Our Apathetic, Irrelevant Campus

This week marked the sixth anniversary of Sept. 11, the long-awaited pronouncement of the “Iraq Report Card,” and the return of students to Harvard. Despite the media frenzy around world events, the number of open-list emails exchanged on everything from Gen. David Petraeus to Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and the ample free time afforded by “Camp Harvard,” chatter around campus centers on lofting beds and where the best final club party is. Wide-eyed first-years and jaded upperclassmen left dissent at home.

My free time this summer allowed me to savor the free New York Times that The Crimson gets—a privilege that Harvard students regrettably lack during the year. After reading the paper cover to cover every morning, I felt naïve and at a loss for how life on campus can go on so normally while Iraq is in such a state of destruction. I’d kept fairly up to date on my world news in between classes, but I underestimated the absolute futility of our situation in Iraq until this summer. Harvard students are all policy wonks and budding politicians, but we lack the pathos or perspective to understand the depths of despair of American soldiers and Iraqis.

During the semester, I’ll scan the headlines of nytimes.com in the middle of my Cold War class when suddenly I have to jot down notes on the importance of The Partisan Review, and I need to respond to this IM from my boyfriend asking about our dinner plans—and oh, I have to e-mail the teaching fellow sitting across from me to ask for an extension on the take-home midterm. And class is over, I have a social life and an overdue paper to attend to, and sectional strife in the Middle East is the last thing on my mind until the next time I zone out in class.

For our super computer-literate generation, news becomes a procrastination tool akin to the Facebook, and we lose the personal and contemplative component of reading. The print newspaper at breakfast creates a meditative and undistracted time for the text that allows me to not just suck in information, but also to slow down and formulate ideas about my position and power to change this news. I love seeing The Crimson read at breakfast, but I would also love to see lively debate among friends at lunchtime, national publication in hand, over war strategy or immigration policy.

Postmodern views about text and communities aside, the fact of the matter is that few Harvard students can contemplate the enormity of the war—especially when delivered via news alerts on an iPhone screen—when it directly affects so few of us. The supposed purpose of General Education is to focus on “the real-world applications of a liberal arts education.” Despite this agenda, the University and University Council administrations have done little to foster civic participation among its students.

Last winter, a month-long pilot program organized by The Crimson and the UC delivered dozens of communal copies of The New York Times to Harvard dining halls. The program could be continued at a discounted cost of 40 cents a copy at that time (it is likely lower now). The student governments and dean’s offices at Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, and Yale currently sponsor free newspaper readership programs at their schools.

The UC received over 350 emails from students at the end of the pilot program showing overwhelming support for its continuation. The UC and The Crimson sent a letter to then-President Derek C. Bok to persuade the administration to pick up the cost of the program, but Bok declined. The UC voted down legislation that would share the expense of papers with HoCos, which would have cost $1,700 for the duration of the semester—the same amount of money regularly doled out for parties in a given weekend.

In a Crimson article on March 5, UC member Jon T. Staff V ’10 said that money earmarked for newspapers “will not go to cultural events” or “political rallies”—the supposed goals of the UC. The need to balance funding of student activities with student services is the UC’s prerogative. But who will rally or organize if they lack a built-in civic community? Or basic information?

The multitude of student groups at Harvard allows every individual to find his cause and promote it, but rarely causes collaboration with other extracurricular associations. RSS feeds and blogs customize information, leaving our generation perhaps better informed than any other previous ones, but informed selectively and self-centeredly. Facebook lets you add “causes” to your profile and find friends based on common interests and charities. But will the “1,000,000 strong for Barack” actually vote for him? Will thousands of blog readers board a bus in real life and stand before the White House to demand change?

It is often said (by professors and policy makers at least) where Harvard goes, others follow. Yet Harvard has fallen behind the times, both in moving its students and in stirring the national consciousness. It is a very small step, but University Hall should give the gift of civic awareness through free papers, and if they will not, the UC must. Perhaps soon, after four and half years of silence, students will really speak up. No one ever ended a war with a text message, and maybe it’s time to revert to old-fashioned tactics to get the point across.



Kristina M. Moore ’08 is a history and literature concentrator in Dunster House. She is the president of The Crimson.