Word: grapes
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...have forgotten, it seems, the battles of our not-too-distant past and have lost entirely our ability to think of anything other than muddling our way through this conduit to medical school or Wall Street. I have difficulty deciding which bothered me more, the outcome of the grape debate or the Undergraduate Council election this December, but both highlighted our ready willingness to abandon integrity in the moment of choice for the easy comfort of shallow goals...
...astounded when the ad hoc Grape Coalition was formed; never before in my memory had a conservative group taken an active stance in campus politics. Conservatism here tends to be expressed in enforced apathy. The opinions of Harvard students or the Undergraduate Council do not matter in the world, they say, and it is pretentious to think that Pepsi will pull out of Burma just because we say so (I'm sure they pulled out from the goodness of their corporate hearts). But to have a group challenge the very foundation of the progressive liberal orthodoxy was new and frightening...
...debate was predictable at first. The more liberal factions on campus quickly mobilized and informed themselves of the allegations the United Farm Workers (UFW) have made about grape growing conditions. Many middle-of-the-road students didn't care, and the more short-sighted and selfish factions mounted an ignorant "Grapes taste good" campaign. We have gotten along quite well for some time without grapes, and I doubt very sincerely that many of the eventual yes-voters ever bought grapes on their own out of frustration that the dining hall didn't have them. A vote for yes, essentially, said...
Then the serious pro-grape people began to attack the UFW itself, and things changed fast in an even more disturbing way. Because we cannot know for certain what the actual conditions in California are and can only hear the opinions of the grape growers and the UFW, we do not have enough facts to vote no, they said. And it was this side that carried the day. What this means, essentially, is that when conflict arises between organized labor and the rich land-owning class, we give the benefit of the doubt to the latter...
...potential Quad improvements go, these are just the tip of the iceberg--other possibilities include a student-run Contented Workers Table Grape Plantation (complete witk big-screen TVs and roving masseuses in the fields) and a Quad militia, charged with the armed takeover and subjugation of Lesley College. I'm sure that there many other ways for the Quad to be improved which I haven't thought of yet. When I do, the students of Harvard University will be the first to know--just as soon as I get out of this bathrobe...