Weiss Up

The sleepless night before the Holy Cross game, I dreamt I was on the second floor of some palatial Harvard building, and that before me, gracefully snaking its way down to the first floor, was the finest wood bannister this side of the Andes. All the staircases at Harvard would have shivered their timbers at the sight of this bannisterial specimen, but I was calm as I edged my duff onto its perimeter, then slid down. Upon my descent, the Dean appeared from the shadows and growled, you don't belong at this college young man, and I fled out the door with a shudder.

Despite the whimsy of this story, sliding down bannisters remains a valid method of athletic expression. Since the advent of the two-story building, human beings have taken to their asses instead of tripping downstairs, great distance runners have borne the name "bannister" in celebration of the rival sport, and the term "bench-warmer" was bestowed on the American language by the particular frustration of second-string sliders who were forced to maintain more orthodox carriages during key bannister contests.

Perhaps no sport enjoys the popularity bannister-sliding does at this time in this country. More and more crosstown rivals in more and more small towns are leaving the gridiron as the arena for the annual conflict--and taking to the bannisters of the vicinity. In small parishes on the Mississippi and in teeming boroughs on the East cost, patriotic youths have erected grand and alabaster bannisters in tribute to the state. And in upstate New York, I am told, they are razing America's traditional sports temple to make way for a Hall of Fame for the great splinter-pickers of our era.

Alas, the moral of both my dream and this national saga is that there are no bannisters in ivory towers. Cambridge academics have turned a cold stare on the flight of this sport, and thus in the vestibules of academe--where bannister-sliding should indeed have flourished--students trudge on from class to class. The more optimistic hoped at the beginning of the decade that in this university--where great minds had already solved the Konigsberg Bridge problem and Zeno's Paradox--scholars might by now have found a way to slide up bannisters. But no, with the steady evolution of Harvard College into Harvard trade school, formidable scholars have no time for the sliders but spend all their time assisting the less-daring into medical schools and law schools.

Nonetheless, the architects endowed Harvard with a veritable firmament of bannisters. At the top of the list is Sever Hall, already renowned for another architectural idiosyncrasy--the whispering arch. The glorious wooden bannisters in Sever's concourse are the slickest and longest at Harvard, and any student sophomoric enough to slide down between classes will surely make a bang, even if he or she doesn't crash through the glass doors. Matthews Hall and the Science Center have challenging and steep bannisters that should test the mettle of any slider who looks over the edge to the chasm below.

Robinson Hall and University Hall have spindly metal bannisters, but a Robinson slide is thrilling, if scary. Widener Library has prepubescent brass rails, but if you slide on these, you will truly be shaking the golden rule: Rumpled professors may scurry to their files, but the officious bookchecker is sure to apprehend you. By all means slide, though, and put this University on its ear, even if you end up on your ass.