Can't Help Being Bourgeois

WHEN the Berlin Wall effectively came crumbling down over a week ago, the reforms in East Germany suddenly became more than an abstract political issue. No longer were the decisions of a few leaders the center of attention. No longer were political junkies the only ones interested in the reforms. Now we could all relate to what was going on, by focusing on the personal experiences of ordinary Berliners.

We wondered--and we're still wondering--what sort of experience it must be for East Berliners to come to the capitalist West for the first time. What are they feeling over there? The most interesting strain of the media's commentary on their experiences has been the wonder East Berliners have felt upon trying out bourgeois life for the first time--upon realizing, for instance, that there could be a hundred different kinds of sausage, all in the same store, each truly distinct from the rest.

It's easy to attribute archetypal significance to events that are as far away as Germany. It's easy to speak of the Brandenburg Gate as theentrance into "bourgeois society." The world is not so centered as that, though. Admittedly, "bourgeois" is one of the world's vaguer words, but it nonetheless seems to me that Johnston Gate in Harvard Yard has a lot in common with the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. They're both gateways into a sort of bourgeois way of life.

I don't mean that leaving Harvard Yard and entering the consumeristic picnic of Harvard Square is analogous to leaving East Berlin for the West. I have the other direction in mind. Entering the Yard to become a Harvard student is analogous to walking through the Wall to West Berlin: it's a way of becoming bourgeois, even if the process here is not so shockingly immediate.

THIS realization first struck me when I told my sister, who's still in high school in Kentucky, that I was going to New Haven for the Harvard-Yale game. Kentucky is a state that's big on sports, but the Harvard-Yale game?! She looked at me as if I'd lost my bearings, as if I'd suddenly announced that I'd voted for George Bush.

And I remembered how I would have reacted in high school to someone who actually went to the Harvard-Yale game. There was a time when I was repulsed by the mere idea that thousands of Harvard and Yale students and alumni would really fill a stadium to cheer about how great their school was and how the other school sucked, while a few big guys down on the field ran around and tackled each other all afternoon.

Last time I had a chance to go to New Haven for the Game, two years ago, that repulsion hadn't worn off. I opted to stay in Cambridge and read John Locke in the library on that cold Saturday afternoon.

Reading Locke is probably just as bourgeois as going to The Game, but I think there's a difference. Around here anway, The Game is The Hype, and by going I show that I believe the hype, the same way that some newly westernized Berliners believe the hype about the hundred sausages.

It's not just that I went to the game. It's that I cheered. I actually jumped up on my seat when Harvard scored. I screamed. I felt happy when we were winning. I exchanged high fives with the people sitting next to me. I felt depressed when Yale started coming back. I ran onto the field afterwards. In short, I displayed school spirit.

Not only at the game itself, either. On the Yale campus, everything was a comparison to Harvard. Ornamental Gothic versus stately Georgian architecture. More posters on their kiosks or on ours? Basically: which is better, Harvard or Yale? As if it mattered. As if anyone in the world who doesn't go Harvard or Yale cared.

IT'S taken me a little over two years of Harvard to get to this point. What will two more years do? And what about 25? Will I eventually turn into one of those gray-haired, Harvard-tie-wearing alumni who sit in the front row and munch caviar while cheering on the old alma mater every year?

As I look back at the weekend, I can only take solace in two things. One is that I had a good time at the game. The other is that, in the middle of the game, when Derek Bok smugly walked down the sidelines in front of the Harvard fans and was roundly cheered, I remembered myself enough to boo and give him the finger.