Fighting for Tradition

Former Eliot Master Alan E. Heimert '49 has never been an advocate of major changes in Harvard, an institution he first arrived at almost 50 years ago.

When other house masters pushed for the non-ordered choice system in 1989, he opposed it.

When the College imposed a new restrictive alcohol policy in 1990, he reportedly explained to House residents, "Those gutless cowards up in the Yard want to take away your booze."

And when he realized that he could not prevent permanent change in the character of House life, he quit--and last Spring, spent $14,000 on the Eliot Fete.

Heimert, who lorded over Eliot House for 23 years, has retired to a comfortable room in the History and Literature concentration office, but still believes that the "old" ways of College life are the best.

"Maybe I just don't have the knack to keep the old alive anymore and to resist some of these changes," says Heimert, who has chaired the History department, English department, and the Committee on Degrees in History and Literature. "In a way, I felt I was in a situation where I was spending most of my time trying to fight off what I thought were bad things instead of being able to concentrate my energies on what I thought was good."

Heimert led the campaign against the non-ordered choice system, which was instituted in 1989. He remains a strong advocate of the system of "master's choice," which ended in 1973.

Heimert claims House life was far more diverse under master's choice than under ranked preferences or non-ordered choice.

Under this scheme, masters interviewed and selected future residents on the basis of quotas defined by concentration, academic rank and secondary school background.

"One slice was for area of concentration so that one house wouldn't have all the humanists or all the scientists," Heimert says. "Another slice was according to probable rank so that one house wouldn't get all the dumb people and the other all the summas."

In addition, the system differentiated between students who attended "select" private schools such as Groton and St. Paul's, which traditionally sent many students to Harvard, and other secondary schools.

The College set a 60 percent "preppie" quota in order to prevent "a house becoming the house of the rich people and another house the house of the poor people," says Heimert.

Heimert rejects charges that the master's choice system was racist and elitist, insisting that it was successful because masters sought a healthy house environment.

He claims the one-year experiment with randomization in 1966 was an "utter failure."

"It was a disaster," he says. "I have often thought that the fact that the class of 1969 had been randomized had something to do with the big revolution in the spring of '69."

"They sat around for three years festering, and no matter which house you went to, they said, 'I didn't want to be here.'"

Not a Bastion of Elitism

Heimert's critics claim his effort to preserve House personalities was a way to perpetuate Eliot House as the last bastion of old-style Harvard elitism.

But Heimert fires back at his opponents, trying to debunk the "obsession" with "Eliot House and preppies."

"If Eliot House didn't exist, some people would have to invent it" as a concept, he says. For critics of Eliot House, "it was a way to establish your own egalitarian legitimacy even though...once you got into Harvard you are no longer in an egalitarian setting."

Heimert further attacks preppy-bashers, saying they support a "compulsive anti-elitism which strikes me as acting from guilt." He groups them with supporters of random housing assignment and critics of selective concentrations like Social Studies and History and Literature.

The former Eliot master rejects accusations that he was the last guardian of Old Harvard, pointing to his Midwestern, public school background.

He claims that as an undergraduate "if I had applied to Eliot House, my neckties would have been too wide."

But after all, Heimert says, today "preppies are not what they used to be."

"I remember back when preppies were really preppies and clubbies were really clubbies," says Heimert. "You could tell by the way they talked with a lockjaw and they dressed different. Now everybody dresses the same. Everybody looks like they're going to Michigan State."

Heimert laments the drop in the number of undergraduate preppies from about 60 percent of Harvard students 30 years ago to less than 40 percent now, claiming a metamorphosis in Harvard's social atmosphere.

"The social standards of the public high school have come to dominate Harvard rather than the prep school," he says. "When I was an undergraduate, everybody wore Oxford shirts and socks as opposed to baseball caps and fishnet underwear."

Heimert also slams the pre-professional "Kennedy School syndrome" that has become a regular affliction among non-preppy undergraduates, who increasingly demand "a sense of the cash value of anything [they] are learning."

"There are probably more people now who are here for their diploma, not their education," says Heimert. "They want the Harvard degree."

Preppies, on the other hand, are more interested in a broad-based, liberal arts education than in a diploma with the Harvard seal.

"Some preppies are rich enough so they don't have to worry about a job," says Heimert. "So they're not that practical."

They hold the view that they "don't need to look for a job because daddy will give [them] a company," adds Heimert.

A Final House?

Heimert denies any affiliation between Eliot House and Harvard's nine all-male final clubs, which have faced charges of sexism and elitism in recent years. In fact, he says he was not aware of their existence until his junior year in the College.

Heimert says he supports the University policy of not recognizing the clubs because of their sexist membership policies.

Although he defends the clubs' rights to determine their membership, he says their exclusion of women is not "very nice."

"I suppose some of the clubs might benefit from having some women members," he says. "Like the Pi Eta. It would civilize them."

But given the changing nature of preppies, the clubs too have evolved, he said.

"The clubs are more attractive to the new wealth, the upwardly mobile rather than to the old Brahmins: Roosevelts, Gores, Standishes, and Cabots," says Heimert.

He attributes the growing popularity of the clubs to the University's restrictive alcohol policy and the lowering of the legal drinking age.

Noting that many of the clubs have become like fraternities, he dismisses the claim that clubs serve as networking organizations which help Harvard undergraduates succeed professionally.

"I suspect probably the Porcellian is, but then the Porcellian people could probably network without the Porcellian," says Heimert.

A Drop in Diversity

While Harvard today is more ethnically and geographically diverse than it was 30 years ago, Heimert claims the undergraduate body now accommodates a smaller spectrum of personalities and intellectual interests.

"There were a certain number of mad geniuses, eccentric poets, kookie people--all of them full of a lot of vitality," says Heimert. "Actors and flamboyant people, I feel there are fewer of those now. Maybe if I were Master of Adams House I wouldn't feel [that way]."

Heimert attacks the "superficial" diversity which he says the admissions office has artificially imposed on the College.

In his undergraduate days, Heimert says, "You were interested in what peoples' interests were--not in some demographic census definition of them."

"I think that diversity is a positive step in so far as the diversity does not become...so much a priority that in order to achieve diversity you sacrifice something else," says Heimert. "Sometimes you wonder whether the admissions committee hasn't pushed it a little."

Heimert claims that as house master, he encountered a number "tragic instances of people...brought here to Harvard to build up the numbers and can't keep their head above water."

"One has the sense now that there is one of each," says Heimert. "There are no ties that bind."

He points out the dark side of the admissions office policy of trumpeting increasing ethnic diversity.

"We don't have the figures for poets, actors, musicians, and scientists," says Heimert. "It's as though that external characterization--African-American, Hispanic, Native American--is what's important."

He also attacked the notion of admitting students so that they can act out their stereotypical ethnic roles instead of appreciating their own individual skills.

Heimert envisions an setting in which Black students participate "in a kind of Black community but yet develop enough sense of identity that they don't have to play Black all the time. Or gays that don't have to play gay all the time."

They should not "be anxious about sitting down with a honky or a straight," he adds.

Intellectual Life

Heimert says the intellectual life that former President A. Lawrence Lowell envisioned in the houses has disintegrated in recent years.

In the last 25 years, the University has abolished the position of instructor--a post mostly held by resident tutors expanding their doctoral theses into books--and has moved to recruit more junior faculty from outside the University.

Previously, most tutors in the 1950s had Ph.Ds, while today the majority of them are still graduate students, according to Heimert.

In addition, most of them are not College graduates anymore, and therefore, they are not familiar With the workings of the undergraduate system, Heimert says.

Former President Bok's 20-year tenure was characterized by myopic, reactive but well-intentioned policies that failed to address the essence of many problems, according to Heimert.

He notes that Bok addressed social goals and race relations instead of "what some us think is the primary vision of Harvard, which is, academic education."

"I suppose [Bok] wanted everybody to love each other and be nice. As a believer in original sin, I figure that goal is never met, but you can move toward it, I suppose," says Heimert.