Stop, Before It's Too Late

I'M USUALLY A pretty relaxed guy. When strangers deliberately inflict physical pain upon me for no apparent reason, I just say, "It's cool." Yet as an undergraduate at Harvard, I have come across a few things that make me want to kill, or, at the very least, hurt. The most horrid of these is the Harvard Hiss.

Why must you hiss every time a professor says "Yale" in class? Hiding behind The Joke's inherent anonymity, hundreds. of Harvard undergraduates daily undergo a dreaded ritual of emitting the grating sound of a tire being punctured by a rusty nail. Don't look so innocent you whey-faced, chicken-butt cowards. Yea, I know it's not you--its the next guy. Always the next guy. Well listen up, spineless--it's a community problem now, a problem we are going to have to face and deal with together.

We must stop The Joke now before it's too late. I can't stand it much longer--already when the hisses are let loose I get that bad feeling that happens when you cringe your face so tightly that your skull no longer has room to house your eyes.

Evidence of the Hiss Joke as early as the Stone Age has been unearthed by acheologists. Apparently, Cro-Magnon lecturers would talk about buffalo hides or something, and if they ever mentioned our rival species, which at the time was the emu I believe, all the little Cro-Magnons would hiss and then laugh long and hard into the starry night.

As a result of the major brain damage accrued from an improper diet of leopard face and dinosaur crispitos, Early Man believed that the Hiss Joke was the end all. The current mainstream hypothesis is that "fine herbs" on our chicken is the causal element today, but regardless of the roots a cure must be found. It is inconceivable to continue life with hisses erupting over any professor's slightest mention of Yale, or that there might me a modicum of work due at any time for the class.

Professor: "And I know you will find this subject incredibly interesting if you will just peruse the five pages of assigned reading within the next five months."

Hundreds of Jokester Students: "Hiss."

I DO KNOW how important tradition is to Harvard, and I've never been one to break with tradition by recommending beneficial changes. Yet I feel compelled to remind you that it has been many decades since we were at odds with the emu. Indeed we have equaled and, some say, even surpassed the status of that annoying bird. Without a doubt our amazingly rapid ascent to the forefront of God's creatures deserves an enthusiastic round of applause. We as a people are enormously self-sufficient and adaptable--not to mention extraordinarily bipedalistic. At Harvard, we are now in a secure position--financially, spiritually, and evolutionary--to abandon once and for all the dreaded Harvard Hiss.

It won't be easy at first--many students will surely undergo severe withdrawl symptoms. Ambulances must be stationed round-the-clock outside lecture halls, and electro-shock therepy should be available at UHS. But if we all work together, maybe one day, perhaps even in our childrens' lifetimes, we will at last be able to walk fearlessly into a lecture and hear a professor say "Yale" in passing. With any luck, the only reaction will be the heavenly silence of a thousand undergraduate sneers.