Speak in Hard Words

Many events and trends over the last four years have annoyed me to no end, but one letter to the editors of The Crimson published earlier this semester raised far more ire in me than its scant two paragraphs should have afforded. The letter carried that high pomposity and undeniable self-importance so prized in these pages, but it did not tackle any of the issues our generation of Harvard students have rallied around.

The author made no mention of the death of affirmative action in admissions to schools in California and Texas. No discussion of randomization was to be found. He did not even tackle the inflexibility of the Harvard meal plan. Instead, the letter treated that grave disgrace of this campus: illegal postering on Thayer Gate.

The letter reads: "Recently, the ground between Thayer Gate and the Science Center has begun to resemble a war zone, with zealous extracurricular groups taping countless posters to the ground in various patterns. When I have passed through this area in recent weeks, I can't help but think of how visitors to our beautiful campus must feel about Harvard students' reckless disregard for the beauty of our surroundings."

I have a feeling that I know what visitors to our beautiful campus would think if they saw these posters. They might think they were at a college.

I suppose I should not be surprised that we would have difficulty with the idea of being "students." After all, Harvard students today are perhaps equally unlikely to take over University Hall as they are to feel that Animal House adequately sums up their college experience.

Doubtless there are some advantages to current campus life. Few of us will graduate with criminal records, and surely trading afternoons of keggers for late nights of studying will pay off eventually. But I fear that in acting like upstanding adults, mindful of our good fortune and the responsibility it entails, we lose something essential.

In a recent interview, the venerable Secretary of the Faculty John B. Fox Jr. '59 said he sees in current students the same profound sense of privilege present in the generation who came to Harvard after the Second World War. It was a time when Harvard became far more competitive than it had ever been--nationwide recruiting and the G.I. Bill ensured that--and students were far more serious and respectful than they were before or after.

In the '60s, all that changed, Fox said. Students came to feel there were profound problems with Harvard and with the world, and that it was incumbent upon them to change things. Over the decades, this feeling has waned, and, in an era when Harvard admissions are again more competitive than ever before, many have again become willing--grateful--to accept whatever Harvard has to offer.

"I think that's good stuff," Fox said. I disagree. Certainly we are lucky to have gotten in, and certainly Harvard can and will do many things for us. The mistake is, however, to believe that it is our duty to calmly accept whatever the University has to offer at face value and not to question it every step of the way. Harvard, I like to think, is not in the business of sending out into the world mindless drones who will play follow the leader for the rest of their lives. Instead, it was my impression, Harvard means to instill in us the ability to analyze, synthesize and evaluate everything around us so that we can uphold what needs upholding and challenge what needs changing.

All too often do the forces of conservatism on campus claim that we should mind our own business. It is not our place, they say, to engage in political discussion on this campus or in the world. We, after all, are only students and couldn't possibly know what we're talking about. If we take this attitude, how are we ever supposed to fix anything? If we believe that during college we should automatically respect authority, what would make us think we would be able to challenge it when we leave?

So what if we later in life find that our actions seem foolish to more mature eyes? In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Class of 1821, "Speak what you think now in hard words and tomorrow thinks in hard words again, thought it contradict every thing you said today." After all, what time is there for youth and idealism, if it be not youth?

Our humble letter-writer continues: "On behalf of those students who would rather preserve the beauty of the Harvard campus than contribute to the grotesque scene in front of the Science Center, I beseech my fellow Harvard students to cease this destructive and costly littering. Find somewhere else to put your posters and show more respect for the beautiful setting that attracted many of us to Harvard in the first place."

Yes, let us show respect for the true beauty of Harvard. Let us work hard and live hard and believe hard. Let us not take ourselves so seriously. Let us not talk of being responsible as if that means being complacent. Let us for once be who we are, not who we are told we should be. And for the love of God, let us poster wherever we want. For in doing so we do not deface the ground but rather inject our stodgy red brick surroundings with the wild-eyed enthusiasm of youth.

Andrew A. Green '98, an English and American literature and languages concentrator in Pforzheimer House, was managing editor of The Crimson in 1997.