Word: gerson
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...results in the Canadian Rhodes and British Marshall Scholarships competitions this year. The Crimson's headline last Monday said Harvard had been "shut out" this year, an approach that seems wrong. Rhodes Scholarships aren't simply prizes that schools collect, but opportunities for students. As U.S. Rhodes Secretary Elliot Gerson '74 told The Crimson, "We choose individuals, not colleges." I appreciate the disappointment our U.S. Rhodes candidates may feel, but I hope we will all take the success of our Canadian Rhodes and British Marshall winners as a true measure of the Class...
Calling this year's results a "random fluctuation," Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68 attributes Harvard's non-showing to an unavoidable statistical aberration that was bound to happen one year or another. Elliot F. Gerson '74, American Secretary of the Rhodes Scholarship Trust, deems it an "inevitable" event into which no "great significance" should be read. While chance no doubt played a part in Harvard's poor showing, I would add to that an entirely non-random factor...
...American Rhodes competition, look no further than the process by which Harvard selects its candidates for the award. While well-meaning, Harvard's Rhodes endorsement competition, carried out by the college and administered by the Office of Career Services (OCS), consistently denies qualified candidates university endorsement, as Gerson himself and the Warden of Rhodes House noted on a recent visit. Even though college officials moved to address Gerson's concerns by raising the number of endorsements by 21 percent this year, so many clearly qualified candidates remained on the sidelines that it's no surprise Harvard was denied outright this...
...these changes are made, Lewis and Gerson can rest assured that Harvard's present impotence in the Rhodes competition is indeed a statistical fluke and not the result of a miscalibrated endorsement process. Future applicants too can then know it was the stars that were aligned against them rather than the system...
...Gerson said Harvard should not be phased by this news...