ON A RECENT SUNDAY afternoon about 150 students gathered in Harvard Yard to express their support for affirmative action and its attendant quota systems. During the course of the rally one dissenter stood alone. Howard Jonahs '78 held a sign proclaiming "Affirmative Action is Unjust" on one side and "Hire on Merit" on the other. Although Jonahs says he received threats and taunts from members of the crowd, he surely represented a much larger segment of the Harvard community than was apparent that day. Even more important, Howard Jonahs was right.

The phrase "affirmative action" covers a large set of different individual programs. Originally it included programs to encourage applications from women and minorities who otherwise might not have applied. Affirmative action meant wide advertisement of opportunities to insure that prospective minority applicants had adequate information. It meant searching in previously overlooked areas for well-qualified minority group members and working to improve the qualifications of all those who remained underqualified, regardless of their race, sex or ethnic background. These efforts are all quite laudable and have received widespread support, as they should have.

But today affirmative action also means the imposition of racial, sexual and ethnic quotas. It now includes, for example, Judge W. Arthur Garrity Jr.'s order that one black schoolteacher be hired for every new white teacher until a certain percentage of Boston schoolteachers are black. It includes quotas for firemen and policemen, even though hiring standards had to be lowered to meet the required percentages. Affirmative action quotas now apply in occupations ranging from construction labor to law.

These quotas also now apply to academic institutions. To be acceptable to the federal government, a university's affirmative action program must include goals and timetables to remedy "deficiencies" in areas of "underutilization" of minorities. The goal is to equalize the racial, sexual and ethnic proportions of personnel in academic institutions, according to Walter J. Leonard, Harvard's affirmative action czar. Goals, timetables and proportions are all euphemisms for quotas, without which the charges of "deficiency" and "underutilization" wouldn't make any sense. In fact, the demand for stricter quotas with closer compliance was the main point of the recent student demonstration.

It is by definition racist to treat individuals differently on the basis of their race, yet this is precisely what affirmative action quotas require. Under these quotas individuals are hired for jobs or admitted to schools with their racial, sexual or ethnic backgrounds as a key reason for selection. As a result, other people lose school or job opportunities because they are from the wrong race, sex or minority group. Such quota programs are inherently racist and unjust.

Affirmative action quotas are also counterproductive and impractical. One can imagine, for example, the feelings of an applicant rejected by an employer or school, while others are being accepted, not because of their superior qualifications (they may often have inferior qualifications), but because they belong to the right race or minority group under affirmative action quotas. Such a person most likely will feel bitterness towards the favored races and minority groups, a feeling that will foster a racist attitude. Even where the applicant is rejected solely on the basis of his qualifications, he is still likely to blame the quotas.

Quotas foster racism in many other ways as well. As such programs become more widespread, they will foster the belief that all successful minority group members have achieved their positions only through special privileges and quota systems. "He only got that job because he's a black" or "she only got that job because she's a woman" will grow from whispers to openly expressed opinions serving as the foundation for a reinvigorated racism and sexism. This is tremendously unfair to women and minority group members who gain their positions legitimately.

There may be even more disastrous consequences when applicants begin to make fraudulent claims about their ancestry. Then the law will have to specify what it means to be black, Spanish-American or white. Is it really in the interests of the fight against racism to have official legal definitions of certain races or minority groups? Is it really wise to label and pigeonhole every American in order to know what special quotas each can fill? The final disaster will occur when the government starts issuing official heredity status cards to all citizens.

Furthermore, quotas promote racism by encouraging people to think and speak in terms of racial and ethnic groups. The widespread use of quotas will cause people to perceive others in these terms instead of as individuals. As the focus on race grows, so does racism.

Affirmative action quota programs are also fatally flawed because they ignore qualifications for positions when this consideration is essential for the successful performance of job duties and school tasks. No one wants to be served by doctors, lawyers or plumbers who received their positions because they were members of particular minority groups. For an economy to work rationally and efficiently, it should run on considerations of merit and qualifications alone and not be burdened by useless, irrelevant racial quotas.

In applications for jobs and school admissions, acceptances should go to the best qualified person available, regardless of race, sex or ethnic background. This is the only just, moral and practical basis for such choices.

But it is unlikely, under a quota system, that positions will go to the most qualified people available. At the time a position opens up it is unlikely that the most qualified applicant will by chance be a member of the race or minority group that is needed to fill the quota slot open at that time. In this case the most qualified applicant will lose his opportunity because of racist considerations. If the most qualified applicant does happen to belong to the right minority group, then the quotas are irrelevant because the person will be chosen anyway, if the basis for selection is merit.

Instead of a system of reverse discrimination, the goal should be to eliminate initial discrimination against blacks and other minorities, which is a departure from the merit criterion. Quotas, like such discrimination, depart from this criterion, and thus are unfair to everyone--unfair to consumers and employers who lose the benefit of superior service, unfair to fellow workers who must rely on less skilled help in their jobs, unfair to most minority group members who suffer the suspicion that they did not earn their positions, and unfair to those with the best qualifications who may lose opportunities that should have been theirs.

Finally, affirmative action quotas have another shortcoming when they are governmentally imposed. In a free society, people should have the liberty to associate with whom they please and live their lives as they wish. The government has no business enforcing on people quotas concerning whom they will associate with in hiring employees and running their own businesses, or admitting students and administering their schools.

Supporters of affirmative action may argue that those groups who have suffered discrimination in the past deserve the benefits of quotas and reverse discrimination to compensate for the original injustice. But first, to the extent that quotas are counterproductive, as argued above, these groups will not receive any benefits from quotas. Secondly, quotas do not identify and compensate the victims of past discrimination. These programs do not right the wrongs of the past. Instead quotas create new injustices against new victims, perpetuating discrimination.