Leaving Hallowed Ground

As I walk through the Yard on a pink evening when the air rests heavily on the trees and the lights of Memorial Church glow through the haze of twilight, I wonder what it will mean to leave this place in three weeks. I stand at the intersection of paths in Tercentenary Theatre and think of what James Bryant Conant '14 said during Harvard's tercentenary year of 1936: "He who enters a university walks on hallowed ground." What will I miss about this hallowed ground? And what will I carry with me?

Before I came to Harvard, my impressions of the College consisted of a quick tour through the Old Yard on a summer day marked by thunderstorm, a glance through the pages of The Harvard Book, the pop wisdom of numerous college guides and my father's tales of sherry in Eliot House. Having spent four years here, thunderstorms have become commonplace, The Harvard Book has sat dusty on the shelf, the advice in the guidebooks has long since fled my mind and I have yet to see most of Eliot House or its mythical sherry. So much for first impressions.

But what of second and third and last? Lingering long in my mind will be the physical beauty of Harvard. During my first year, I used to walk through the Old Yard at dusk to catch the first lights as they gleamed from centuries-old dorm windows. These beacons provided comfort and an excursion for the mind: John F. Kennedy '40 lived behind one of these windows, and Ralph Waldo Emerson another, and Quentin Compson another, in William Faulkner's fiction and the collective Harvard consciousness.

A great part of Harvard's allure lies in such history. As former Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory Archibald MacLeish wrote in 1976, "When we think now of the greatness of the University we think first of the dead," the long-gone strangers as well as the beloved friends. As a result of these people's contributions to Harvard's longevity and national importance, decisions made here carry weight far beyond their importance to the present institution. Administrators and professors know that they have an obligation to the thinkers who came before them and to those who will come after--thus the often protracted debates on seemingly petty matters of College administration that in fact carry the weight of judicial precedent.

To leave Harvard is to be forced to part with the University's centrality in American thought and folklore. Of course, the name follows Harvard graduates for years if not a lifetime. But our answer to "What do you do?" will no longer be, "I am a Harvard student." Leaving means that we will have to find new ways of proving ourselves, ways that may not seem as immediately satisfactory as the addition of those seven letters to our resumes.

It also means that we will have to accept certain mundanities of life outside a university like Harvard. Academic discourse and the search for intellectual freedom may not prevail wherever we find ourselves. The brightest stars in the pantheon of scholarship will no longer offer themselves up for our perusal twice a week at 11 a.m. We will have to content ourselves with libraries whose holdings may be less than infinite. We will no longer take for granted our membership in an enclave where truth is the highest virtue and the search for it is amply supported.

These ideas are enough to make me ambivalent about graduating. But there are benefits to leaving. We will be forced to decide how we want to define ourselves, rather than letting a name define ourselves for us. We will, if we are lucky, find our callings and make their fulfillment our goal. And we will, I hope, take to heart the words of Charles William Eliot (class of 1853) inscribed on the 1890 Dexter Gate, and serve our country after we leave.

One evening before June 5, I will again make the pilgrimage to Widener Library simply to experience the exit: to pause for a moment at the top of the shallow, grand steps and consider Memorial Church across the way in its perfect symmetry. To consider the many who have preceded me on this hallowed ground, and the many who will follow. And to remember why I am leaving.

This is Sarah J. Schaffer's last column.