Guilty Pleasures

You want a Harvard soap opera? You can finally change the channel from Fletcher University Professor Cornel R. West ’74. Not even the Afro-American Studies department and University President Lawrence H. Summers can match the melodrama and tabloid feel of the show that opened Friday: two gorgeous and semi-famous College seniors accused of running a scam to rip off their friends and colleagues in the old and prestigious Hasty Pudding Theatricals, forsooth.

Suzanne M. Pomey ’02 and Randy J. Gomes ’02 are skyrocketing to what must be highly unpleasant stardom. If the pilot of “As Harvard Turns” was last week’s secret meeting to inform Theatricals members of the situation, episode two was the arraignment yesterday morning. We’re all hooked. People are reading the newspaper like it’s eating ice cream, smacking their lips over the all-too-juicy details.

At the arraignment, Pomey’s head was a blonde beacon in the front row, one-time friend Gomes’ dark head three rows behind her. A gaggle of Theatricals members sat between them, shoulders and backs turned, conspicuous and cold. Here and there the regular courtroom Joes muttered amongst themselves about what the big case was today, more than one cocking a brow at the well-coiffed collegiate crowd. A broad Boston accent noted “the Hahvahd kids charged with stealing ninety thousand bucks.”

The scene featuring the two Winthrop House seniors indicted for larceny was truly theatre of the absurd, familiar to me only in that it was vaguely reminiscent of the O.J. Simpson trial. The same mud-brown paneling, uptight officers, grim-faced suits. It was a moment of such epic soap-opera proportions that one half expected close-ups or an outburst from an aggrieved Hasty Pudding-ite in four-inch heels. Where was the bad theme music? Judge Ito? The white Explorer? The New York Post headline? But there were no such unseemly antics in yesterday’s episode of Harvard shocker: just two quiet and decorous “not guilty” pleas. From my vantage point in the second row on the left, when they rose to face the music, the dramatic duo barely exchanged glances. They may not be friends anymore, but in at least one sphere, they can never be separated again. Randy-and-Suzanne. Suzanne-and-Randy. Those names now twinned forever in Harvard College gossip.

And the thing about Harvard College gossip is that there’s so little of it. Not like this, anyway, which is why Randy and Suzanne are doomed to immortality. Larceny. It’s not a word a Harvard student says often, most likely. A delicious word. Roll it over your tongue slowly. It tastes like chocolate, sinful, delectable. Like the Hasty Pudding Sundae at Ben and Jerry’s in the Garage—a guilty pleasure. Which is, I suspect, exactly what this alleged instance is for most of the College. Forget Shakespeare in Love. Think Shakespeare in College: whatever happens, it reads as a tragedy of ludicrous and tabloidesque grandeur. We’re usually watching from afar, not with ringside seats. And here’s the secret: Harvard College students are involved in a scandal and you like it. Your classmates are falling from grace and some part of you likes it. Some part of me certainly does. The Long Strange Trip of Randy and Suzanne reveals us for what we really are—which is maybe only human.

I’d like to think that I don’t find this compelling. But I can’t really help it. This scandal has made scandal respectable for us somehow. To pick up The Crimson instead of pretending not to look at the tabloids at Out of Town News makes it easy to hide an appetite for titillating tidbits. In the public eye, Randy and Suzanne have become more than fellow students who might not graduate in June if the criminal case is still pending—they’re the soap opera next door.

We’ve had our share of media blowups this year: Afro-American studies and grade inflation among them. But this one has a special flavor all its own—a surreal quality that makes it easier for us to secretly enjoy. We have full emotional license to savor the dark details because it’s a Harvard scandal, but one that for most of us has no personal consequences. Unlike the other two cases, which arguably reflect badly on the school, Randy and Suzanne don’t really affect most of us at all. The school is officially so distanced from the case that I saw no tutors or school administrators at yesterday’s arraignment. In years past, when The Crimson has printed information of this nature about students within the College, inevitably some administrator or tutor has called the newspaper to plead for “your fellow student.” But in this case—an eerie silence. Maybe Randy and Suzanne have grown larger than life for the administration too? Or maybe Summers is hoping we won’t change the channel back to him.

Vasugi V. Ganeshananthan ’02 is an English concentrator in Lowell House. Her column appears on alternate Wednesdays.