Word: sds
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...CRIMSON recently carried a letter by several SDS members attacking YPSL's petition which calls for a student referendum to decide whether ROTC should continue to enjoy special privileges on campus. The issue, the letter declares is, not ROTC's special status. Rather, there is no issue: "Morally, then, there is no 'right' to be part of an an organization like ROTC...
...SDS' basic argument is that the only legitimate and tolerable position on the Vietnam War is "opposition," that the only tolerable evaluation of ROTC's role in American policy is "counterrevolutionary," and that therefore democratic decision-making is irrelevant to decisions about ROTC because there are no decisions to be made. The SDS letter maintains that because belonging to ROTC is immoral, a student has no right to do something immoral, i.e., join ROTC. Visions of Cotton Mather! Or, indeed, George Wallace, a proponent of similar doctrines of absolute truth...
...declare "Thou shalt not have the right to belong to an immoral organization" is not merely ludicrous. It implies that on anyone's say-so, Harvard students can be shorn of their right to join, for example, SDS, on the grounds that SDS is immoral because SDS' confrontation politics strengthen support for Wallace and repression. Who's to decide what's moral and what isn't? If SDS can arrogate to itself such moral infallibility, why can't the Mountaineering Club--who get closer to God--do the same? Jon Ratner '70 President, Harvard-Radcliffe Young People's Socialist League
Regarding the SDS letter against ROTC being on campus in the October 21 edition of the Crimson: We would like to know just when the SDS obtained a copyright on morality? We reject the notion that by allowing a student referendum to decide the status of ROTC, Harvard is submitting to the "narrow self interests of some Harvard students," or "welcoming the instruments of repression...
...issue is not the morality of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, but the simple Right of students to believe differently than SDS. To reject the right of some students to belong to ROTC, is to deny their right, their freedom, to believe as they want, and feel they must; it is to deny them the right to support U.S. involvement in Vietnam. This negation of freedom puts SDS in the position of advocating suppression. The SDS should remember that no matter what moral superiority they claim, they have no more right to suppress freedom than the U.S. government...