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Friday, April 08, 2005

WHY DID HE DO IT?
HERE’S ONE THEORY.


Suddenly they’re everywhere. From William James Hall to the Carpenter Center, Harvard students, all of them wearing white t-shirts with “no shit” symbols on them, are massing in protest against the university’s silence on what’s become known as “the Marty Matter.”

Harvard Economics professor Martin Weitzman (“Marty” to his friends) is a man of means. But for months he has been stealing horse manure from a struggling local farmer in Gloucester, a man who only recently was able to capture Weitzman in the act and have him arrested.

The students, who have been joined in their protests by Manure Movers of America, are demanding that Harvard make a public apology and offer financial compensation to the farmer for Weitzman’s thefts. “It’s shameful that Harvard is harboring - even honoring - a person on its faculty capable of this sort of behavior,” said one student organizer. “We’re all embarrassed. It’s time for the university to speak up and do something about it.”

Although Professor Weitzman has so far refused comment, one of his teaching assistants has released to the press a centuries-old American cookbook she found in Weitzman’s office. “Everyone assumes Marty was using the dung as fertilizer,” the student, who wishes to remain anonymous, said. “But the book suggests something far different. He had it open to this page, whose recipe for ‘Ham dres’fd without fire or water’ includes the phrase ‘then bury it in Horfe dung for forty hours.’ It’s my theory that Professor Weitzman was dressing hams.”