The Faceless Masses

With the start of the school year, we find ourselves amid a swarm of students in the depths of the Science Center or Sever Hall. No longer are we distinct individuals. Instead, suddenly we are all one mass of faceless creatures in whose direction professors direct their words. From the direction of the podium or even among the very mass, we blend. In short, we are anonymous.

For some reason, anonymity has gained a very bad reputation. Just look at the U.S. News and World Report college ratings, which have dropped Harvard from number one to number three because of large class sizes. Anonymity due to large classes is not that bad, not to trivialize the other obvious disadvantages of large classes. Anonymity can be an asset and not always a liability.

That anonymity which some look upon very unfavorably, and even despise as a symbol of our own unworthiness in not making ourselves known, is in fact a sign of the privacy we all have. After all, the positive term for anonymity is privacy. Privacy is so valued that some individuals fiercely protect it.

While we as students argue against anonymity in classes, we also promote our privacy. That very anonymity that makes us faceless on the outside empowers us enormously. We can enter our observations into the CUE Guide as non-biased sources of information so that our responses on the back of the form guide other students. Nothing but our impressions of the class matter. Whether we rate the workload compared to our high school health class or organic chemistry doesn't matter. In short, we are only important in one dimension.

When our grades are posted in a class, only one dimension of ourselves shows--only our work, or testtaking ability if you wish to be cynical. But only for that one class. We could have won an Olympic gold medal or failed a class the previous year, but it doesn't matter. That very anonymity which we have preserves our privacy.

Other people in the world would do anything for that kind of privacy. Politicians who are evaluated not only on the basis of their governing ability, but also on the purity of their private lives, would love to be monitored only at their job.

Joe Klein, in his Newsweek column, wrote that he had signed his novel Primary Colors as Anonymous because he wished the novel to be evaluated on its own merit, not as the novel of a political columnist well-known the media. Klein had to evade an elaborate and concentrated media assault intent upon determining the identity of Anonymous. We take our anonymity for granted and even complain about it.

We as students disapprove that only one aspect of ourselves, our classwork, is presented to our professors and section leaders. They usually do not get to know us as people. Would we feel differently about reading Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, a classic children's story, if we had previously read her other works published under a pseudonym? These thrillers were deemed too sensational to be published then: A Long, Fatal Love Chase, a story about obsessive love, is only now being published. But Alcott's other works should make no difference to us. Little Women could never be called sensationalist literature.

Then, when that anonymity and merit-based criticism are such ideals, why are Harvard students not happy? Would we want our professors to know that we never liked the subject matter of his or her class in high school? Do we want to prejudice our teachers, or do we want them to regard us on our own merit?

Every new class, every new activity, every new person we meet is a fresh start. Anonymity does have a certain mystique. Look at the media frenzy over Primary Colors, simply because no one knew who the author was. You can keep my 15 minutes of fame; I think I'll stick with anonymity.

Tanya Dutta's column appears on alternate Mondays.