Sweltering in Justice

If there is one thing I have learned over the course of last semester’s famously popular “Justice” course, it is that although life may be unfair, human society can correct for these inequalities. In this respect, Harvard is morally obliged.

There are thousands of people in the world—even on this hallowed campus, America’s so-called bastion of justice and equality—who are richer, smarter, and more talented than I am. And yet, despite this abomination, our society, steeped in the rhetoric of equal opportunity, does little to ensure a truly equal system. I’m referring, of course, to the equality of outcome. Why suffer inequity when we can all be the same?

A personal issue of mine—one that really offends my acute sense of equality—is the case of the student I’ve nicknamed Mr. Canaday: the freshman who saunters thrice daily through the front door of centrally-located Canaday, positively glowing at the good fortune of his short walk to the dining hall. The morally arbitrary housing system gave him inherent advantages over me, who, as a Grays Easterner, lives hundreds of feet further (that’s, like, 50 steps!) from Annenberg and the mail center than Mr. Canaday.

He was, it seems, one of the lucky few to enjoy the lush and exclusive privileges life has to offer, selected in a way that is as arbitrary as winning the lottery, or being nominated for the Supreme Court by President Bush. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, Mr. Canaday clearly enjoys the privilege of sleeping later, of spending less time in transit, of wearing more fashionable, less comfortable shoes—all because he lives in a more convenient location that he did nothing to deserve.

For the sake of justice, Harvard needs to treat all students equally. Especially Mr. Canaday, the pompous bastard. It’s so unfair.

I propose the construction of a futuristic, spherical, rotating dorm (whose name should include equal quantities of each letter of the alphabet, so all feel equally important) in which the rooms are equidistant from every location on and off campus, from the mail center to Logan Airport. In an egalitarian society, I should not have to make the perilous journey across the yard every day, fending off angry foreigners and their pets, if Mr. Canaday can so easily bypass the John Harvard statue and all its accompanying mayhem.

But the tyrannical rampage of random privilege does not stop at housing. Mr. Canaday’s well-endowed muscular frame puts my own to shame. The sheer, intimidating perfection of his figure is a testament to the abhorrently unfair process of DNA distribution. In the interest of leveling the social playing-field, I support dragging Mr. Canaday down to the level of the genetic proletariat: scar his face, knock out his front teeth, surgically remove his bulging biceps…whatever it takes. It’s only fair.

And we speak not only of Harvard, but also America. For even here, inequality festers in its many subtle forms. From income to intelligence to bone structure, humanity is riddled with dissimilarities that put egalitarian ideals to shame. If equality is truly to be the maxim by which Americans lead their lives, they should strive not to be one people, but, rather, one person. Eliminate inequality, and enforce equality with all the might our hefty $30 billion endowment has to offer. Usher in an age of glorious homogeneity!

Life isn’t fair. That’s where Harvard should come in.



James H. O’Keefe ’09, a Crimson editorial editor, lives in Grays Hall.