College Colloquialism

LIFE RIGHT NOW IS COMPLICATED enough for high school seniors. The prom is right around the corner, graduation is only a month away, and within the next week, seniors all over the country will have to choose the college of their choice.

And, as an offshoot of that last matter, comes one additional task facing high school seniors: the learning of a new language, the language of college.

The list reads like a disjointed combination of Password and Jeopardy: The Yard, The Quad, The Quadrangle, The Green, The Diag, Old Campus. What is, a big open space where students congregate.

The language of college is certainly different from that of high school. Study halls become hours off. Homerooms become House Offices, or College Administrations. Lunch ladies become dinning hall workers. Lunch Hour becomes, well, Lunch Hour, but in assuredly different surroundings.

Likewise, terms differ greatly among colleges. Government at Harvard is Political Science practically everywhere else. Dorms are apartments, and apartments are dorms. A House at Harvard is a college at Yale, and an off-campus accomodation at Wesleyan.

And so, the ritualistic spring tours of Harvard Yard for pre-frosh (perspective freshmen at Swarthmore) take on new import. The high schoolers are doing more than soaking up the surroundings; they are taking note off Harvard's particular linguistics.

Come September, the acceptance-seeking frosh is not going to give himself away by appearance or age; rather, the Yardling will make his mistake by confusing Mem Church with Mem Hall (which is a dead ringer for a cathedral anyway, with Michael Sandel as high priest), or reacting with a blank look when someone asks him for his bursar's card, or confusing a gov jock and a crew jock.

The poor freshman will give away his lowly status by his quizzical gaze and questioning stammer when an upperclassman friend simply says, "After my Science A, I'll be swimming at the IAB--I mean MAC--you know, right around the corner from OCS, by D.U. Meet me there and we'll have lunch in A-house."

THE TOUR GUIDE STARTS HER spiel in front of Mass Hall. "Part of this building contains freshmen rooms. Most freshmen live in Harvard Yard here, in entry-way groups of 15-20. Each group--and by the way, they're all co-ed--has its own proctor. After freshman year you'll live in one of the 12 residential Houses located down by the River or up by the old Radcliffe College."

But the high schooler, with mental pencil poised above mental note-pad, hears only, "Co-ed, Harvard Yard, entry-ways, proctor groups, Houses, River, Radcliffe;" 'Co-ed, Sweet!'

"Where are you living next year?" the Yale-bound graduate will ask the Harvard-bound one. "Well, I don't know what dorm it will be yet, but my entry-way, co-ed, will have 15-20 students, er, kids, and a proctor," the latter will return, proud to be in the know, and proud to be attending a school that doesn't call houses colleges or Jennifer Beals a graduate.

The tour group shuffles on to the John Harvard statue-of-the-three-lies. "And here on the side is the Harvard seal, 'Veritas,' it means truth," the guide continues. "Behind me is the Science Center, where students take the computer test, pass the Quantitative Reasoning Requirement, and take some of the science courses required by Harvard's Core Curriculum." Veritas, the Science Center, the QRR and the Core register amidst furious mental scribling.

The group crosses Quincy St. and stands in front of the Freshmen Union. "And this is where freshmen eat," Crimson Key's finest continues, "assuming they show the checker their bursar's card. And upstairs is the Expository Writing--'Expos'--office. That building over there is the center for Hist and Lit concentrators, and that one...." She drones on.

"What are you going to major in," Joe Pre-Frosh will be asked this summer. "We don't major, we concentrate," he'll reply kindly. "This special writing major, uh, concentration, they, uh, we have, ex-pos, sounds good, although I think you have to fill out a bursar's card to get in."

By September, some will be experts at the vocabulary game, understanding full well that the IOP's at the K-school on JFK. But for now, the wandering pre-frosh are still struggling with the basics, still learning to distinguish Harvard Yard from the Radcliffe Quad, and still searching for the Square in Harvard Square.