For example, when MSA members protested thepaucity of tenured minority faculty members at aJunior Parents Weekend event this year, only 20students picketed. In contrast, the demand forAfro-Am garnered the support of the Students for aDemocratic Society, which organized the UniversityHall takeover, as well as other protesters oncampus.
Some graduates, however, say the small ranks ofprotesters and the relative calm on campus todaymake current protesters the real crusaders.
"I think today's student reformers are braverthan we were," Wilson says. "Their environment isnot as conducive to protest as ours was."
Tom and Gutierrez say the political atmosphereon campus today warrants different tactics thanthose used by radical protesters in the 1960s.Gutierrez characterizes the 1990s as "more subduedtimes."
"We've talked about being more activist andmore drastic," Tom says. "But I'm afraid that wewould inspire negative repercussions. We couldnever recreate the spirit of the '60s, and I thinknow we would be seen as extremist, and would thenbe ineffective."
Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles says thetactics of yesterday wouldn't be acceptable today."I see few, if any, parallels between 1969 and1994," he says.
But some student complaints voiced in 1969persist today. "We don't want to openly antagonizethe administration because I don't think thatwould work. But I'm still not sure theadministration is trying hard enough to addressour concerns," Tom says.
"We realize that this is a gradual process, butI'm not sure that it has to be," she adds."Afro-Am was created overnight."
Tom says the MSA has concrete demands andexpects that the group will submit a recommendedtimetable to University officials in the next fewweeks.
"Sometimes I do feel like we need to push forsomething to happen now, because if it drags onand on we'll graduate and then administrators canjust start their dance all over again with newpeople."
Gutierrez says Harvard has yet to take even afirst step towards admitting that ethnic studiesis a valuable intellectual pursuit. "I think thatwe have to criticize the meager response of theadministration, which is indicative of theirreluctance to do anything," he says.
Daniels says that even in his time, theadministration was far from supportive. "Some ofour agreements were retroactively altered orreneged," he says." We all knew that we couldn'ttrust the Pusey administration, and this breakdownof trust caused yet another fissure in theUniversity."
Like the protesters of the 1969, MSA memberssay they seized a unique moment to put theirdemands into the spotlight--last spring's JuniorParents' Weekend. They say they saw a chance forsuccess and jumped at it.
"We had just a moment to slip in and push theUniversity to move forward," Hall says of theAfro-Am movement. "That's why we had to be soaggressive."
Griffin also says the Afro-Am department wasonly possible because of a brief moment in time inwhich almost anything was possible.
"That was a time when gradualism and partialsolutions just weren't acceptable," Griffin says."That was a time when students had the power andthey were going to use it. I don't think studentstoday could ever get that power back."