It has come to our attention that many Harvard students are eagerly completing our “coloreds” comp and participating in our fine organization only to turn around and criticize our “institutional culture of racism” when they become alums. They stay long enough to take advantage of their separate but equally clean spaces, and then claim to have been treated “unfairly” in a ploy to gain sympathy from employers who want to understand why their articles were never allowed on the front page. This sort of institutional criticism cannot stand. The separation of the races is a proud tradition here at The Crimson, and we on the editorial board would like to take this opportunity to urge anyone who might someday take offense to our system of segregated bathrooms not to bother becoming a part of our organization.

Perhaps if we had reached these students before they completed the comp, we could have attempted to disabuse them of whatever cognitively dissonant impulses drew them to The Crimson in the first place. Yes, The Crimson has racially segregated bathrooms—as well as separate printing facilities and a monthly “whites-only” rager—but it’s been this way for generations, and there’s nothing “racist” about the idea that whites are fundamentally different from the other races. Maybe we could have persuaded them that the status quo is in accordance with the natural order, and we could have worked on separate sides of the building in peace. Otherwise, we would have told them not to bother coming to Harvard.