Word: sams
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Sam also knows what has to be done for Indians at Harvard. First, you have to bring more of them here--there are still only 11 undergraduates--and you have to make sure they're the right kind of Indian. Most Indian students who manage to get here come from urban areas rather than reservations. Because they are used to "straddling the fence," as Sam puts its, they have little or no trouble adjusting to Harvard, but--for the same reason--they are less likely to make a direct contribution to Indian society once they get out of here...
...type of people that are coming here, you can't rely on as leaders for the Indian people," Sam says. "They don't come from the reservation, so they don't have that experience factor to draw on." The reservation, he says, gives Indians a sense of identity, "something you can point to and say, if you destroy this, you destroy us--something to rally behind, to show to other people...
American Indians at Harvard, the group that Sam chairs, has taken up as its main project a recruitment program aimed at Indian students on reservations. The four five active members of AIH have been flying around the country, their fares paid by the admissions offices, speaking to entire school bodies and to small groups, trying to get people to consider applying to a place as unfamiliar as Harvard...
...easy. Indian students who consider college at all are more likely to think of state schools, where there are special programs for them. Sam says that, being realistic, he doesn't expect a very high proportion of the students AIH has contacted actually to apply "because of the distance from home, the strangeness of the place...
...Harvard really a good place for Indians to go to? "Well, I think it's potentially a good place for them," Sam says quickly. "You can get a good education here, you can make contacts, you get a lot more exposure to things than you would back home...