Uncork the Sherry, Please

In June the University's most successful fundraiser will step down from his post, and appropriately enough, one of the nation's most-renowned economists will arrive to fill President Neil L. Rudenstine's shoes. (Other issues aside, the presidential search committee must have thought, "Who better than Lawrence H. Summers to figure out what to do with our endowment now?") After a decade of Rudenstine-style wining and dining (with hand-written thank-you notes, no doubt), Summers will navigate the stirring end product: an extravagant $19 billion endowment, mostly comprised of alumni donations.

Last year alone, Harvard raked in more than $450 million from alumni--an impressive 32 percent more than any other American university. It took Rudenstine's finesse, but graduates were plenty willing to give back to the University whose diploma helped land them in their posh Upper East Side or Louisberg Square homes. It couldn't have been too difficult to woo those still attached to Fair Harvard and still able to belt out "10,000 Men of Harvard" by heart. Little else--besides tax deductions--could explain their willingness to throw bills back at their alma mater.

There is something suspect, however, about the way many alumni have remained connected to Harvard--namely by dumping money on the president's desk--but have ceased interacting with the members of the College themselves. Except when delivering a lecture about their latest book, watching the occasional Game or moving their son into the Yard, alumni rarely return to the Square that was once their own--and rarely seek connection with the students who have taken their place in the classrooms and in the houses. These graduates choose to express their loyalty through money rather than any serious connection to Harvard or, rather, to Harvard as it exists today.

It is unsurprising that the pre-coeducation, pre-randomization Harvard College of years ago epitomized collegiality and alumni-student networking. It probably represented the most concentrated form of back-scratching in the Western hemisphere, and why not? If an alumnus, for some reason, didn't already know a student by name or through family connections, then he could, at the very least, take for granted that the student would resemble him both in appearance and in manner. There was security in such homogeneity.

But most of today's alumni have little connection--and even less in common--with the present population of the College. We're not just female and Jewish--we're even further from the traditional Crimson WASP than that. With whom at the College would alumni specifically seek connection, anyway? Their houses have been randomized, their final clubs rejected and their fellow Harvardians (gasp) diversified. A few vestiges of the Old Boys' Club still prosper, thank goodness, but even those are fading fast. (The Fly Club now includes four--four--minorities!)

For sure, Harvard graduates will forever donate money to the College and the University. But there is little desire to reach out to the outlandish members of today's undergraduate community who devote themselves to organizations that had no place at Harvard just 20 years ago and to causes that may seem, shall we say, nonsensical to the average graduate-turned-titan of Wall Street. ("A living wage is not economically sound!")

With all our reform in the name of diversity and progressivism, Harvard has lost the characteristic alumni-student back-scratching that made this place so special from the first. Sure, students will always be able to expect a solid education and an impressive diploma from Harvard. But 50, 40, even 30 years ago, they could also expect a wink and a nudge when it came to employment as well.

Now, without even our alumni extending a helping hand, we struggle to shed the egotistical (and now slothful) Harvard stereotype as we scramble trying to land unpaid internships and we vie, viciously, for the handful of fellowships and job openings available to us. I don't mean to protest the way many alumni have chosen to give back to their alma mater--I, too, find it of the utmost importance that each elm in the Yard be endowed--but it's frustrating to know that what was once networking in its most virile, potent form has degenerated into a JobTrak computer program.

Alumni simply aren't bending over backwards--or even turning their heads--to seek and employ qualified, hard-working Harvard graduates anymore. And it's because the Class of 1951, returning in June to celebrate its 50th-year reunion, probably feels as comfortable associating with this year's graduating class as it would attending a DMX concert. Networking necessitates a degree of identification between the donor and the beneficiary which, admittedly for the better, no longer exists at the College.

And so we resign ourselves to the fact that however many alumni are still kicking today, they don't really give a damn about us at the College anymore. But assuming that Harvard not only retains but develops its diversity, attracts a few more minorities and entices more than just a handful of international students, hopefully that will become the obvious status quo. And, thank God, the robust Old Boys' networking of yesteryear will resurrect itself--in p.c. form, of course.

Jordana R. Lewis '02 is a history and literature concentrator in Eliot House. Her column appears on alternate Thursdays.