WE BECOME HAHARVUD MAN, FIND SPEECH STILL FREE

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--I've entered "Hahrvud."

I entered it through one of the gates, just-like anybody else. I stood for a while drinking in the beauty of leafy, historic Harvard Yard--pronounced "Hahrvud Yad."

"Can you direct me to 'The CRIMSON,' I asked a student.

"It's not in the Yad," he said, vaguely. "It's outside the Yad."

Well, maybe it was over around Hahrvud Squaah.

I wanted to find out if free speech still ruled... if the CRIMSON still published "Confidential Guide to Freshman Courses" which blasts professors who need to be blasted.

So I asked a cop.

"It's on Plmmmptnnn Street." His vowels weren't in an uproar. You couldn't even hear any.

"I could swear you said Phummmmmptnnn Street," I said.

"I did say Plmmmmmmmmmmmtnnnnnn Street," he retorted, pointing.

I followed his finger. On the way I fell in behind three students en route to a second-hand bookstore. They talked something like I did 25 years ago at Heidelberg and Ohio State, but slightly modernized.

"If we blow all the loot we got for books, whatta we gonna use when we meet those cha-cha babes?" asked one.

"We can save a few bucks by moochin' a coupla free meals at the house that rushes us," suggested another.

Finally I found Plmmmptnnnn Street--spelled Plympton--and the CRIMSON office--and, for 50 cents, the "Confidential Guide."

"One of Hahrvud's sacred professor gets panned in the Sock Sigh One section," a student who sold me the book said.

"The Sock Sigh. One section?" I wondered what THAT was.

"Yeh, Sock Sigh One. You know, Sock Sigh One."

But I didn't. What Page?" I asked. And he told me.

Then I found it--"Social Science I"--any idiot should've known what Sock Sigh One was.

This Sock Sigh One prof, it said, was "universally condemned as in previous years" for his "completely irrelevant or utterly useless lectures" which were "unprepared, disorganized and rambling"...besides he told "unfunny dirty stories"... Typical appellations were "inept, insulting and an intellectual sloth."

Evidently a big favorite.

It was cheering to find that free speech reigns at Hahrvud. It was worth learning this foreign language to find it out.