Scrape Off That Barnicle

I have a serious confession to make. I am an "arrogant nitwit." Furthermore, I behave like a "blockhead." Or at least, that's what Boston Globe columnist Mike Barnicle would have you believe.

In his column in last Thursday's Globe, Barnicle lionized security guard (and Harvard graduate) George Baker '76 as his "new hero" and mocked a group of Harvard students whom Baker had treated rudely. I am one of those students, and I can attest that all of the key claims in Barnicle's argument are utterly false.

The incident that began this war of words occurred about two weeks ago, on Sunday, Sept. 29, when a group of about 10 students arrived at 124 Mount Auburn St. for a job training session. The door to the lobby was locked and a sign instructed us to use another entrance or to call the security office. Some of us students chose the latter option, and we were shortly buzzed into the lobby.

Barnicle reports the situation much differently. According to his account, we "push[ed] past the sign, [and] through the door." This fabricated scenario is physically impossible because the door was initially locked and then opened for us remotely. Barnicle also states that "in the lobby, the floor was being waxed. It was a tad bit slippery, and nobody wanted these future leaders to fall down and whack their noggins." Wrong again. The floor was being sanded and refinished, but not waxed; it was not at all slippery, and there was no danger of anyone slipping and falling.

Barnicle then alleges that as we entered the lobby, George Baker benignly asked us: "Can any of you people read English?" The truth is that Baker confronted us and attempted to interrogate us in a hostile, ill-mannered fashion, his tone full of seething rage. Over and over again he furiously questioned our reading skills. Perhaps I'm a bit paranoid about racial issues, but I thought his comments seemed especially inappropriate because our group was over-whelmingly comprised of racial minorities.

According to Barnicle, "not a single student had an excuse for regarding the sign as a nuisance." I personally informed George Baker that the sign had directed us to call the security office, which then admitted us. He responded by demanding to know who had actually unlocked the door, apparently assuming that I possessed extra-sensory powers which allowed me to divine the name of the unseen security agent to whom we had spoken on the phone for only a few seconds.

We soon tired of Baker's hysterics and went up to our training session. He then pursued the one student who had promised to report his uncivil behavior. She was heading for the other entrance to the building, and he attempted to intimidate and harass her into dropping her complaint, at one point asking if she (a black student) had problems with him simply because he was a white male.

Barnicle claims that the students Baker offended are "rude, spoiled elitists." If Barbicle had the slightest shred of common sense, he'd realize that students who spend their weekend hours working probably don't fit the stereotype of filthy rich debutantes whose ancestors all attended Harvard. His column is yet another example of the irate and irrational Harvard-bashing which is all too popular in the local press. Barnicle also seems to have based his column solely on Baker's account of the incident. Even lowly reporters and columnists at The Crimson know better than to go to press with such one-sided versions of events.

Baker is not the working class hero, "standing tall...against the culture of absurd complaints," as Barnicle believes. Baker is a boorish, disrespectful self-stigmatized pseudo-intellectual who attempted to defend his unprofessional actions by citing Plato instead of heeding his employer's request for a formal apology. At the very least, he could have said: "Look, I graduated from Harvard in 1976, but I'm stuck in a dead-end job. Can't you understand why I'm grouchy?"

Fortunately, Baker has now been reassigned; he won't be around to annoy Harvard students anymore. It's only too bad that we can't say the same for Mike Barnicle.

David W. Brown's column appears on alternate Wednesdays.