coach, an honest man. That virtue is always its own reward."

Rutgers Football Program October 3, 1970 'But we have found senior leadership this year. These are the same fellows who were sophomores in 1968, and they remember that, too.'

'I'm more happy for the boys than anyone else...expecially the seniors,' he said."

"Yovicsin pinned his hopes on "a great senior class.'