Look Homeward, Angel: Divided Allegiances

A few isolated individuals have a rather difficult decision to make each year when The Game rolls around. These men are the Harvard-educated Yale professors, and the few poor souls on the Harvard faculty who happened to have received their degrees from New Haven.

One such man is professor John Whiting of the School of Education whose treason is compounded by the fact that he played football for the Bulldog--against Harvard. How does he resolve this difficulty?

"I'd say my loyalties are very definitely with Yale," Whiting comments. "I'm with Harvard up to the Yale game, but then..." He hastens to add, however, his opinion that "Harvard is going to cream Yale this year."

On the other side of the coin is professor Charles Blitzer of Yale's Political Science department, who received his Ph.D. here. "By and large I guess I'm for Harvard," he says, "except, as seems the case now, when they are heavily favored. Then my instincts for the underdog are aroused."

The list of men who have drifted here from New Haven is a long and distinguished one, including Dean Bundy, Archibald MacLeish, Dean Brooks, V. O. Key, Andrew Gleason, David Owen, Kingman Brewster, Whiting, and many others. Yale also has its share of defectors, men like Paul Hammond, Blitzer, Robert Lane, Richard Ruggles, H. Bradford Westerfield, and James Tobin. Besides the momentous choice of football loyalties, these people who have had associations with both schools have some interesting observations about the different characteristics of each.

Women, apparently, are a pleasant innovation for those who never had them as classmates at Yale, and most agree that the presence of 'Cliffies in classes is a "most striking" distinction. Dean Bundy calls Radcliffe "a real advantage" and goes on to say that co-education is expected "by increasing numbers of young Americans today, and I agree with them."

'Cliffies or no, undergraduate life is not the same at New Haven and Cambridge. One contributing influence is the proximity of Yale to New York as compared with the proximity of Harvard to Boston. Yale's former President Hanley once joked that the university's medical school had trouble because "the people in New Haven are so healthy, and the divinity school is faced with the problem of a town devoid of sin, or other elusive elements of life, inevitably leads him to New York.

A Harvard faculty member candidly admits that "When I was at Yale and we wanted to 'go to town,' we went to New York." This usually involves a three-day weekend, and it happens fairly frequently; for, as one put it, "New Haven is certainly no great intellectual center."

"Are you familiar with the term 'shoe'?" asked Yale professor Robert Lane. "Well, I would say it's some-what less shoe to do well in your studies here than at Harvard."

With the lessened emphasis on studying comes a correspondingly greater stress upon extracurricular activities. Professor Key notes that "at Yale the boys seemed to take the secret societies very seriously." It is, according to many, a bit easier to become a Big Man On Campus at Yale, although a Yale professor points out that "the emphasis on extracurricular activities here has lessened."

Another aspect of university life which distinguishes the two institutions is the relationship of the college to the university as a whole. At Yale there is a much sharper division between the graduate and the undergraduate students, and it is rare for the two to be mixed in the same course. At Harvard, a greater number of lower level courses are taught by grad students. Dean Bundy feels that this is valuable, since it creates "a greater interplay" between the two. Blitzer agrees that the isolation of the Yale graduate school is too sharp.

Whiting prefers the system used in Cambridge because "it gives the student more opportunity to take advanced courses and to go ahead intellectually." This blending tends to give the Harvard man a stronger sense of professionalism with regard to his field of concentration, according to professor Owen. Because of this, however, "the resistance to taking work outside the field of concentration is greater here."

The advantage of the strict separation at Yale is in favor of the college student, says Whiting. "At Yale, the undergraduate is kingpin." He adds that the trend among the Harvard faculty is a preference to teach on the graduate level; at Yale, the opposite is true.

An oft-stated comparison is that the individualistic and inquiring personality prevails in Cambridge whereas unity and democracy are manifest in New Haven. Former Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson put it this way: "In the classrooms of Harvard there was a spirit of independent thinking unlike anything I had met before... The whole atmosphere was electric with the sparks of competitive argument. On the other hand, there was little of the corporate class spirit and democratic energy which was so visible on the Yale campus."

This theory has many takers. Owen emphasized the "more cohesive sense of the community there, and the greater sense of freedom here;" and Whiting talks about the "esprit de corps at Yale which you don't find as much here." Professor Key feels that the orderly, Gothic architecture in New Haven is symbolic of this when compared to Cambridge's haphazard combination of various architectural patterns.

All comparisons of this type must, as most of the faculty members observed, be taken within the context of time, and it has been quite a while since most of the men have been back at their alma maters. Bundy emphasizes that the two schools are "much more alike than different," and Stimson sums it up nicely by saying "I can only say that I am glad to have had a vision of both these great institutions."

And then there's the story that President Lowell used to tell about the man who sent his twin sons off to college--one to Harvard, the other to Yale--in order to tell them apart. The Yalie was elected president of his class and varsity football captain, and became a member of Skull and Bones. The other half of the set had a beard by the end of his freshman year, narrowed his circle of friends to four people, and graduated summa. And after graduation, they still couldn't tell them apart