Word: fernandez
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...John P. Fernandez '69 had plenty of personal commitments to keep him occupied in 1969. He was a married man, working 40 hours a week. He didn't know too many students--he transferred to Harvard his junior year and lived off campus...
...Thomas Crooks, then master of Dudley House, walked up to him, Fernandez recalls, and said, "John, the Committee of Fifteen needs someone with a reasonable mind." Fernandez thought it over and decided to run in his House elections for a seat on the Committee...
...adopted a creative counter-strategy--it ran its own delegates in House elections, and if they won, they promptly resigned. When Dudley House held its election, it came down to a runoff between Fernandez and an SDS member. Fernandez won, and headed for the final hurdle to becoming a member--the green marble lottery...
Because the committee only admitted three student representatives, yet each House had held an election, the final choice was decided by lot. "I remember," Fernandez says, "there were only three green marbles and you had to choose one of them in order to win. I was feeling kind of unlucky that day and I asked the president of Dudley House to choose for me." He walked away with a green marble and Fernandez had his seat on the committee...
...Fernandez does not consider himself a traitor to his fellow students, but he does recognize that many undergraduates did. "There were comments made as I walked out of the hearings. They called me pig, said that I was selling out to the establishment." Others questioned what he, of all people--"a minority with a very poor background"--was doing in the CRR meeting room on the penthouse floor of Holyoke Center, "sitting around with all these white gentlemen...